Julian: Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining the Behind Company Lines podcast. Today we have Nate Hamet, the CEO and co-founder at Quindar. They are an aerospace startup focused on automation and automating the satellite design, test and operations processes. Nate, thank you so much for joining the show.

Julian: I'm really excited to jump into your background and your experience and what you're doing at Quindar. Before we get into all that good stuff, what were you doing before you started the.  

Nate: Yeah, Julian, thanks for having me on. so before I started the company, I was working at an aerospace, startup that was doing synthetic aperture radar operations. And so, it's kind of the, the, the flavor of, of the year and. In the earth observation realm for aerospace. being able to take pictures with radar so that you can image an area on the ground, an area of interest, they call it, at night, during the day through cloud cover. So something that the government is very interested in.

as well. And then, before that I was, at One Web, which is a broadband, company via satellites. And, they started around 20 13, 14. so I, I joined a few years later and, was tasked with creating the. ground system that was able to talk to the satellites. and at that point, they were looking at 1500 satellites and in 2016 or so, planet maybe had the most satellites in orbit at a couple hundred, or excuse me, at about a hundred.

and so we were trying to 15 x that and that's where the term mega Constellation came to be. and so, you know, being a young engineer, I was like, Sure, let's do that. Sounds. that's where we kind of, you know, ran into this problem of, of operations and automation. but that's where I got a lot of, of my lessons learned and, experience with operations for design and test, for satellites.

Nate: And then, yeah, before that, I was at Lockheed Martin, so much larger company. I was working as an electrical test engineer, in the factory testing satellites, which was fantastic. I was testing a large. size of a school bus, satellite that provided 3G services to our armed forces. and that was great.

Nate: It got to test a lot with tests like you fly, You they call it. So they do a bunch of environmental testing which mimics in the rocket it going up and the shake and acoustics that it's gonna feel. So you kind of try to mimic that on the ground and see if it's gonna,break. and so luckily they don't, cuz the engineers are brilliant.

but then the awesome cool thing with that was I got to also fly with the satellite to Cape Canaveral. Integrate it with the rocket or the launch vehicle as, as we typically call it in the industry. and we did a bunch of tests over there as well, just to make sure nothing happened in flight. got to watch it go up and the minute that it detached from the umbilical, if you might see in, in rocket launches, my job was done and it was onto the next satellite.

Julian: That's incredible. Where did the fascination with satellites come from?  

Nate: So believe it or not, my undergraduate degree is actually in meteorology, so it's in, you know, studying weather. So, you know, when Twister came out, that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a tornado chaser. I wanted to be the guy on tv, you know, in the middle of a hurricane.

Nate: Getting blown and, you know, blown away. And, you know, a part of that, at Michigan, I joined a balloon club and that balloon club, I thought was a weather balloon club. And instead they were actually testing small satellite components on weather balloons and then getting them back. So instead of sending 'em to space, never getting them back again, they could launch 'em at high altitude 120,000 feet and retrieve them and see if their experiment worked.

Nate: A part of that I got fascinated with, okay, if I'm the weather person for this team, they want to predict where a balloon when you launch it and to where it pops and where it lands so that you can safely retrieve your payload. I need real time data from the balloon. I can't just use the models that are produced every six hours, every hour, depending on which model you use.

and so that's when I started to understand software and electronics and to try to create like, A weather sensor that could telemeter real time weather data down to the ground. And, you know, it kind of took me a second and realized, well, this is actually what a satellite does. and I started to learn electronics and as I, you know, wanted to progress my career, decided, you know, maybe it's a good idea to, to learn satellite systems engineering. And so I went to grad school for that. and that's kind of what took off with me in satellite.  

Julian: That's incredible. I, it's, it's funny, the coincidence, I was just watching something on, and Netflix and it was around the, how weather's predicted and it was talking about Yeah, the network of satellites and, and then on the ground how the network of satellites kind communicates with, with a bunch of ground technology to interpret the data and then push it out to different, you know, local channels.

Julian: And it's this cascade effect that then we, we get, you know, the information that we have on. our phones and our applications. so it, it is so fascinating. How do the network kind of cohesively, you know, gives you information, that, that, you know, obviously comes so quickly and so readily, outside of, you know, weather and, and the other types of information.

Julian: I think, you know, and I guess that we relate with satellites like our phone service. What other information is being gathered from, you know, the network of satellites, that we may not know of.  

Nate: Yeah. Now, especially in the last five years, you know, sci-fi has almost become real of with what we're trying to do in space, with satellites, with spacecraft.

and so kind of like the big kas out there, our earth observations, taking pictures, optical, as I mentioned, the new kind of synthetic aperture radar taking them and they look like black and white photos and, and radar. commercial gps or, position navigation in time is, is the more appropriate word, is becoming a thing, trying to have more secure, reliable, GPS out there.

and then in space manufacturing is, is is becoming a thing, whether it's refueling satellites, or actually like building components in space, with spacecraft and, you know, recently, within the last year or two, NASA has looked to outside commercial companies to build a commercial iss essentially.

Nate: And so there's three big, primes who are working to compete, to be a commercial space station. as, as a follow on to the iss. And then going to the moon. going to the moon is a big one now too, is starting the lunar economy. And the part about being out there too is. As you start to get into orbits that are further and further away from Earth, you can actually, view other satellites.

Nate: And so the government's interested to see what are other, countries, you know, doing with their satellites as well. So in reconnaissance, and then finally it's, you know, data relay and broadband and direct from satellites, to your cell. to be able to make an emergency text when you're in the middle of nowhere, or just, you know, while you're on a plane, is to seamlessly walk onto a plane and never lose your cell phone connection. So a really exciting time in, in aerospace.  

Julian: That's incredible and, and what, you know, in terms of the advancements and, and, you know, this whole commercial, there's so many different topics that, that you touched upon that, that we can dive into. But I'm so fascinated just in how it, involves kind of, or affects the technology that we have.

Julian: You know, you talk about signals on your cell phone and not being able to be disrupted. What was the incumbent. For having this technology, was it kind of a more centralized location that the information would be, sent to and then it would be then dispersed? is that kind of what it was before and, and where is it leading to now?

Julian: Is it like really direct communication to, you know, our devices or, or, our personal use kind of, devices?

Nate: Yeah, I would say it's, it's seamless connection. Like that's where, where the industry is going. It's not having to buy another device to be able to talk to a satellite. And these other devices are usually much more clunkier, you know, than your iPhone or your Android.

Nate: And no one wants to carry around multiple devices. You know, the less that we have to carry. similar to to space, you know, size, weight, and power is, is everything swap. And so the less that we have to do and the more that it's integrated and that's where, you know, it goes down to the manufacturers of the cell phones and the chips that are in the cell phones and getting ahead of the curve to know that the iPhone, let's just say 17 or 20, like what's gonna be in there so that we can deploy satellite services, that are just as seamless with those next generations of cellphones.

Julian: Yeah. What does the collaboration look like with like private commercial companies and, and government, and then also companies like yours that it sounds like enables this,this kind of, I would say, you know, design, but also this implementation of, of this technology. it sounds like you kind of, the vehicle that helps all this data kind of progress.

correct me if I'm wrong, of course, but yeah. What, what does the communication and collaboration look like now?  

Nate: Yeah, so that's a great question. you know, definitely as I've been in this industry now for eight or nine years, it's, you know, who you meet along the way. you know, same thing with college.

Nate: Not necessarily the grades you make, but the hands you shake. and so, you know, part of this process, You know, we noticed that in the furthest upstream, and just like creating satellites, additive manufacturing, 3D printing is allowing more affordable manufacturing and at scale of satellites. And so the price has really gone down.

Nate: And now customers, you know, want more data, which usually means more satellite. And, they want quicker data. They want the latency to be much quicker than what you would get with, you know, even a, a satellite service. you know, that's internet, based. So they want that quick and snappy and so they want more satellites.

Nate: And then the next phase in that is, the ground stations are the antennas. And so the antennas are really more now like, airbnb where you can rent them by the minute, which I know is not like Airbnb, but there's other, you know, customers who are competing for time on that antenna. but it's great because it allows more companies to access that without having to build out their own infrastructure.

Nate: And honestly it can be like ice road truckers when creating and deploying these antennas where, you know, very northern and southern latitude regions where your satellite, if you're in lower orbit, is gonna pass very, very frequently around. You know, you have to work against the elements in the weather and the tundra to be able to, you know, take heavy equipment.

Nate: Along, you know, permafrost and then to be able to, you know, dig trenches and stuff when it's thawed and then, you know, to complete the circle. so antennas as a service has helped, you know, open up that area. And then finally, as you, as a lot of folks have seen with. You know, SpaceX and some of the other smaller launch companies, like Firefly and Astra and Rocket Lab, you know, they're creating, much more affordable launch vehicles that can take smaller satellites and more companies can afford to get to space, which is typically the most expensive part of, you know, you know, your s.

Nate: Procurement and creation and deployment. and where we're at is we're, we're the midstream there. So all of that has become, you know, a focus of the industry as, as it should be. But every single satellite that's out there, every single spacecraft that's out there needs communication with the ground and they need operations.

Nate: And so as we have more satellites and, and as space gets even busier, and as we have more launch, You need to be able to scale out operations. More of like IT as if you just deployed another server. And so that's where Quindar comes in.  

Julian: That's incredible. And, and what about, you know, what Quindar is doing? You know, you said it's operationalizing this whole process and, and making it not only accessible, but efficient as well.

what are some of the exciting kind of, projects that you're working on or companies that you're working with to kind of, you know, use this technology and advance it, and gather more different types of data? You know, tell us a little bit about the traction and the progress that, that you're seeing.  

Nate: Yeah, I, I can't name any specific companies just yet.

but just as, as I was mentioning with like the types of customers, we have a diverse set of users, you know, whether that is the in-space, manufacturing, earth, observation, you know, telecom, a lot of those have come to us. seeking help with operations and it's because of a few things. And, you know, it's, it's a tough market to hire in.

People are expensive, especially aerospace engineers are, are very, very expensive. and so what you see in like the Apollo 13 and a lot of like famous images of. Of people in a control room with dozens and dozens of screens and like, you know, the huge screen in the front. That's exactly what operations is still like, it really hasn't progressed much in the last couple decades, and so it's futuristic as like space sounds.

Nate: It's very archaic behind the scenes because what has worked in the past, That's what people like and it's like, well, it works. Space is risky. We can't get it back, you know, so we're gonna keep on, on moving, but the industry is moving much, much faster. and so our services are able to onboard those diverse set of customers and abstract away the year, two years.

Nate: It would take them to create the same sort of software on the. To be able to track a satellite, which is complex orbital mechanics and mathematics, to be able to reserve contacts. You know, now you know where it's going. You have to reserve antennas that are all around the world and know when is it gonna pass overhead and for how long.

and so being able to reserve those times, we abstract that away as well. And then every satellite speaks a different language. So, there's kind of like a funny saying where it's like every satellite has its own personality. you're in this space environment, it's very dangerous. there's something called a single of that upset, which is just radiation particles that you kind of crash your computer a little bit and you have to be ready for those moments.

Nate: And then each of these manufacturers, Kind of creates their own language that their satellite speaks. And so as the number of satellites and manufacturers start to increase, you know, we're working, with them to be able to have a default configuration in our platform. So even if you have. with supply chain, different manufacturers making your, you know, let's just call it your earth observation constellation, taking pictures, you know, we're able to handle that orchestration and understand this satellite speaks this language, this satellite speaks that language.

Nate: And then finally at the end it's, you know, it's like I mentioned, it's a dangerous environment. Things go wrong and you have to be ready for that. And so that's usually what those engineers are there for is to, to be ready for that moment. Cuz it was, it cost a lot of money to get up there and the, and the satellites were expensive.

Nate: We're taking all of the events that happen onboard the spacecraft. Again, just think of it like a computer. You know, your cpu, your ram, your state of health. What was the server doing? Did it, did it, did it actually like, accomplish its workload? That's, that's really what you're doing on the ground, is trying to make sure things are okay and if they're not, fix them and get back into service.

Nate: And so we're automating all of that away. And so essentially the room that you'll normally see, you know, you could be able to access it from your computer instead of going into that room itself, which during the pandemic, NASA and JPL proved to be by operating, you know, the Mars Rover from home. And I think that's really what woke the industry up was, well, if NASA can do this and is willing to do this, then maybe the industry can also do this as well.

Julian: That's incredible. when, when I hear the language, I work with a lot of engineers and, and so I'm thinking like Python, Java, I'm thinking all these, you know, coding languages. But is it, is it similar? Are, are there like specific languages? I know you said they all speak different languages and have different personalities, but are they kind of, you know, built and cut like, you know, software languages as well?

I wish, a lot of it's based off heritage, you know, some of the new space c. Are actually creating satellites that are more like servers. So the same way that you would connect to a remote server that's, for example, hosted in aws, would be a similar sort of protocol to connect to your satellite, on the ground.

Nate: Yeah, we do use like common languages like that, like Python and, and Java. but on board the satellite, they're usually, embedded programming written in, in c c plus plus and things like that. . Yeah. Yeah.  

Julian: I, I'm curious, you know, kind of with the evolution of, of, you know, Quindar and what you've been, what you're building, how is it, what are the different like challenges that, that you face working with technology in space and, you know, private companies and government that are just different than, than most, you know, companies, Most startups that, that, you know, are working with, you know, software and, and, And more consumer accessible products versus, you know, this seems like highly technical, highly specific, and, and, and kind of a, a small group of people who are working on it.

Julian: What are, what are those different, you know, challenges to that, you know, that you face?

Nate: Yeah, that's a great question. believe it or not, like the aerospace industry is, is starting to move towards the cloud, a lot of it was servers hosted at data centers that they maintained because it's like, well, this is my data.

Nate: I trust, you know, my data to be owned and managed by my people. and the cloud's been around for, I don't know, 15, 16, 17 years as like a public service. And we're just starting to migrate back into, you know, using that as a service. So that's like the first one is, you know, trust in using the cloud. The second one would be, it's pretty common for satellite operations.

Nate: To be in a physical location that the only way to be able to tell your satellite to take a picture is to physically be in that building. and so kind of as you could see with the pandemic and, and the work from home movement, that was really the catalyst that, that pushed folks to say, We need to go into the cloud and we need to be able to, you know, operate securely from home.

Nate: Yeah. And so it's, it's our philosophy that you. Security is number one with us. It's absolutely number one. We wanna be able to support the government as well. And that starts day one. Not, not when you're getting a customer and they're doing a security review that starts with your developers, you know, all the way down there.

Nate: Yeah. And, you know, with that baseline, if you can do your banking online, if you can store your passwords online, you know, kind of like the, the core of, of, of, of living, then you can tell a satellite to take a picture online.  

Julian: Yeah. Who, who are the major cloud service companies for satellite? And, and information like that.

Nate: Yeah. So, so really it's up to the architect to be able to, to, to develop the ground system, to be able to track the satellite and contact it and deploy the services to be able to, to encode and decode the language the satellite speaks. And so like your Microsoft, your aws, like those are, those are the big carriers and they're starting to get more space, ecosystem within those cloud platforms. like there's Azure Orbital, which is their version of being able to rent ground station time and antenna time, without having to go through like those antenna experts, if you will. that'll onboard you. Same thing with aws. They do the same thing.

Nate: And so, you know, as their meat and potatoes, those companies, meat and potatoes is that, they are infrastructure. And so they're able to take, just, we call it wide band data, just a lot of data, that your pictures for example, and they're able to almost instantly get it to the customer so that they can begin processing.

Nate: Whereas if you didn't have that backbone, you know, it's gonna be very, very expensive, to talk to your internet service provider to be able to get that sort of bandwidth because these antennas aren't located. In the middle of cities, typically where there's good infrastructure or in the US you know, when there's great infrastructure, they could be in Ghana, they could be in, you know, Northern Alaska, which believe it or not, you know, it's, I was told in 2016 when I was at one web that it was quicker to fly in MRI from a hospital to another hospital than it was to upload and download it.

Nate: So even, you know, in, in the us you know, the infrastructure in some places isn't there. And that's where these intended providers are starting to get the benefits of working with the cloud station, providers,

Julian: Yeah. As we commercialize satellites and, and kind of this whole process within private companies and, and, and, and different service providers and, and things like that.

Julian: Is there gonna be a day, soon or, or in the near future where we are, you know, very much seeing satellites kind of a huge web and network, you know, as we look up at the sky, is, is that gonna be the reality at, at one day?

Nate: Hopefully we don't see them. there's definitely the concern though, as these satellites, as they start to populate. , I know like starlink went through it with astronomers, saying that as they were looking through their telescopes, you know, they were getting the reflection back from the solar arrays of the satellite and those messing up with their deep space imaging. so hopefully, and there's a push in in the industry to be able.

Nate: You know, make satellites, more dark, which does have, its like thermal issues, in space. but yeah, I, I think, you know, for, for you and I, you know, I don't, hopefully we don't notice it because it's seamlessly integrated into all the products we use today, but hopefully we notice it in the sense that in your car, for example, Like you now have your hotspot, like you now have internet.

Nate: Like you really don't lose connection to sell to, to wireless. And then to be able to stream and get data from all those places, like on a plane, like you'll be able to watch Netflix, you know, and to do everything you can. And especially with business like. Not watching Netflix, but you know, being able to, to, to work on a plane and almost like not lose your day is, is super important.

Nate: Just, just the economy itself. I know like John Deere just came out with a request for proposal, to integrate, you know, iot on their tractors. You know, those are in the middle of nowhere. so farmers are gonna start seeing, you know, ergonomic economic, you know, benefits to, access to data in those remote areas.

so I'm, I'm super excited to see all the other, you know, projects that are out there to get us data when, where we normally don't and where we. Understand, we don't.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. Now it's incredible with the amount of, of information and how it leads to just progress and, and giving the capability. It's, you know, not the first thing or, or the first,use case that, you know, generally is the most innovative piece, but it's, it's what trickles down from that.

Julian: And Yeah, like the, the farming piece is so, so fascinating, especially as, you know, the population's growing and. Access to food and, and, and just supply and, and everything like that needs to be. I, I don't know if it's further regulated or just further accessible, in a lot of ways. And, and I think it's just knowing, pieces of information that get us there.

but in regards to, you know, Quindar, and, and what you're building, what are some of the biggest risks that you face today?  

Nate: Yeah, so we're a new company. we founded in March of this year of 2020. and so we started from scratch. However, you know, we were, we have experience, you know, at our previous two to three companies, depending on who you talk to with operating satellites.

Nate: And our team is actually five other co-founders. and there's six of us total that we started and we've. Been together across two companies over the last, six to seven years. And so we do have a brand about being able to operate, you know, satellites, a large number of satellites in a diverse set of satellites.

Nate: So that does help. But the product and the solution is, is large. it's a large and, a couple weeks after we incorporated, you know, we're all, we all got together. We're all technical, we're not business. And so like we had to start learning, you know, the school of hard knocks of business. And so we started.

Why Combinator Startup School? which was great because it kind of reversed our path. And instead of us saying, we've done this before, we know the solution is to actually go talk to whom essentially would be our customers, figure out what their pain points are, and, and find what the best solution, which they often don't know the solution.

the best solution for. and as we kind of went through that process, we saw on the, you know, top right corner or whatever the website that YC was accepting, applications. but they were due like a week and we didn't necessarily have like the solution yet. We were still talking to customers and stuff, and I was like, Well, you know, well, I guess Gretzky's said it, you know, you miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. And I was like, at least let's say that we had a chance to say yes or no or to get an interview versus not knowing at all. And so I applied, you know, read through their, their tips and practices. We got an interview. Which I think they said this year they did 1400 interviews of like 14,000 or something like that.

Nate: Candidates. I thought we did terrible during that interview and they asked us all business questions and we're technical. I was ready for technical questions and so I was like, Guys, it was a great run. You know, obviously this just wasn't gonna be for us. you know, we learned a lot from that moment. two days later I got a phone call and, our group partner was like, We don't, normally fund six co-founders.

Nate: That's a lot. but because of what your team's been through and what you've done, you know, we're gonna take a chance. And so you guys are accepted. And that, I think, set us up for a lot of these success and traction that we're seeing today because we, we didn't have a product. We didn't have the solution. and building it from scratch in the aerospace industry, a lot, aerospace traditionally is built off heritage and it had to have worked before against another satellite and we didn't have that.

but, but building out and talking to our users and gaining their trust, and especially as I learned with, you know, sales and business, it's, it's all about relationships. And that's what, one web, one web brought us. which, you know, is, is unfortunate to, to be a part of one of the worst days of my life.

in March of 2020 when they filed for chapter 11, after raising. Billions, billions of dollars. And having launched, their like 70th or so satellite successfully, which is usually when you invest in companies, is like they're, they're doing what they said, they're getting their traction. But the stock market crash, no one knew what was happening.

Nate: And 400 plus of our employees were were laid off in a day without saying good, without being in the same room to say goodbye. But the thing that happened with that, All those employees who did fantastic,did fantastic job to, to build the company that that is there today. Went and sprinkled all around the aerospace industry.

Nate: And so we've been utilizing a lot of, like, those relationships, you know, to gain that trust and to be able to, to give pilot or not give pilots, but work with them on our pilots of our service, so that we can continue to build out.  

Julian: Yeah. What, what was the most compelling reason that you, that you feel, you know, why YC kind of put their faith in, the, the overall kind of vision of the product?

Julian: And I know you said, you know, at that point you didn't have a product, but, I, I was told by a founder, on the, on one of my. So I think it was,the founder of BoomTown, but he's like, product market fit is a point in time, and it was so compelling because it's true, you know, you, you continue to iterate and fit your product and it evolves, throughout the longevity of, of your business.

but what was the most compelling thing that you think they saw in wanting to involve themself in a project like yours?  

Nate: Yeah. without a doubt, our. like our team is very diverse in, the software skills and aerospace understanding for the complex mathematics behind flight dynamics, behind the complexity of hundreds of satellites, but only a dozen or so antennas.

Nate: So you gotta pick which one to talk to. the language that satellite speaks like that was my, my role at, at One Web, for example, or the analytics, like another one of our founders, you know, worked on the analytics and. another one worked on, you know, infrastructure and, kind of gluing everything together.

Nate: And so with our powers combined, like we can build this, we have built this and the team that's behind it, not only even on the technical side, we also compliment each other. Like on the business side, whether it's, you know, someone wants to grow their career on the legal or the finances or the business development.

when we voted on positions, even, none of us voted for the same position. it's kind of an easy decision to make about like what everyone's doing. .

Julian: Yeah. What, what makes your job particularly hard? I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm learning sales and business, and so, you know, it is a different beast than being able to create internally the solution that's gonna work because even, you know, in our previous jobs, we would talk to like the people who would use the software..

Nate: Probably not as much as we should have, and that was really drilled into us at yc, was to consistently be talking to our users and to, So it's, you know, difficult ga you know, gaining that, that trust and that this product that you know is, is being built for satellites is gonna work and be better,more affordable..

Nate: Have higher performance. and it's gonna make them look like the hero, like our, our buyer persona is like the managers, the VPs, the director, cuz we're enterprise sales and our job is to make them look like the heroes. and so learning all of that, has been, has been a wild ride.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. I always like to just, you know, kind of think about the future as, as companies are building. I know you just launched in March, 2022, this year, and that's incredible to see where you've gone now and, and also where kind the futures headed. but if everything goes well, you know, what's the long-term vision for Quindar?

Nate: Yeah, the long term vision is everything is flipped right now we're building software on the ground and it is rare for an aerospace company to be completely software not having the, the CapEx of hardware. And it's expensive. It is expensive to build a satellite constellation, and we're completely, Software makes us very a, a affordable, and you know where, where that's going though is what's on the ground, needs to be in the satellite.

instead of us wondering what's going on, with a satellite and saying, I need to talk to it every six hours, just check up on it like a parent checking up on a kid. It, it needs to be like an iot device. When something's wrong, it's phoning home, it's gonna phone home to say like, Hey, do I need a software update?

Nate: Is there any, you know, for, is there any software update that's ready for me? and we'd be like, No, there's not. or to be able to talk, in, Crosslinks they're called, so from satellite to satellite. And so essentially, Ground stations in space instead of like the terrestrial hardware that you would have on the ground.

Nate: And that's where we wanted to, to elevate ourselves to is from ground software to,onboard flight software.  

Julian: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's incredible. And I can only imagine the, you know, the ability for it to affect so positively the different, industries that, that use that information or can use that information and, and lowering the barrier to entry, is only gonna, you know, grow that exponentially.

I always like to ask this selfishly for, for my own research, but also for my audience, what books or, or people have influenced you the most?  

Nate: Yeah, I'd say one of the books is, is, is a classic in the, in the business and startup, definitely Lean Startup I probably read that three or four times, which it's almost ingrained now in my brain about like, you know, how to, how to, how to even operate a team.

Nate: You don't even have to be a startup, but even like operating a team and acting like one. the second one I would say is, is Build By Tony Fadell. so, you know, the inventor of of of Nest, and the iPhone and stuff. and just realizing that, you know, the first touchpoint, you know, that first mile, that's the customer's, you know, that is what the customer is gonna think of the company and of the product.

Nate: It's so important to have like your, your user interface very friendly and understandable and what we're making. Is not that you need to hire these specialists to be able to track and contact a satellite, but whereas like a, a normal, any, anyone almost could be able to operate a satellite with our platform and the user interface is gonna solve a lot of those problems that software can't.

Nate: You know, there's definitely a lot in the back end, and that's what we've did before, but that first mile is so important. . Yeah. Yeah.  

Julian: That's so exciting. And, and Nate, I know we're at time here and thank you so much for being on the show. I'm so excited to see, you know, where the evolution of this technology kind of interacts with us on, on the daily, in our daily lives and, and how it can really progress different things, you know, technology, but also just like.

Julian: You know, an experience and, and culture and, and society. And in so many ways, it just seems like, you know, moving this forward is gonna influence us a lot. So, I hope you enjoyed your time and, and I always kind like, like, like our founders to, to have a chance to, to let us know where to support, their business.

Julian: So where can we, this is, this is the chance for all your plugs. Where can we find qar? Give us your LinkedIns, your Twitters, anything under the sun that, that we can get involved to support you in the.  

Nate: Yep. We're quindar.Space Links there to our LinkedIn, to our Twitter. you know, we're always looking for partnerships to enhance, you know, our capabilities with operating satellites.

Nate: There's a lot out there, obviously, customers, you know, who are looking to, to build their own constellation. don't worry about the operations. Focus on the challenging stuff, and this is a utility that, that, can, can handle. Incredible.  

Julian: Nate, thank you so much for being on that show. I really hope you enjoyed yourself.

Nate: Awesome. It was great being here. Thanks, Julian.  

Julian: Thanks.

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