YouSaid · the spoken record

Will Marshall

lines on the record: 52
first: 2021-12-13
most recent: 2021-12-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please do follow us on your podcast app so you can always have the latest episode downloaded. If you want to contact us, our email address is hibt at npr.org. And if you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is at how IbuelTis, and mine is at GuyRaz. Our Instagram is at HowIbuilt This NPR and mine is at guy.roz. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger with music composed by Rumtin Arab Louis. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Farah Safari, JC Howard, Julia Carney, Carrie Thompson, Elaine Coates, and Harrison VJ Choi. Our intern is Catherine Cypher. Jeff Rogers is our executive producer. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to how I built this. This is NPR”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's Robbie Schingler and Will Marshall, co founders of Planet. 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 Earth imaging satellites in history. And by the way, one of the coolest things their satellites recently detected, A fleet of World War II ships that slowly washed ashore in Japan.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I bet So when you think about how far, where you are now and what you have up in space and what you're able to do, how much do you think that it has to do, and we're just kind of reflecting on your journey to get here, which is why I ask this question, because some people think I'm asking, by the way, some people think I ask this question, and I think you know the question when asked, because they want a binary answer, like, oh, it's luck, oh, oh, it's skill. It's 72% luck, and 37.8% skill, whatever. It's really a question that is designed to be reflective, you know, where you've been and where you've arrived to. How much do you think that has to do with how lucky you got and how much do you think it has to do with how hard you worked and how smart you were and all that stuff, Will?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm thinking of like the real world on MTV. Did you ever have to kick anybody out? Like, they kicked out Puck from the real world?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sounds stressful. Always discussions all the time around the house. I just want to put on my slippers and watch Ted Lasso.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know we touched on this earlier. You guys had originally moved into a community house or group house for more than 15 years, and I think both of you are in your 40s. I think either one of your partners in your lives. You still live in a house together with other people. Like, no judgment at all. I'm super introverted. I don't like to live around other people except my family. But can you explain this, why you guys choose to live this way? Now, at this point in your lives?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Double it what's just a lot of Google drives and so you are not profitable but is there a path to profitability, a clear path to profitability?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most of the companies that we profile on the show produce consumer products. They tend to hit profitability within four or five years. We profiled Moderna recently, and obviously that company took 10 years before they became profitable. I think they spent $4 billion. What you do is very capital intensive. It requires a lot of money to get satellites up into space and to process all the data. I think your satellites produce like 15 terabytes of data a day, right?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is an important point because oftentimes on the show I talk about, we hear from companies talk about mission. And most companies have a mission, right? You have to have a mission to motivate people and for people to feel connected to what you do. But mission has to be baked in. It doesn't mean can change, but it has to be baked into the company from day one. And I think this idea of baking in an ethics team from day one is absolutely crucial. I'm assuming that's how you thought about it.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Airplanes and subs and the movement of people across borders and things like that. And I could also imagine it could be used easily by governments looking to quash dissidents and people who are trying to promote human rights.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, here's what I'm wondering about, right? And I can't be the first person to ask you about this. I suspect that there are safeguards built into what you do, but what I'm worrying about is, I mean, this technology is amazing, right? Which you made available to companies and businesses and governments and so on. But I can't imagine that there couldn't be used in ways that are not wonderful and bright and sunny and optimistic. Like, I know you talk about, you've talked about how you could track environmental degradation and humanitarian disasters and refugee movements, but you also track for military intelligence purposes, like looking at missile installations or the location of”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so you're talking about the planet and crisis and the need for more data and information. And meanwhile, by the time this episode is released, you guys will have literally gone public on the New York Stock Exchange. And I wonder what the thinking behind that was. One reason, obviously, is to bring in more cash, which clearly you'll do. And the other is to make a return for the investors. Well, I guess those are the two main reasons, right?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so we are in the midst of not only a planetary crisis, a mass extinction. We know that. And you both live in California, and you have a furrow seat to some of what's happening. So, how, I mean, I understand how the existing data can help us track some of these things. But when you talk about making an impact in an even bigger way, what do you imagine? Is it more people using your data and then making policy decisions based around it?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I know that you've kind of solved the problem of cheap satellites, and they'll get cheaper and cheaper, obviously, as time goes on. But is there a way to solve the problem of expensive rocket launches? Is it possible to make rocket launches cheaper?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And one of the things that I've read about your company, which I think is actually pretty amazing, is you know that there is always a possibility that a launch is going to fail. Because there's so much fuel, there's so many moving parts in a rocket launch that it could just explode. And you're okay with that because your satellites are so cheap that you could take the risk that if one of these rocket launches fails, it's okay because another one will be okay and that's the price of doing business.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how that one photo of a forest in Oregon led to many millions more. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to how I built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2013 and Chris, Robbie, and Will have finally proven that they can take a photo from space, which allows them to go to more investors and say we actually know how to do this.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, so you've been working and basically building all these small satellites, and then I guess around April 2013, it's launch time, and you've booked one satellite on an American rocket and one on a Russian rocket, right?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Has to be totally perfectly clean. You can remember the lens cleaner up in space. That lens has to be so clean and that's it.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess eventually you had to set up a kind of a clean room to build the satellites, which is a room with no dust and no contamination at all, right? It's beyond sterile. It's like crazy super sterile”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you pitched the idea to investors, I understand that you had idealistic motivations, which many Certainly continues, but you still have to appeal to people who want to make money. And so how did you explain to investors that they would make a return on that investment? How are you guys going to make money for them?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, all right, now that you had a space on a rocket, and you knew that it was going to happen, this is 2011 when you signed this deal. Were you now able to go out and raise money because it was still going to be another presumably a year before you could launch this proof of concept?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It. Okay, so you sign up to get your satellites onto a rocket. But just to be clear, it's not like our arrival and departure times are 98% if you're booking a date on a rocket, it's not likely it's going to go out on that date, right?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, Could hitch a ride for this small satellite on a rocket that was already going up with other cargo, I guess I should point out. There's like a whole industry that offers these kinds of services And I guess you guys ended up working with two companies to get your satellites launched. There was an American company and then a Russian company you worked with. And how much was this going to cost you?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, just to be clear, the idea was let's test the concept, let's get our prototype up into space. Sounds straightforward, but we've got to get into space. How much does it cost to put something on a rocket ship into space?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Here's my question Why did you need to prove this concept if you had already essentially tested it when you worked for NASA?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so you have got some savings that you throw into this company, and you've got a prototype. But then what do you do? It's 2011. And, I mean, to get this off the ground, this is not like Tate's cookies that's been on the show or Stacy's Pita chips or kombucha. You need millions and millions of dollars. To start your company, help me explain what you then, once you've a prototype, what do you then do?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I guess one of the first things you guys did was to build a prototype of what your satellite would look like. I mean, you had some experience building things, so tell me about that prototype.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“10,000 bucks. Okay, so between the three of you, you could probably pull some money together and make it happen because you had savings from your job.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Earth observation got it. Okay, Earth observation satellites. So building these things, by the way, just to build a prototype, right? How much did that cost? I'm just curious. How much money did it cost you guys?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so now you guys decide to start a company, and it's going to be a company that will launch small photographic satellites into space. That's not the right term, not photographic satellites.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got it. Okay, so you had this idea that in order to do what you wanted to do, you had to leave NASA. So what was the first step you took? It was the three of you, right? It was Will and Robbie, the two of you and Chris, and the three of you sat down and said, hey, let's start a company together?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we come back in just a moment, how will Robbie and Chris start working on building a satellite the size of a breadbox? And then how they managed to get that tiny satellite into orbit. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to how I built this. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This I'm Guy Raz. So it's the last day of twenty ten, and Will, Robbie and another NASA scientist, Chris Bosshausen, are getting together as they always do on New Year's Eve. And as they clink their champagne glasses, the three of them are also talking about starting a business, to build and launch small satellites for taking pictures of the Earth.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Help me understand Working on this project would eventually kind of inspire you guys to go off and do this on your own. What was it that you saw in this technology and the possibility of it that then led you to say, hey, we can actually do this and turn this into something bigger?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, so this was a time where the idea was let's kind of dive into satellites for a sec, right? NASA obviously has the greatest space satellites in human history, right, that can look way out into the cosmos. But they're huge. Anybody who's been to the Aeron Space Museum or one of these museums where they've got decommissioned spaceships can see how big some of these satellites are. They're huge or expensive. They're not always totally reliable. So the idea was, hey, can we start to look at smaller satellites? It may not be as robust. It may not be able to do the kinds of things that the Hubble can do, but could do pretty important things, like take images of the Earth. Was that the idea behind this NASA project?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And meanwhile, Will, you and another guy at NASA, whose name is Chris Boshausen, you were working on this project called PhoneSat. What exactly were you guys trying to do?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you're working for both of you, when you're working in a place like the Ames Research Center, obviously a NASA lab, is there just unlimited money to play around with? Is it pretty straightforward? Like, hey, I have this idea and there's just money available and not unlimited, but I mean, is there kind of a big sandbox to play in and funding for it?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, you guys moved to the Bay Area. You're living in a group house in Cupertino, and Pete Warden is your boss. And what did you guys do? What were you tasked to do? Help me understand. I mean, this is not everybody understands space research can mean a million things like journalism can mean a million things or finance can mean a million things, but what were you actually working on?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we'll get to this later, but both of you still live together in a community house, which I always call the group house, but I guess it's a little different. So help me understand this. There's nothing kind of different or unusual about a group house, especially for young people trying to save money. But this is not what that was. Bunch of colleagues who worked together at the Ames Research Center also living together to continue the conversation that they were having at work at home?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you guys get to the Ames Research Center in Mountain View. At this point, I mean, you guys have known each other now for five years. Now you're in the same place, and you move in together, right? You get a house together”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that was it. Like, he was basically, he ran the Ames Research Center. I mean, it sounds a little bit like Parg Xerox, you know, in the 70s, right? He was a guy who could say, Hey, he liked you guys. You challenged his thinking maybe, or, you know. And he said, hey, why don't you come work for me at Ames Research Lab? And eventually you guys both said, you both did.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This guy Pete Warden we should mention he was the director of the Ames Research Center I think until like twenty fifteen or something. He's kind of a legendary figure in that world and he was also, it's interesting because I read a little bit about him, he was a real critic of NASA. He was a public critic Of the NASA bureaucracy and stuff like that, right?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, all right, you're both writing and collaborating on various papers about these types of things. And I guess in 2002 you got together at another space conference, but this one was in Houston.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I remember, I mean, in 2002, I remember going to Afghanistan as a reporter, and there were a few people who had those garmin handheld devices that could kind of geolocate you, but they were very crude compared to what you see today under iPhones. And they were amazing.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, is it fair to say to both of you, Will and Robbie, that at this time you guys were sort of part of this group of young kind of researchers working for space agencies and space research agencies, part of this group of young emerging scientists, what have you, who really wanted to see if you could have some kind of influence over policy eventually, right? Is that fair to say that that's sort of how you saw yourselves?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So the two of you meet at this conference, and what you just kind of kept in touch, or what did you, because I know that you would begin to collaborate on different projects over the next few years, but at that conference, what were you talking about that you wanted to collaborate on?”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They didn't have the money to work in a so called clean room, a hermetically sealed lab without any dust or particle, so they made their own version using off the shelf items from Target. The company has come a long way since then. Today it captures about three million images of the Earth a day, and it's now simply known as planet. It also just went public on the New York Stock Exchange, raising nearly six hundred million dollars in capital. But let's start at the beginning. Before Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler met in two thousand one, they were leading sort of parallel lives on different sides of the world. Will grew up in England and got a PhD in physics at Oxford. Robbie grew up in California and the Midwest. He also studied physics, and both he and Will spent time doing internships at NASA. The two of them”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not to mention the size of those satellites. Some of them can be as big as a school bus. So what if, the co-founders wondered, you could launch a much smaller satellite, as small as a loaf of bread, and do it for a few hundred thousand dollars rather than hundreds of millions of dollars. And what if those satellites, instead of peering at distant stars, could be used to explore our own planet to take millions of images of the Earth every day, tracking the health of crops and coral reefs, and detecting things like oil spills and forest fires? It turns out you can learn a lot about how the earth is changing simply by photographing it every day. Anyway, back when they launched Planet Labs in 2010, the three founders built their prototype satellites in a small garage in the Bay Area.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sometimes starting a business can feel as complex as rocket science. The legal filings, the compliance letters, the accounting structure, and that's just the first few months. Now, imagine doing all of that in addition to actually doing rocket science, which is what makes the idea of planet labs seem almost insurmountable. Because what Robbie Schingler and Will Marshall set out to do more than a decade ago was to completely reimagine the business of space satellites and to turn it into a simpler, cheaper, and fundamentally more accessible tool for people to use. Robbie will and their partner Chris Bosshausen were all scientists at NASA and were way too familiar with the slow, bureaucratic and expensive process of getting a satellite launched.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's how I built this show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Guy Ros and on the show today how three scientists at NASA left their jobs to build satellites literally in a garage and launched planet labs, a data company that now takes about three million photos of the Earth every single day.”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And when you're ready to launch, you offer code built to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Loans issued by Celtic Bank and serviced by Stripe. All loans subject to credit approval. Hey, really quick before we start the show, a lot of you have lots of questions about how I built this, like how do you pick guests or where do you record the show or how can I get in touch with Howard Schultz? Spoiler alert on that one. We can't help you. But we can try and answer any questions you might have about the show, our work, or even me. If you'd like to submit a question, please visit gyros dot com and fill out the form and we'll answer some of your questions right here on the show in the coming weeks. Again, that's GUIRAZ. com”
2021-12-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Planet: Will Marshall and Robbie Schingler · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT