The co-founder and CEO of Esper, Shoaib Iqbal, talks about the grit and grind required to launch a hyperspectral earth observation satellite:
He and his co-founder Przemyslaw Lorenczak are on this year's Forbes Australia 30 under 30 list. Like many start ups in the space, pardon the pun, they have met with their fair share of disaster. Despite their first launch 10 months ago failing, Shoaib comments that growth is nevertheless spectacular. They were enterprising enough to strike a deal with another hyperspectral company for the imagery they were going to sell from their first launch.
There is similarity in what Esper does to Spottitt using imagery analytics to ultimately write to asset management databases from space:
Esper allows resource exploration companies to, effectively, perform geotechnical analysis from space. Instead of drilling expensive boreholes, then analysing the soil for evidence of, for example, lithium, they break the light spectrum up into many bands so customers can look for the spectral signature of this raw material. A nice point Shoaib makes here is this can reduce the environmental disturbance of a large drilling campaign. He also makes a compelling economic case - less than $5 per image vs hundreds of thousands per exploration borehole.
Similar points were made during the episode with Wyvern's CEO Christopher Robson:
On the topic of exploration, I also talked briefly about one of the small number of maps that I made over 10 years ago that appeared in an announcement to the Australian Stock Exchange. This is when I worked at oil explorer Central Petroleum: An Asymmetrical Risk/Reward Equation, Asia – Australia Roadshow, 25 February 2013 – 7 March 2013. More on the company. ABSOLUTELY NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE.
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