From the Planet Press Desk: VIP Visitors

Our location, right in the heart of San Francisco, gives us a lot of opportunities to host great minds from science and beyond. This week, Planet was lucky enough to host two powerful voices in their field: Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt.

As a San Francisco startup and manufacturer, we were honored to welcome San Francisco’s congressional representative, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, to the Lab. This visit was the culmination of a lot of work led by our Government Relations and Strategy team. It’s been a key goal of theirs to highlight the Silicon Valley’s transformative role in the modern “Space Renaissance”.

To that end, Leader Pelosi took a tour of our manufacturing facility to get an up-close look at our Dove satellites, and sat down for a discussion with our leadership team. Erika Reinhardt, Planet’s Director of Product Engineering, gave Leader Pelosi a walkthrough of our data pipeline and platform, designed to get an image from space down to your laptop in less than 24 hours.

Robbie Schingler (Planet Co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer) and Leader Pelosi with a Dove

Erika Reinhardt and Robbie Schingler present Leader Pelosi with a commemorative image of San Francisco, and a laser-etched satellite side-panel

Up next was Alphabet Executive Chairman, Eric Schmidt. Robbie Schingler hosted a fireside Q&A session between Mr. Schmidt and team Planet. Schmidt took an interest in our unique position in the aerospace industry—our rapid spacecraft design and testing process, our massive data pipeline, and our easy-to-use online platform. Topics ranged from mission statements and corporate structure, to machine learning and the future of remote sensing.

Eric Schmidt delves into the future of machine learning with Planet Co-founder Robbie Schingler (and our Chief Strategy Officer)

Left to right: Robbie Schingler , Eric Schmidt, and Tom Barton (Planet COO) pose next to a Dove satellite

Everybody at Planet is busy. Sometimes, as you rush to your next meeting and past a rack full of satellites in the cafeteria, you forget how unique a challenge it is that we’re all trying to solve. Visits from prime ministers, political leaders and tech veterans serve as a nice reminder that our mission stretches beyond the Silicon Valley; it has the potential to positively impact people all over the planet. And that’s pretty cool.