California-based Swarm Technologies is bringing remote connectivity to companies around the world, with a Canadian co-leading the satellite startup as it pushes forward growth amid a global pandemic.
The company has 29 employees as of March and is continuing to hire, with several open careers on their hiring page. Swarm has 93 total satellites in orbit, although it is unclear how many are operational or in a commissioning period. Launches typically come every few months; the last launch was in February, sending 12 picosatellites named SpaceBEEs to orbit.
Recent media reports in April, however, indicated that startup Swarm and a 28-year-old company called OrbComm are in a regulatory dispute considering how to provide services overseas on the VHF spectrum.
As background, back in January 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) gave Swarm a licence to launch 150 satellites in a VHF band previously exclusive to Orbcomm. Swarm had launched several satellites in March 2018 before the FCC approval, receiving a $900,000 fine over five years – but not getting in the way of it raising a $25 million Series A funding round not too long afterwards.
Orbcomm and Swarm separately sent letters to FCC, with Orbcomm asking how Swarm would share spectrum in VHF bands and asking for a review, while Swarm characterized the situation as a “stunningly frivolous request.” The FCC has not yet offered a ruling on the Orbcomm petition, which was last updated April 26 with Swarm’s response.
Outside of this petition, however, Swarm has been experiencing growth and has found ways to adapt through the pandemic. Co-founder Sara Spangelo recently spoke with retired NASA astronaut Ron Garan about the company’s plans. (Swarm did not respond to multiple SpaceQ requests for an interview.)
Spangelo has long experience in the space industry. She is from Winnipeg and was a finalist for the Canadian Space Agency’s astronaut recruitment of 2017. She also is a past employee of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Google X, and worked on CubeSat missions during her masters and Ph.D. at the University of Michigan.
Spangelo told Garan that at Swarm, as a young startup with few employees and so many launches, everyone works long hours. Potential employees are warned about the schedule and expectations in interviews. “I try to turn them off,” she joked, “and we find that people that really want to work on a mission-focused company get really excited about Swarm.”
The benefit of the long hours, she added, is the opportunity to grow your career quickly on a small team. Swarm, Spangelo explained, sees connectivity as a fundamental need for humans in the same lines as education, clean water and efficient supply chains; this is in part because they see it as a right to access, and also partly in that good Internet access allows for economic boosters to local economies such as financing and starting businesses.
“The example I like to give is if you’re out hiking or backpacking, without a cell and you get lost, if you can send back a 50-byte message with your latitude, longitude, altitude and SOS … that could literally save your life. Very small amounts of data can be super-impactful,” she said.
She also pointed to the value of Swarm maintaining the same founding team of about five people through an immense period of growth. “They are just world-class. You go to them with any problem, any stress or any existential crisis, and we’ll work together as a team.”
When fully ready, Swarm’s fleet should have global coverage with no meaningful delays (not even an hour or two) in obtaining data, and should make connectivity fluid even in remote environments. All technical information is online to allow hobbyists to set things up themselves, she said, which reduces “friction” with those who enjoy such setup and also helps drive the sales cycle as Swarm is not always needing to provide technical support.
The company made its network service live to commercial customers in February and has current capabilities of allowing those people to check in several times a day, using low-power and low-bandwidth devices optimized for remote applications ranging from the Internet of Things to shipping.
Media outlets have pointed to the company’s low price point of $5 USD per month per connected device, with the device available at a one-time cost of $119 USD. That’s light-years ahead of the typical cell phone plan, although of course the network is structured for more gradual uploads and downloads than the typical Apple or Samsung streaming phone the urban consumer uses.
Vertical markets where Swarm has seen the most traction so far, Spangelo said, include agriculture (such as connecting sensors), maritime app locations for things such as environmental monitoring or fishing buoys, fire monitoring, weather stations and energy (electricity solar, oil, gas and wind). Full financial information is not available on Swarm, however, including metrics such as its revenue growth or profitability; this is common among young space startups that don’t have publicly available information made available to the market.
Some insight into the company’s robustness, however, may come from the scenario that unfolded after the novel coronavirus pandemic erupted worldwide in March 2020. Thanks to global connectivity, Spangelo said, Swarm could look at how companies in Europe were faring to make adaptations as the United States and Canada rapidly shut down. Cues to help the workforce transition remotely, she added, came from practices implemented from Google and Apple and Facebook.
“Having all hands more frequently communicating and being really transparent with the team, they appreciate that. Just [disclosing items like] this is where our burn is at, these are our hiring plans and these are the changes we’re making because of COVID.”
While Swarm reduced its spending on big projects, she said the company’s three years in the market already – along with the preparation – allowed it to not have to lay anybody off or cut salaries, “which is extremely rare in startups.” This was in part due to satellites from Swarm already functioning in space and bringing in revenues, which gave leverage as the company was already entering operations instead of being in the fundraising phase.
She therefore pivoted her support to individual support for employees who were struggling. “I worried a lot about mental health and being isolated, being fearful, not being able to visit family or have [the usual] support systems. I myself even struggled. It was kind of like, we’re all in this. It was really challenging, but I think the team adapated and a lot of the team members took care of one another.”
Physical distancing forced the company to have only one person at a time building satellites and equipment during waves of the pandemic, with other team members coming in with masks and sanitation during safer periods. “It’s a testament to having an amazing team and supporting them, and finding solutions, which as a startup you’re doing every day,” she said.
Swarm will have an interesting few months ahead of it as the world begins to open up from the pandemic and as the FCC weighs in on the VHF issue. The company is doing its best to position itself for growth, Spangelo told Garan, and plans to be around for a while to best serve its customers.