Our Investment in ICEYE
I love meeting extraordinary entrepreneurs from all backgrounds: passionate thinkers with audacious ideas; those with a socio-economic purpose and a penchant for massive value creation; engineers with incredible intellect and execution. But it wasn’t until I met the co-founders of Finnish start-up ICEYE that I encountered all those entrepreneurial archetypes.
I have Tim Draper to thank for the introduction. In March 2016, Tim interrupted a pitch meeting I was in, saying, “I want you to meet someone out in the hallway” Out in the corridor, he introduced me to Rafal Modrzewski and Pekka Laurila, co-founders of ICEYE (pronounced Ice-Eye).
That intro spurred a three hour, mind-blowing odyssey the next day. It was one of the more memorable meetings I’ve had in my time in Silicon Valley.
These two hyper articulate 20-something Scandinavians were using Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) to disrupt and democratize the Earth Observation (EO) data space; an arena that has until recently been dominated by a handful of big companies and accessible to a few superpowers and multinationals able to afford frequent and precise satellite images around the world. ICEYE’s particular area of focus (and origin of its name) was using radar — deployed on microsatellites — to observe the Antarctic region to monitor ice melt, new shipping routes and oil & gas rigs. But unlike major satellites which can cost upwards of 100’s of million dollars to build, ICEYE is making timely and affordable access to EO data possible for a huge range of new industries. And, in an astonishingly short period of time, with their combination of tech and business savvy, ICEYE’s founders had secured large revenue-generating deals from energy companies and government clients; all this before having launched a single satellite.
Here’s why I find these two to be a perfect entrepreneurial team:
First, they have amazing tenacity. Rafal first approached Tim a year before our investment. Tim was not convinced but Rafal promised to keep him posted. After a year of hearing Rafal and Pekka’s impressive string of milestones, Tim connected us. That was the day we met in the corridor.
The ICEYE co-founders displayed impressive technical acumen. I was intrigued by Rafal and Pekka. For due diligence, I enlisted Nirmal Velayudhan, a space and satellite industry leader and a close friend from my Qualcomm days. In a round two meeting with Rafal and Pekka, Nirmal fired off a blizzard of technical and business questions. Team ICEYE didn’t bat an eye and deftly provided the answers.
Rafal and Pekka — both college dropouts — also showed business acumen and prowess way beyond their years. Their fierce ambition, big business mission and persuasive talents were also on display as we finalized our investment. Like the most successful teams, the two merge complementary skills: Rafal has a big vision and infectious enthusiasm while Pekka deftly manages details on financing and engineering and keeps Rafal’s passion and talents focused in the right direction.
Rafal and Pekka are also applying their wise-beyond-years social mission, persuasion and business chops in recruiting what is already a world class and truly diverse team. They tap the CERN network for candidates and then invite potential hires to participate in an unusual ‘audition’ process: they’re flown to ICEYE HQ in Helsinki to dive into a project with existing team members for one week. Now Rafal and Pekka and other employees share a house in Helsinki, and they travel cheaply — but they smartly invest in acquiring talent. The process has resulted in an impressive team; many of whom have moved halfway around the world to Finland. Their team looks like the United Nations of Engineers, with representation from talent across the globe — Australia, Estonia, Pakistan, Poland, and the United States, to name a few.
There’s so many other examples of why we are inspired by and believe in ICEYE. Yes, the SAR space is bubbling up: radar on micro-sats, for just one example, can augment what satellites can’t do when weather gets in the way. But what really sets ICEYE apart is the belief they have woven into their culture: that democratizing critical global data and making it available to more industries, at a refresh rate and cost that is orders of magnitude better than any system out there today, can unlock a floodgate of innovation across wide sectors of our economy — insurance, construction and transportation to name a few.
While there’s an important place in our infrastructure for huge, powerful satellites that provide precise images, there’s a huge opportunity to provide a less expensive approach. ICEYE has smartly applied proven Scandinavian design principles (think IKEA) to earth observation: the belief it is possible to deliver good design that prioritizes functionality, looks good and intended for and accessible to everyone.
Draper Nexus is pleased to lead ICEYE’s most recent financing round (official announcement is here). We are honored to partner with this incredible, passionate team. We truly believe that the game-changing technology they are building and how they are doing it will unleash unprecedented efficiency and innovation, and in so doing, that they will transform a whole host of industries and greatly improve society.
