Will Marshall, Planet — Founder Story

I had gone to a United Nations conference that had a theme of something like, ‘Using space to help humanity.’ It was about how to use satellites to help people on the planet. That really inspired me and my co-founders to think a lot about that. Fast-forward to when we joined NASA, we began working on ways to do space missions that were more affordable than the traditional NASA ones, which typically cost about $1 billion each. That was a bit insane and we thought it must be possible to do things at a lower cost than that.

Star Fleet has nothing on Will Marshall, the co-founder and CEO of Planet.

The company has so far sent 233 miniaturized satellites into low orbit. Today, 149 satellites continually photograph the 57.3 million square miles of Earth’s land mass.

Planet’s flock — called Doves — are no bigger than 10 by 10 by 30 centimeters. They circle the globe each day, sending back high-resolution images of the Earth. The idea is to make global change visible so that organizations can apply the fresh data being sent back to improve climate monitoring, agricultural crop yield prediction, urban planning, and disaster response.

Marshall’s pursuit of the stars began when he was a teenager in England, where he developed what proved to be a lifelong passion for astronomy — as well as a talent for tinkering; he wound up building his own telescope after finding out that he couldn’t afford one.

“They were just too bloody expensive,” he recalled.

With a PhD in physics from Oxford University, Marshall, who has described himself as a “quantum physicist cum space scientist in search of world peace and harmony,” joined NASA where he helped to create the Small Spacecraft Office at the Ames Research Center.

Marshall and his co-founders went out on their own and started Planet in 2010. Just three years later, they sent the first two Doves into space. We spoke with him recently to learn more about his journey and how it led him to find a way to use satellites to help humanity.

Q: Where did you grow up?
I’m from England. We moved around a bit, but I grew up mostly in Tunbridge Wells, a city about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of London.

Q: What did your parents do?
My father was a civil engineer and my mother was a school teacher. It was a pretty standard upbringing for me and my two sisters.

Q: What triggered your interest in science?
I became very interested in astronomy quite early on and read a lot of books about space and astronomy.

Q: Were you a science fiction fan?
I wasn’t really interested in science fiction. I was more interested in science-fact.

Q: Who were your favorite authors?
When I was 16, I read “A Brief History of Time” by Stephen Hawking. That was very influential in my thinking about going into physics. And then before that, I read a lot of books by a gentleman called Sir Patrick Moore. He was like the Carl Sagan of Britain, and the presenter of an astronomy show, called The Sky at Night, which ran every single month for 56 years on the BBC.

Q: Was it difficult for you to leave England to pursue your career in another country?
No, I didn’t find anything hard about it. Nothing, really.

Q: Are there any things about home that you really miss?
I do miss the pubs. And I miss the countryside in England, which is very beautiful — though we have some fantastic hiking here; it’s just different. I also miss the conversations. I guess the biggest thing that I miss is European culture.

Q: What don’t you miss?
I don’t miss the weather. Also, I don’t miss England’s conservative nature. Everyone’s very conservative there in the work context. Here in Silicon Valley, if you have an idea, someone’s like, ‘Here’s a million dollars, have a go at it.’ No questions asked. In England, it’s ‘Oh, I don’t know about that.’ Very boring.

Q: What were your initial impressions when you arrived in the US?
I came here to do an internship at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). My first experience was arriving in Los Angeles International Airport, and then driving to LA. It was like, ‘Oh my God, what is this monstrosity that I’ve gotten myself into?’ But I was very excited about the experience of coming to California. You hear all these things about it. I lived at CalTech, which operates JPL for NASA, and so they put me up in the student dorm, which was lovely with a beautiful campus. And of course, I was extremely excited to see what it was like at NASA and to meet the scientists there.

Q: Talk about the genesis of your idea for what became Planet. What problem did you think needed solving?
I had gone to a United Nations conference that had a theme of something like, ‘Using space to help humanity.’ It was about how to use satellites to help people on the planet. That really inspired me and my co-founders to think a lot about that. Fast-forward to when we joined NASA, we began working on ways to do space missions that were more affordable than the traditional NASA ones, which typically cost about $1 billion each. That was a bit insane and we thought it must be possible to do things at a lower cost than that.

Q: How did you and your co-founders think satellites and imaging could help improve things back on Earth?
If you look at all the big problems facing the world, the challenges are basically around things like solving poverty, ending hunger, giving everyone access to clean water, and stopping climate change and deforestation. With Earth imaging — and particularly this idea of having many more satellites up there to image the entire Earth every day — we thought we could demonstrably help tackle those global challenges.

Q: Something that really would change the world?
We felt that we had a shot at it. If you like, the stars were aligned for this project. We really could see that we could make a big difference. We knew how to build a spacecraft and it was like, ‘Hell, it’s worth a shot.’ What was the worst that would happen if you go back to square one? It’s not like we were going to go hungry. We’re perfectly employable people and we were young enough in our careers, so we thought, let’s go do it.

Q: And very Silicon Valley-like, you built your first satellite prototype in a garage?
We really did. At Rainbow Mansion, the community house in Cupertino. Several startups later came out of the garage. Ours was the first one. But yes, we literally built our first satellite in a garage.

Q: Could you have done this back in England?
No. The reason is not money and it’s not technology. People in Britain are just as smart in technology as they are here. And it’s not a US thing. It’s just this area of California. It’s this risk approach. If I go to Boston or if I go to LA, I get the same silly risk approach that doesn’t make any sense to me. Silicon Valley has this particular risk approach that’s very tolerant and that is what makes the difference.

Q: When you spoke at the Dreamforce conference, you talked about how “a connected, big data, transparent planet,” could change how we view the world. What did you mean?
If we rewind the clock to the late 1960s when the Apollo mission first went around the Moon, it gave us the first full frame picture of the Earth — the Blue Marble — that became one of most circulated images in the world. It was basically the first time people got to see the planet as one. We had been in space but here people were seeing Earth from the vantage of the moon. That led to a bit of a change in human consciousness. Scientists, at least, had been aware of our effects on the climate and the thin atmosphere that protects us from the vast vacuum of space. But this made it real to many people. And many people attribute that picture to playing a large part in the Green movement. They were like, ‘Oh my God, we live on this tiny planet and we need to take care of it.’ It was a psychologically important step for us as a species.

Q: And that kind of information wasn’t previously available for them to make those connections.
We have never had data that’s up to date to see how we’re interacting with the planet, like how are the ice caps or the forests changing. We know that it’s happening because you can take measurements on the ground, but you don’t get a real sense of it. So now, with pictures taken of the Earth every day, that will potentially help the way people think about the planet. We’ve been used to static maps. Suddenly, we can think of Earth as this changing place, and it’s our job to help make sure we don’t change it in a negative way.

Q: How many satellites have you sent up so far?
We have 149 satellites operating right now. It’s the largest fleet of satellites ever launched.

Q: Do you have a favorite quote you live by?
I like “‘Where there’s a will there’s a way,” because it has my name in it. Then I like, “‘The only risk you have in life is to take no risk at all.’” And one of my favorites is from Albert Einstein: “Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

Q: Is there an individual you most admire?
I admire Albert Einstein. It sounds crass and simplistic because, well, everyone likes Einstein. But I really do. I see him as a bit of my childhood hero. He made a lot of interesting contributions, of course in physics, but also in the realm of world affairs and philosophy and other places. He was both interesting and inspiring.

Q: Do you feel that the US is now your home? Or do you still feel like a visitor? I think of it as my home. Most of my friends are here, though my family is still in England, but I do think that the US, and California, in particular, is home. Whenever I fly to California, I’m like ‘Ahh, the sun.’