Dec 13, 2021 · 1h 0m · how-i-built-this
Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of 'How I Built This,' host Guy Raz interviews Planet co-founders Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler about how they left NASA to revolutionize Earth observation by building constellations of low-cost, miniaturized satellites.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 39.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.0 Guest teaching 2.9 Guest disagreement 0.9 Guy pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 51:46 Firm rejection of negative surveillance framing
When Raz challenges them on whether high-resolution daily imagery enables human rights abuse or terrorist use, Marshall firmly rejects the negative framing by highlighting their strict embargo lists and proactive ethics committee.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 50:39 Host challenges guests on dual-use surveillance risksRaz refuses to accept a purely sunny, optimistic narrative, pressing the co-founders on whether foreign dictators and military intelligence could exploit Planet's imagery to track dissidents and border crossings.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 45:20 Marshall corrects public misconceptions on space cost dynamicsMarshall educates Raz on space economics, correcting the assumption that rocket launch savings drove the industry by demonstrating that the 1000x increase in satellite capability-per-cost was the true revolution.
Guy holds their own ▶ 54:10 Host cites specific business and data production figuresRaz drills into Planet's capital intensity by comparing their balance sheet against Moderna and citing specific daily terabyte data volume figures to challenge their path to profitability.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Show Announcement and Listener Q&A Callout | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Guy Raz delivers the standard introductory monologue, housekeeping announcement, and background context on Planet Labs. | |
| Early Connections and a Vision for Space for Humanity | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks about their early background and shares his own reporting memories in Afghanistan using early GPS units. Will Marshall gently refines Raz's question about focusing on policy, noting they wanted direct impact on humanity. | |
| Debating Space Weapons and Joining NASA Ames Research Center | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz demonstrates familiarity with Pete Worden and NASA's institutional history, drawing analogies to Xerox PARC. Marshall and Schingler share the humorous story of debating space weapons over drinks. | |
| Living and Brainstorming in the Rainbow Community House | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz inquires about the communal living arrangement and the nature of working at NASA Ames. Schingler explains the Mission Design Center and taking iterative hardware risks. | |
| PhoneSat: Testing Smartphone Technology in Orbit | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Marshall explains the PhoneSat concept, detailing how modern smartphone internals match satellite requirements and educating Raz on open-source space testing. | |
| The 'Stars Aligned' Vision for Daily Earth Observation | 4 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Raz asks how PhoneSat led to launching a company. Marshall explains the realization that consumer electronics commoditization could enable daily Earth monitoring for humanitarian goals. | |
| Mid-Show Break: Building Bread-Box Satellites | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz sets up the commercial break and asks why their new satellite vision could not be executed inside NASA. Schingler and Marshall explain the cultural divergence between NASA requirements flow-down and Silicon Valley rapid iteration. | |
| Bootstrapping and Garage Prototyping at the Rainbow House | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz presses on the financing details and prototyping costs. Marshall corrects Raz's terminology on photographic satellites, noting they are called Earth Observation satellites. | |
| Optics Engineering and Hitching Rides on Commercial Rockets | 3 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Raz asks why they needed a proof of concept if PhoneSat already worked. Marshall explains the complex physics of optics, non-expanding telescope materials, and secondary payload hitchhiking economics. | |
| Pitching Steve Jurvetson and Raising Seed Funding | 3 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Raz questions the commercial monetization model presented to venture capitalists. Marshall explains how valuable data was obvious even before building full downstream monetization. | |
| Creating Target Greenhouse 'Clean Enough' Labs and Managing Risk | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks about clean room requirements. Schingler and Marshall explain building a clean-enough greenhouse from Target with HEPA filters, trading single-satellite perfection for constellation redundancy. | |
| Twin Orbital Launches and the First Oregon Forest Photograph | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Marshall and Schingler recount the dramatic simultaneous orbital deployments and the emotional realization when the first high-resolution forest image came in. | |
| Mid-Show Break: Scaling Up Satellite Constellations | 3 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Raz compares their low launch costs and asks about rocket launch economics. Marshall points out the common misconception, educating that the 1000x leap in satellite capability-to-cost far surpasses SpaceX rocket cost reductions. | |
| Disaster Response, Global Impact, and Going Public on the NYSE | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz brings up environmental monitoring and asks about the business reasons for going public. Marshall highlights the company reaching maturity and the planetary necessity of measurement. | |
| Dove Satellites, Geopolitical Transparency, and Built-In Ethics | 5 | 4 | 2 | 4 | Raz presses hard on ethical concerns, dual-use military surveillance, and potential authoritarian abuse, specifically asking if they would sell data to ISIS or Al-Qaeda. Marshall and Schingler detail their internal ethics committee and embargo controls. | |
| Data Infrastructure, Core Commercial Markets, and Profitability Path | 4 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Raz cites daily data generation numbers and questions the financial path to profitability. Marshall corrects the data volume figure to 30 terabytes and lays out four profitable enterprise verticals. | |
| Reflections on Success: Persistence, Timing, and the Art of Creation | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Raz asks his signature question regarding luck versus skill. Marshall and Schingler reframe the narrative around persistence, tolerance for ambiguity, and the craft of creation. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Schingler: Modern economic infrastructure relies heavily on space tech started by the military
“So much of infrastructure of our modern interconnected economy Flows through space, and a lot of people just don't know about that. Yeah, we all now have, you know, we don't know GPS and location now, and it's just, that is just back-end infrastructure for soc…”
Marshall: Planet founders shared a communal house with Apple, Google, and Stanford peers
“Yeah, no, actually, but it wasn't just NASA people. We had Students who are at Stanford, people that worked at Apple, people that worked at Google, all these places, and that created a fervor of intellectual dizziness that was always fun for us. So it was a mi…”
Schingler: Cheaper satellites enable higher risk tolerance and faster scientific discovery
“If they're smaller, they're cheaper. If they're cheaper, you can take more risk. If you can take more risk, then you can have, then, and they're cheaper. Then you can do more missions. If you can do more missions and you diversify your risk, then it increases …”
Schingler: Smartphone hardware capabilities and engineering processes closely match satellite requirements
“And really the insight that the team had is, what's so different about a phone from a satellite? And turns out, like, the engineering processes, the capabilities internally, All of that stuff is very similar.”
Marshall: NASA's PhoneSat successfully operated commercial smartphone cameras and radios in orbit
“And the phones worked just fine in space, and we had amateur radio astronomers around the world get these little Yagi antennas, these little handheld antennas, to follow the satellite, the little pictures it had been taking with the Phone camera. And email the…”
Marshall: Apple and Google's consumer electronics R&D far outpaced NASA's electronics budget
“But now, the billions and billions of dollars that would be going on in the consumer electronics industry, like Apple and Samsung and Google and all these companies, was far outpacing what NASA could spend on the development of electronics.”
Marshall: Pre-Planet Earth imagery was only captured monthly or annually
“Typically before our mission, you could only get a new image of the Earth maybe once every month or sometimes every year, depending on the resolution you needed.”
Schingler: Past organizational success creates rigid processes that anchor and trap engineering
“When you become successful with a particular thing in the future, that could become an anchor for you, right? And so, great, that's your success. You make a system out of it. You have all these processes, and then you actually do a requirements flow down. That…”
Marshall: Planet applied Silicon Valley's agile software strategy to satellite hardware
“We wanted more like the Silicon Valley release early, release often software strategy than the requirements-driven, very careful science project of NASA.”
Planet co-founders bootstrapped initial satellite prototype with up to $50K
“It was actually three different amounts. I can't remember, but it was upwards to 50 K.”
Marshall: Planet built its first satellite prototype using consumer electronics chips
“We built a test one at Rainbow this community house in the garage. We added a camera system, then we added all the other systems, radios and so on to make it a working satellite. Leveraging consumer electronics, not exactly a phone like we'd use in phone sat, …”
Marshall: Planet paid roughly $300,000 per launch for its first two satellites
“I think it was 300,000 dollars for the first one, and it was about that for the second one, and we decided it'd be best to put one satellite on each of two rockets to give a bit of redundancy.”
Schingler: Planet raised $3.2 million in its initial financing round
“Yeah, 3.2 million. We ended up having a 200 K. We also had friends and family came in a little bit.”
Schingler: Planet's first clean room was a $100 deployable greenhouse from Target
“I believe it was less than a hundred dollars, which was a deployable greenhouse that was bought at Target. Then it had some HEPA filters.”
Marshall: Large satellite constellations allow companies to tolerate higher unit failure risk
“Mainly it's about a risk approach, which is just assuming more risk per satellite. Okay, that one satellite has slightly more chance of having a dust on it, but we're going to put more satellites up than we need, and if a couple have that, it's not the end of …”
Planet's first two satellites launched within 48 hours despite six-month plan
“We had planned them to be six months apart so that we could take the results from the first one, and if something went wrong, iterate the satellite and try and fix that before the second one, except because you can't control the launch date, and they ended up …”
Schingler: Planet's first orbital photograph captured a forested region in Oregon
“Funnily enough, the first image of That we got was a forested region in Oregon. And you know, the original idea was to count every tree on the planet. And sure enough, that was our first picture.”
Marshall: Planet's Earth-observation satellites cost roughly $200,000 to $300,000 each to build
“It's about 300 K, or just slightly less than that, two or 300 K.”
Marshall: Traditional NASA satellites average approximately $1 billion in cost
“Most NASA satellites average, average about a billion.”
Marshall: Planet launched 460 satellites for less than one typical traditional satellite
“That is why we've launched all of the now 460 or something satellites that we've launched on 33 rockets for less than the cost of a typical satellite. A lot less, actually, still.”
Marshall: SpaceX's reusable rockets drove a fourfold drop in launch costs
“The rockets have, in fact, got cheaper. Just the last five or so years, they've gone down about fourfold, and mainly because of SpaceX. SpaceX, with its reusable rockets, has brought the price down”
Marshall: Planet generated over $100 million in revenue last year
“We did just over a hundred million in revenue last year, and that's a mature business at some level.”
Marshall: Transparency regarding nations' military activities increases the likelihood of peace
“The more information different countries have about each other's activities, including military activities, the more it's likely to be peace.”
Marshall: Planet has repeatedly refused data requests to prevent civilian harm
“We have our own ethics committee. That reviews every case with the government and checks. Is, is there some way in which this might bring civilian harm? And we have many cases refused to give data where we think that would be the case.”
Marshall: Planet supplies satellite data to Google for Google Maps
“So we supply data to Google for their maps. They do huge numbers of requests to us.”
Marshall: Planet projects over 40% annual growth and profitability within two years
“So we have very clear line of sight now on a growth path, you know, going just over 40% a year for the next five years we project. And that gets us to profitability in the next couple of years.”
Raz: Planet maintains roughly 200 active satellites, history's largest Earth-imaging fleet
“Their satellites last about two to three years before they basically disintegrate, which is why, even though Planet has launched more than 400 of these satellites, they only have about 200 circulating the Earth right now. Still, that's the largest fleet of Ear…”