Space enterprise founder, Laura Crabtree, talks with Darrell and Jordan about starting Epsilon 3 and how they are helping companies across the space industry (and beyond) plan, track, and record their large projects and mission. They discuss their growing market fit, building relationships with your investors, and the benefits of having three founders.
Space enterprise founder, Laura Crabtree, talks with Darrell and Jordan about starting Epsilon 3 and how they are helping companies across the space industry (and beyond) plan, track, and record their large projects and mission. They discuss their growing market fit, building relationships with your investors, and the benefits of having three founders.
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Darrell Etherington 0:01
Hello and welcome to found I'm your host Darrell Etherington and I'm here with the rocket fuel of my booster.
Jordan Crook 0:08
Betcha Jordan crook. That's right. You
Darrell Etherington 0:11
really gotta go and Jordan. I like
Jordan Crook 0:12
to gas. Yup, you know? Sure.
Darrell Etherington 0:18
was like, Is this appropriate, but we're good. We're still good. Fine. So we're on found you know found, which is TechCrunch is podcast about the stories behind the startups. Every week, we talked to a different founder. We hear their story, we hear how they built their business. And we'll hear about how they run their business to we have some very exciting news. Before we get to this week's episode, we have another episode of found live coming up. That's where we record live for all to see. And you can join us for those via hoppin, which is the events platform we use. You can sign in through hop in and join the conversation live to ask your own questions. There's a link for that in description. I haven't even gotten to the best part, our guests for this one. So this is coming up Thursday, March 31 12pm. Pacific 3pm Eastern, and we have Dylan field from figma. Co Founder and CEO figma. So that is that's a big deal. Wow. Jordan. That's your dad. I think you have Oh, yeah.
Jordan Crook 1:18
Yeah, I do. I mean, figma. Wow. They just dominated in like, a matter of a few years. Yeah. design world. I don't think that there's anyone any founder or startup that isn't if not using them like definitely very aware. figma because collaborative design, it used to not be like a multiplayer game. And now it is. Yeah, I think they went for design,
Darrell Etherington 1:40
they went from zero to default faster than just about anything else I've seen in terms of like tools used widely in enterprises. So it'll be great
Jordan Crook 1:47
and super cool, too. He was like a teal fellow, like just a super duper smart guy. And he got some investment he got in with the investors, I was like, it's gonna take me like four years to build this. And they were like, okay, and that's what he did.
Darrell Etherington 2:03
Amazing. Alright, so we'll learn a lot from him. So join us again, that's March 31, which is a Thursday at 12pm Pacific 3pm. Eastern. But today, we also have a fantastic episode for you. We spoke to Laura Crabtree from epsilon three. And they've developed complex operations software for the space industry. So basically, they made like an O S for launching rockets. But not only for that, also for integrating satellites with rockets, which is a step you have to do or like building satellites to begin with, they build software that manages all of this and makes it collaborative actually, to tie into our other promo in a way that it hasn't been. It's very surprising, especially if you're not necessarily super familiar with this industry. Maybe you're in a different industry where things are a lot more modern. But a lot of the stuff behind the scenes at rocket companies is done in like Excel, and the kind of like, do it in a shared Excel sheet, or even pen and paper sometimes, which is Windows 95. Yeah, yeah. But Laura can explain better than us about that. So we'll go ahead and get into the episode. Hi, Laura.
Laura Crabtree 3:14
I'm great. Darrell, nice to meet you. And thanks for having me on.
Darrell Etherington 3:17
Yeah, it's great to have you here. Very excited. I'm personally very excited because you have a space company, which is fun not to say that I'm sorry, past found guests and future. I suppose I like all your companies equally. I don't think that space has a special place in my heart says, you know, I drove a lot of the coverage here TechCrunch in past and continue to do a bit here and there. But I know you spoke to Devin on our team. And I did a great job writing about epsilon theory and about what it does. But in case our listeners haven't read those, I recommend that go read those. But in case they haven't, can you give us a breakdown of what epsilon three is? Sure.
Laura Crabtree 3:58
Epsilon three is operational software for space companies and other complex engineering companies to run and test their billion dollar missions to prevent costly or potentially disastrous mistakes. There's a number of companies using us for integration tests and operations that span a large swath of the different types of companies within the space industry. So launch robotics, there are satellite customers, and there are customers using us for integration test and everything in between. So that is, in a nutshell what we do. I love to get into it a little bit more. But you asked for the quick high level.
Darrell Etherington 4:35
Yeah, no, no, we'd like to just set the stage with the high high level but we usually do talk more about geospatial there's a lot in there.
Jordan Crook 4:42
Yeah. I know about space, too. Yeah. has a special place in my heart, because we're gonna grill me
Darrell Etherington 4:52
I don't want to like crazy right now. Because then I don't even know the answer to most of the questions.
Jordan Crook 4:58
Or the audience. I can tell All right, everyone right now. I don't know. I know.
Laura Crabtree 5:02
I want to know the size of my references. Oh, yeah,
Jordan Crook 5:05
pretty much. Yeah, I'm actually not a big Star Trek fan. Okay, obviously, I'm lean into Star Wars. I got Battlestar Galactica is in my top five TV show list. All right. I've been reading a lot like a lot of sci fi genre and my reading as well. I just love it I'd series
Laura Crabtree 5:23
to look into that one. That's actually really
Jordan Crook 5:25
good. I mean, like, it's, it's,
Darrell Etherington 5:27
it's good. Yeah, it's
Jordan Crook 5:28
a fun one. And then I'm on to Gosh, I don't even know what it's called. broken shards, something like that. Shards of, I think I know. Universe. It's putting me to sleep though. It's like very dense wordy. Yeah.
Darrell Etherington 5:43
Well, have you that can be the challenge.
Laura Crabtree 5:46
Have you watched Babylon five at all? Cuz there's a planet on Babylon five that we're that's where the name comes from. So oh, a lot of a lot of people ask me, and I have to tell them, you know that it is a nerdy reference. So I have to, you know, give a nod to the Sci Fi and also the fun aspect of it since Babylon five is set. Not in this time period. So yeah, pretty fun and you know, futuristic and we wanted to kind of give sci fi not to all the people that love sci fi out there. There have been a few people that actually asked if it was a Babylon five reference. So oh, man, they really understood which was awesome.
Jordan Crook 6:27
Which is actually I mean, don't take that for granted. Because that's rare for startups. I feel like most people are like, what is? Yeah, you know, like?
Darrell Etherington 6:38
Yeah, I mean, we had I felt so bad. We had cooks venture on recently. And I was like, Is this like a placeholder name that like, somebody was like, you're a cook, and you have a venture? And then you just named your cup? And he was like, no, no, no.
Laura Crabtree 6:52
It actually took us a few iterations to get on a name that was easily pronounced. Pregnancy did sorry. pronounceable happening live. That was bad. That was real bad, easy to pronounce. Easy to pronounce. Much better. Yes. No, it's not. Major. We'll go with that.
Jordan Crook 7:10
I am. For what it's worth. I will not talk on your company's name in the future. It's okay. If
Laura Crabtree 7:16
you do I won't blame you for it.
Darrell Etherington 7:18
No, I think it's good. And I think it's like, like, I didn't get the reference directly. But I was like, This sounds super Spacey. And I like it. And I'll bet like all your clients probably either get it or like, yeah, that sounds like something we want to do business with. Right. So it has.
Laura Crabtree 7:33
I do really like the name but I am obviously very biased. So
Jordan Crook 7:37
yeah, I mean, you should like, you gotta like the name. Yes. Definitely. Up to you forever.
Unknown Speaker 7:43
That's step one.
Laura Crabtree 7:44
Yeah. I was told recently by someone that joined our company that I am now Laura epsilon three. I am not Laura Crabtree anymore. Epsilon three is my last name. So for what it's worth,
Jordan Crook 7:54
that's how I say founders in my phone. Okay, like their first name, and then their company. Their last name because I don't care
Laura Crabtree 8:01
from now until the end of time. I am now Laura epsilon three.
Jordan Crook 8:05
That's cool. That's actually for the Crabtree. Not to John Crabtree, either.
Laura Crabtree 8:11
I mean, Crabtree's pretty cool. I decided not to change my last name. So I'm going to keep it forever. Cool. But yeah, that's a now epsilon three is my last name.
Darrell Etherington 8:19
All right. Yeah, I think there was like a hole that I got an emergency pig. Just about
Jordan Crook 8:28
like an Amber Alert, or is it about
Darrell Etherington 8:31
the pirates? Editorial note alert? I've done my part. I know. Yeah, I think so. Where I wanted to start on epsilon theory is, I think this is a big part of the business of law, people who are maybe even fans of the space startup industry or like new space, everything that's going on, that's exciting and fun. And like rockets, like don't even understand that this part of the market exists, right? It's invisible to a lot of people. And yet, it's so crucially important, and is also, I think, a point that Devin brought up in this, but then I would love you to expound upon like, it's like not something that has necessarily been touched, even as people were looking to innovate other aspects of the business, right? A lot of it was largely unchanged from even, you know, like the 1960s or
Laura Crabtree 9:15
so yeah, I actually got an email from a large aerospace contractor recently, that said, Hey, I would love your help, because we are utilizing paper for our testing and operational procedures. And I want to get us out of the 1960s that literally was a quote, and I thought, wow, I knew that it existed. And if you look at really, really large companies, they are trying to solve it by building in house tools. But I could go into the number of problems that that brings on, but nobody from global, let's look at the entire space industry is saying, I want to solve this. And I want it to be a solution that anybody In the industry could use, whether it's from launch vehicles all the way to, you know, deep space. And that's where I want to be is solving the problem for everyone in the industry where they could share, and they could bring other people on. If you have a payload or a launch vehicle, you could then easily communicate between the two. That's a hard piece that nobody's really solving. And it's done a lot of times by either the payload providing specific data to the launch vehicle, and then voice communication back as to where they are in the account, etc. I want to make that a lot more seamless and easy. But yeah, it's something that has been, you know, nobody looks at your screens in mission control and says, Hey, what are they using to operate their vehicles? And how are they thinking about that? That's just something people, okay, it's out of sight, out of mind. But I have lived that life. And I know the problems that people have seen, and I know the problems that people still have, and I want to help them with those problems. You know, I don't want people to have a subpar toolset for their operations because they have to build the tool in house because something doesn't exist that they can buy off the shelf. That's where we come in. And we say, you know, you have a small team, I know you don't have 10 people to build in house tools, let's take your in house people and give them back all the time that they would have spent building an in house tool to do something that moves your business forward. And so that's kind of the reason and rationale behind what we're doing.
Jordan Crook 11:22
So as the humanoid and yeah, sorry, cast, right, as the terrestrial being that doesn't understand space, I want to understand better why what you just said essentially, right, like, why off the shelf, because there's so much innovation and just like general use software, right now, like low code? Yeah, definitely. Like you've got stuff like air table people using like spreadsheets and pieces of paper. I mean, we've definitely come a long way, just forget general stuff, where you can kind of like configure software to do what you need it to do. Right? So like, what's the part that's missing that for the rest of us that are not you and Darryl, the space industry needs right to like, yeah, the piece that they can't do with the existing software suite of stuff that's out there.
Laura Crabtree 12:06
So the things that are out there, right now, don't take into account a lot of the really complex decision making, that has to be done in the space operation. So you look at Asana, you have one task, you check it off, and it's it goes away, you can create subtasks and things. But it isn't something that is easily repeatable. And it is, I mean, if you could have a daily task, but it's not something that's specifically configured for the complexity that space operations requires. There's also the complexity of integrating with your data. If you think about a control room, you've got gooeys, displaying data plots, ticker tapes, and time tag of data, then you have your procedure that says, hey, I have to do this step of this procedure at this time. And if you integrate the data, now, you don't have to translate from one tool to the other to actually make a decision on where you're going to go next. So we are integrating with satellite or launch vehicle data to help those operators make decisions in the moment, rather than having to think, oh, this set, I have to be at five volts. Let me go look at the data to make sure it's five volts. And we're also recording all of those decisions that are made so that we have that in the database. So if somebody wants to go back, look at the metrics of what they did last week, last month, last year, they have that data. So they have a lot of traceability all the way through the system. Sorry, that was very well winded answer.
Jordan Crook 13:29
Oh, no. That actually wasn't as long winded as I expected, but you're just crushing it today. Well, thanks, I
Laura Crabtree 13:35
woke up woke up like
Darrell Etherington 13:42
you mentioned your experience. I wanted to touch on that shit, right? Because you have firsthand experience using the systems that already existed and the things that people were trying to do, I think with their own in house efforts, right, like on both sides, too, right? Like both sides being fair, Jordan, for everyone not necessarily familiar with the ins and outs of the space industry loosely, we kind of define it divided among like old space. Yeah, whatever. Like that includes the primes that people talk about. Sometimes we reach our defense contractors and new space, which is sort of like SpaceX and everything that came in there. Yes, exactly. Yeah. I don't know if you find that's a fair
Laura Crabtree 14:19
deal, actually. Yeah, I find it it is fair, you know, you have very large contractors, and there are more than three but Boeing, Lockheed Northrop, are the main three that people talk about, but yet there are more and then you have new space, which is SpaceX, and then everything that came after and I always talk about the new space market, basically coming up to speed while I was heads down with blinders on at SpaceX and when I left SpaceX in 2020, I looked up at this crazy new space, if you will market and saw just a lot of innovation, a lot of new companies and people are always asking me like, is the market big enough for what you're building? And that's a question I get asked all the time. And the answer is yes. Not only in the space business but outside of space because what we're doing solves problems for other markets as well. We just wanted to focus on space because you know, a that's where my passion lies, be. That's where my experiences and see that's where I see the biggest problem.
Jordan Crook 15:19
So what would be then? Yeah, sorry, I want to do this now. Oh, yeah. What like, yeah.
Laura Crabtree 15:25
So we are already supporting other industries. So we are supporting some companies in aviation. So we're supporting Venus Aerospace is a hypersonic. Sassy is wonderful if you ever want to talk to her, and we're also supporting bedrock ocean, which is a robotics fear. Worry. Are you talking to them? Charlie Anthony? Oh, you're talking to Anthony. He's great. You'll love him. Yeah,
Jordan Crook 15:48
I always mix it up with you. Is it Nodle Is first right. And now it's bedrock? Yeah, we're talking to Anthony next week.
Laura Crabtree 15:54
Anthony's Anthony's awesome. And you can jam on all things ocean with him. He's awesome. Human. So yeah, so we're already starting to expand into other industries. But it sort of depends. I think the aviation industry is something I want to tackle next. And also ocean exploration. Something it's like, kind of deep in my heart, my other love
Jordan Crook 16:15
and passion, basically the same space, right? It is,
Laura Crabtree 16:17
like this solid frontier. So
Darrell Etherington 16:20
but it's closer. Yeah, yeah.
Laura Crabtree 16:21
But you think it's easier, but it's not easier? No, it's not easier.
Darrell Etherington 16:27
No, I learned I mean, everything I learned about deep sea exploration, I learned from seaQuest DSV, which is another classics.
Laura Crabtree 16:35
There are some really cool additions that are done in deep sea. A lot of the astronauts talk about their deep sea experiences. Yeah. So there's a lot of sort of parallels between deep sea exploration and space exploration. So I was right, that makes
Darrell Etherington 16:49
a ton of sense. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's funny because it's like an area where I don't think people see the applications like I think sometimes when we talk about hypersonic transportation people like oh, yeah, like that makes sense. Or like point to point. But beyond that, I think a lot of people see it as very siloed. Like stuff that happens over here in the space industry doesn't really have any applications elsewhere. Right, despite the fact that like, say, NASA has been crowing for its entire existence about how things we do up in space have impact here on Earth. Yeah. Here are all the reasons why or why is there are so many interpretations enterprise side and industry side like it doesn't it's not apparent, it isn't
Laura Crabtree 17:26
utterly apparent to everyone, I think that's something that we probably need to do a better job of on Earth is, you know, getting the word out about what's happening in space that actually makes our world better.
Jordan Crook 17:37
Do you want to go to space? Yeah, but I would go
Darrell Etherington 17:39
to space. Good question.
Laura Crabtree 17:41
So that was one of my not yet. I need, I need a lot more money to get a ticket to space, but I would definitely
Darrell Etherington 17:50
go $450,000.
Laura Crabtree 17:54
I've got, oh, I've got two kids, they use up all my money. So I don't have a lot of extra money. But there is actually one of my friends started this company called space for a better world to bring a lot of that information about what happens in space to us, I think that is starting, you know, getting people excited and aware of what's going on in space and how that affects our planet in our world. You know, from the experimentation that the astronauts are doing on themselves on food on the world to climate and Earth Observation and Sensing, there's so much that's happening in space, that really helps us I mean, GPS is just one thing that people take for granted all day, every day.
Darrell Etherington 18:41
But it's also like a lot of that stuff that you mentioned, especially when it comes to like medicine or like food technologies. People also don't realize that's the only place you can do that work and research, you cannot replicate those conditions on Earth, there are things that may approximate it, but it will never give you the exact
Laura Crabtree 18:56
exactly right. And there are a lot of companies looking at medical production or manufacturing in space, because it is the best environment to do some of those experimentation and production. So I'm excited for that.
Darrell Etherington 19:08
Manufacturing and stuff to like the stuff of material science as possible. And I've been excited to Apple should dig into Yeah, I really read all that. And then I just don't write on the website for some reason. Because I'm too busy else, one out of every 10 I'm like this is so interesting. I wish that somebody would share this with someone with a website and access to a large audience.
Laura Crabtree 19:30
I think I know one of those people.
Darrell Etherington 19:34
But like, so when you were working at those places, did you see you just saw the same problems across both? Because I think the perception is they are very different approaches, right? So Northrop approaches space and getting to space and working in operating space very differently than a space. Right? That's kind of the guiding narrative, but it sounds like they share common problems and challenges that you witnessed across both and we're like why isn't it yeah, this
Laura Crabtree 19:58
there are common problem. among new space and old space, I would say that while I was at SpaceX, I did a lot of tool development, like we talked about internal tools. And so I have first hand knowledge of what happens when you build a tool in house. And it is really hard when you have laser focus on this one vision, you know, getting dragged into space, or getting people to space to take that focus and reroute it every once in a while to develop tools for getting them to space or for operating your vehicles efficiently. And so we developed tools in house and they were great. They worked really well. But there was always, you know, what's the next thing? How can I innovate on this? How can I make this better? And I really wanted to continue on that path. So henceforth, why I wanted to start epsilon three to sort of iterate on what I had done previously.
Darrell Etherington 20:52
Cool. But what about the actual decision to do it yourself and to start a business, and like that wasn't something that was within your frame of experience previously? I don't think just looking at.
Laura Crabtree 21:02
It wasn't, it's sort of I don't want to say it was serendipity. But it sort of happened by sort of accident. I was very excited about what I saw within the industry. When I left SpaceX, I went looking for what's the next thing for me? Should I join a startup? Should I go back to Northrop Grumman, and I explored all those avenues. And nothing was really pulling me to say you have to do this, there were jobs. And there were people that I really wanted to work with. But it wasn't a role that was really exciting to me. So I started asking people, What types of tooling they had for their operation. And I talked to probably 20 to 30 Different companies from the ranging from Northrop Grumman all the way to, you know, two or five person companies. And they all said similar things. We don't know, we're going to use Word documents, because it's there. It's easy. We're going to print it to PDF, and then somebody is going to go out to the range and test by engine with a PDF. And they said, Well, what if I gave you a better option? Would you use it? And I got a lot of yeses. That got me thinking, maybe I could do this. But you know, as you pointed out, I don't have experience in running a business building a business incorporating so I started to talk to a bunch of friends that I had, you know, some that had started businesses, some that had, you know, new VCs, I had some connections to friends that were CEOs and leaders and other companies and other verticals. So in FinTech and other things that I don't know anything about, but they are my friends. So I reached out and asked them, What would you do if you were had an idea, and you wanted to see if it was feasible? And he said, Well, you have to find a co founder that will help you on the way and one of my friends introduced me to Max, who is my CFO, and He's amazing. He's very, very good CEO. He's very organized and very methodical about our organization and how we do things, Max, and I just started talking a couple weeks after I left SpaceX, he said, Well, I think this could be a business. And I said, Okay, well, what do we do next? So we wrote up a business plan. And we started thinking about, you know, what's the first step? And then he said, Well, if we're going to really do this, we need a technical co founder, because I know how to write code, but I'm not gonna be able to code this. So we started searching for someone who would be excited and interested in what we were doing. And that's when we found Aaron, who's our third co founder. And we just started talking to investors to see if they would have interest because we thought, well, if we're gonna do this, for real, we need to pay ourselves because I have a family. Max has a family, Aaron was leaving his very lucrative job. And so we were all sort of needed some kind of income we couldn't completely bootstrapping. So we started talking to friends and family and VCs and kind of the rest of history.
Darrell Etherington 23:46
Nice. Yeah. But it sounds like you considered bootstrapping was like a possibility. Because you have revenue opportunities relatively early on, right? Like once you have something built, so that's not always the case, especially in space
Laura Crabtree 23:59
industry. Yes, you're right. You're exactly right. And I think we were actually going to do it. And I don't talk about this a lot. But we were actually going to do it in our, quote, free time. Because I came from a place where I worked 1518 hours a day, I was like, Oh, well, I'll just do it in the evening and manage this from like, eight to midnight every day. And one of our advisors pulled me aside and he was like, Laura, you can't do that. He's like, you're gonna have to do this and be fully onboard and committed. And I said, Okay, well, then I guess we need to raise money, because that was when we were going to bootstrap like very end of 2020. We were thinking maybe we'll bootstrap this. And then we got fully on board, all of us. And then we went forward and raised some money. And the rest is, as you know,
Darrell Etherington 24:43
yeah. Nice. One of the things I wanted to ask you about that you talked about earlier, that I'd like more detail on is the desire to do in house right. And we know like, I know, SpaceX is always very much like, well, we want as much we want to own as much of the stack as possible on the hardware side, right? And if it's seemed like maybe they also fit believe that on the software side as well, but get into like more of why it is such a time sink or like a misuse of resources to do it that way. I mean, I get some of the things you were talking about. And I think obviously probably something where I would think the companies will look at it and be like, This is both a strength and a downside in different ways where it's like interoperability, right, like you want interoperability, but you also want defensibility on some parts of it. How do you negotiate that? And how do you go in and talk to companies that are like, maybe we're going to build this stack ourselves? And not? Yeah,
Laura Crabtree 25:34
I think it goes back to speed, right. So new space, companies want to move as fast as possible. It's all about agile development, the feedback loop to design and how fast you can move. And I can tell you from experience, that building something in house is not fast, nor is it easy, right? It takes more resources than you ever think you need. And it takes more time than you think you need, which in essence wastes money, and startups don't have a lot of extra money. So investing in something like this early, helps you move faster. Earlier, when I talk to companies that are thinking, oh, I want to build this in house, I try to explain, you know, I did it. And we didn't have an MVP, when we were building in house for nine months. And we were building the whole time. But what we did was because we knew we couldn't dedicate people from internal, we actually paid an outside firm to do it. And then internally, we did all of the testing, and then pushed code. So all of that process, but you're still taking people in house to do all of that testing and verification. So you're still taking those people's time and money, as well as now paying an external company to build for you, when you could have paid a fraction of the price to actually just use something off the shelf. And something that is really interesting about what we do is coming from a place where I built tools in house, I want to be basically a partner with the companies that we work for. And so we meet with them on a sometimes bi weekly, sometimes monthly basis, just sort of understand what their priorities are, so that they can help inform what we build next, that's actually proven to work really well. Because the companies will be open and honest, you know, this is working, this isn't working, or this is something we would want and it's helped them be a more successful on the platform and be helped us make sure that they're happy with what they're getting.
Darrell Etherington 27:30
Right. Yeah, you brought the all the challenges and like things that you think of when you're deciding, like, Oh, do we build by the classic matrix of like decision making to decide how you go about launching a new feature product or whatever. But one of the things like people always do the scoping mistake. And it's funny, because at the outset of a project people like talk about the scoping mistake, and like try to build it in, but you never can. Yeah, you're like, Well, this is gonna take longer, and it's gonna be more expensive than we expect it will be. So we all know that. But it still is longer, and more expensive.
Laura Crabtree 28:02
It is. And I actually talked with and actually onboarded, a company that built something in house, and they could never get it. And they were a large company, right? They could never get it to where they were really happy with it. And so what we did was when we onboard them, we asked them, you know, what are the things that you absolutely want? Okay, here are the 50 things that you absolutely want our tool to do. And today, we do 40 of them, these other 10 let's prioritize them so that we can do them over the course of the the contract that we have with you so that you're super excited about working with us in the future and telling us all the other things you need. And that's been amazing.
Darrell Etherington 28:40
Yeah, you get that right, like you get so feature out on a customization because the other thing you're talking about was like agency limited contract, like one term engage, or one time engagement, or whatever. And then it's like all maintenance is left to you like even the testing and everything else, and then like train you up, and they're like, Alright, have fun. And then if you need them to do additional things, you have to engage them again for another fixed term contract or whatever, right? It's another kind of mistake. This This ended up just being like, that's how SAS works and why SAS is
Laura Crabtree 29:08
good, because it continues to make sure that everyone is aligned on their priority. So
Jordan Crook 29:13
like I wanted to talk about that a little bit, right, like pricing and packaging when you have Yeah, like the space industry is big. But it also is pretty diverse. Right? Like we're talking about new space companies that are small, probably well funded, because that's what they're trying to do something ambitious, right? And then you have like old agencies where they have big budgets, but also constrained budgets that they don't want to shift around. Right. So like how do you think about pricing and packaging for this kind of like, everyone should have it product, when there are so many different kinds of customers?
Laura Crabtree 29:45
Yeah, we have different tiers of pricing for different levels of features. And so when you think about an enterprise contract, you think okay, they have to have support, they have to have SLA of XYZ they have to have these types of features built in, we have those types of features. So you know, we can support enterprise contractors, we can also support the little guy with maybe a smaller feature set. And as they grow, they can enhance the features that they have on epsilon three. And so that's kind of the multiple tiers of pricing is how we're thinking about that.
Darrell Etherington 30:17
And that also applies because it's like not only size, but it's like a launch provider versus a satellite integrator versus a satellite manufacturer or whatever, they have vastly different needs. But I guess you can do kind of ala carte pricing of like, add on this thing or add on that thing, or do or they
Laura Crabtree 30:34
would actually be surprised, I get similar requests from launch vehicle providers and satellite manufacturers for similar operational features. And so most of the features, I would say, 95% of the things that we build are available to everyone. And you know, depending on what level of pricing, and then there are certain features that we think that maybe not everyone would use, and then we put that behind a feature flag where you can enable it in the setting, right? So you say I had one company who said this is really, really important to us. And we thought, well, if other people might want to use it, we'll give it to everyone. And then we'll just put it on the settings and say if you want to enable it, you can.
Jordan Crook 31:15
So I think like what I was trying to get out maybe more was like, can you talk me through that? That original conversation? Right? Like not so much like, here's how we solve for it. We did tours, but like, as you were sitting down and going through the process of like, I'm always curious about how founders come up with prices, right? Like, yeah, in general, because it's weird, not perfect science, right? Or like, particularly if you're category defining, because you're like, there's nothing to benchmark it against. Not like we're like, oh, let's undercut them. And like, let's be the premium version of this, right? It's like, we do this thing that nobody's done ever. And so let's just throw some numbers out, right? Like, what how, what happens that
Laura Crabtree 31:57
so we started pricing discussions a year ago with some of our early customers, and we said, Okay, well, this is what we want to charge you. And they said, Okay, that sounds good. And then the next customer, so as you can probably imagine it forward, it's easily evolving. Yeah, you want to get to the place where it's kind of a no brainer on the return on investment. If you pay $15 a month for Netflix, and you get to watch 10 movies a month. Now, that makes a lot of sense, because you're only paying like $1.50 A movie. But if they asked you to pay $100 a month, you'd say no, thank you. And so you have to
Jordan Crook 32:35
ask whatever they want from me. You're saving, like, okay,
Laura Crabtree 32:42
give him everything. But yeah, so we had to understand what the value was that we were giving to people, and then understand their comfort with how much they were willing to pay. And so that's how we came up with the pricing. And as any SAS business will tell you, it's sort of ever evolving. Some pricing models don't work well for some customers. And so we're actually pretty flexible with our pricing model. And we're working on it. We're always working on it and always thinking about it. But it is not an easy thing that sort of comes naturally.
Jordan Crook 33:14
No, it's not. And it's one of those weird things too, like you said, like to I think that some founders aren't as Frank about like, how constantly it is. Yeah, in the pool of things to think about right? And like how much it will change based on customer volume, etc. Like new features being released this ever present thing that there's no real like science or playbook to. And it's just kind of like there all the time. But it's
Darrell Etherington 33:39
also I think it's on both sides, right? You also hear a lot of criticism about especially SAS businesses and companies, why don't you just post you're
Jordan Crook 33:48
involved on that too, right? Because you want good, but coming in. So
Darrell Etherington 33:53
I think buyers are a lot less sensitive than people. I think there's like a lot of public moaning about that, or whatever. But like, actually, the people who are the decision makers and the people who are like, able to write the checks a lot less than people think, right, because I've done some buying some SAS buy. And I was like, if you solve my problem, and we have the budget, I'm very happy. Yeah. Right. And also, then it makes you accountable. Because I'm paying you to do
Jordan Crook 34:20
like, yeah, I guess procurement departments like more comfortable with that. But like, there's also the piece where I've heard founders talk about, well, we post our pricing, because we want to be super straightforward with it. And that way we know every time someone calls, or every time someone emails, like we know, they're already comfortable with this one thing, right? Like at least that doesn't become a point of contention. But then there's also like, we don't want to post it because maybe we're flexible with certain businesses. Or maybe, you know, maybe we want all that lead generation, even if it's not solid lead generation for like, six months from now or a year from now. Right. So like, there's all these different schools of thought and it's just one of those things that it takes up my mental energy which is stupid because I don't say the price.
Laura Crabtree 35:03
Pricing is is always a hard discussion. And I genuinely love this industry. And I want to talk to anyone who wants to talk to me. If I can learn something from them, or they can learn something from me, this is exactly where I want to be. So it might not always end up with them utilizing our software, but I'm always learning and always reaching out to people. So I don't want somebody to go to our website and say, Oh, well, this is the pricing. So therefore, I shouldn't even talk to Laura, I want them to say like, I like what they're doing. And I want to learn about it. And I want to see what happens in the future. Maybe I don't need it now. But maybe I need it in six months exactly what you were saying, Jordan, just yeah, maybe I will need to in six months or a year. And maybe I'll have
Darrell Etherington 35:41
budget available,
Jordan Crook 35:44
always changing. But I'm curious to like in that same vein, like how you think about hiring salespeople, because salespeople are specific being right, like that's a unique personality type that is good at selling things, not necessarily good at Space problems, or whatever we want to call them.
Laura Crabtree 36:02
Well, good. And bad news right now is that I haven't hired salespeople. Oh, that's yeah, I do all of it. It's me and Max. We know the product intimately. We know our customers intimately. And we genuinely very much love doing that. So I love all of the outreach. I love talking to people. This is like kind of my home and learning from them. And so Jordan, this is something I have to think about in the next six months, roughly actually hiring so
Jordan Crook 36:31
do you hire someone from the space sales industry or like just a really kick ass salesperson who can like quickly learn what the boss up or like, is an interesting problem, right?
Laura Crabtree 36:43
It is. If you solve that problem, can you tell me who I should hire? Yeah, no,
Jordan Crook 36:47
I spend so my rental is gonna be Jordan.
Darrell Etherington 36:49
This is Jordan is looking for a job again. She does this on a podcast I
Jordan Crook 36:53
can sell. I like it. I have never sold. But like I believe I could do
Darrell Etherington 36:59
like, in theory, I think yeah.
Jordan Crook 37:02
Well sell. Like I think that yes. Yeah, we'll see. You just give me a call. Laura. When you're ready.
Laura Crabtree 37:09
I will. I'll definitely reach out.
Jordan Crook 37:11
Yeah, I'm probably cheaper.
Darrell Etherington 37:14
No commission, no, I don't know. Amazing, but it sounds like that part you like actually genuinely enjoy that part of like being able to talk to customers and prospective customers and stuff. And correct me if I'm wrong. But is there anything about the role that like, was really difficult for you to adjust to or the something that you were like, Oh, this is not part of the stuff that I like at all. And you had to really work on or what the hardest
Laura Crabtree 37:37
thing for me is that I don't do a lot of the technical work. And in my last job, while I was at SpaceX, I did a lot of digging into flight software. I ran a lot of simulations, and I did a lot of coding. And so I was closer to the code. And so I actually funny story, I actually went to check out the code and do some kind of digging around and give Erin some notes on the code. And Aaron and Max took me into a zoom and said, Hey, Laura, don't do that. And they don't
Jordan Crook 38:09
go into our back.
Laura Crabtree 38:11
And I said, why not? I said, you have better ways to be spending your time. And I said, Okay, you're right. So that was a hard adjustment. Like, I don't want control of it. But I want to at least like be able to figure out what's going on. But they both told me Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 38:25
even if dig around in it. That's fun. Yeah, isn't it?
Laura Crabtree 38:30
So that was hard. That was hard for me. And then you know, the meeting growth expectations, that's something that I am sort of learning because i I'll be honest, like I hadn't started a business before this. So I'm learning about SAS metrics, and I'm learning about how to report and grow those things. And that's something that I'm learning to love. As time goes by, as I love the numbers coming in, from how much engagement we have with our customers and how that's growing every month. That's something that really keeps me excited about what we're doing here
Jordan Crook 39:03
wanted to be hard to write because like, sometimes that's in conflict, like the growth expectations from an investor or from a board are kind of like can be in conflict with what your values or mission is or how you're trying to serve your customers. Right? And yeah, like hear this battle all the time between them? Sure. Right.
Darrell Etherington 39:21
But especially because you went into it thinking initially like, Oh, we're gonna bootstrap this and do it kind of off the side of our desk or in our spare time or whatever. And then to go like, Oh, now it's an Adventure World Adventure metrics are quite different.
Laura Crabtree 39:34
Yeah, the focus is actually on our customers and our team because we think of our customers as sort of an extension of our team. The value is really supporting one another and really supporting the growth of the team, which we think just translates into growth of the company as we excite and you know, please the customers that we have, we think that that will naturally just grow our customer base in reaching out to new customers and So I think more about that, but I also am well aware of the growth metrics and things that we're trying to achieve on that side of things.
Darrell Etherington 40:09
How has it been generally working with the venture side and with investors and having them kind of because, you know, it's like, they're kind of like part time team members in ways, right. Like they're around the business they want to know about more than others. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know. You have Mac and Adrian Fenty, we covered he had an investment somewhere in another space thing. Yeah, but like, in general? Yeah. Good. Well, that's what I met like.
Laura Crabtree 40:37
Adrian's Yeah, very pleasant. I've heard good and bad stories from lots of different investors. And so we made a lot of very hard decisions about the investors that we took on because we wanted to connect with them on a personal level. So we wanted to make sure those investors would be on our team. And so we think of the investors that we have as sort of team members, and we love them. I can't say enough good things about the investors that we have on our cap table. And our angels are very cool, too. I mean, I can email or call the angel investors or any of our VCs and ask for advice or help or support. And yeah, I think only good things from the investor group that we have.
Darrell Etherington 41:21
You know, I wasn't controversial,
Laura Crabtree 41:23
I was thinking you wanted something more exciting. But honestly, you know, I haven't experienced any of the things that people have told me about investors, you know, I go to dinner with them. And you know, when we had our on site, a bunch of our investors came and met the team. And we have one investor who came and he talked to the whole team for about an hour about his SAS experience. And they were all really interested in what he had to say about growing a SaaS business and supporting a SaaS business. And then other investors. We met for lunch. So they came and met the team. So Adrian and Mike Mac, they came in, met the team. And then we've met with Shaheen at Lux multiple times. And he's just always a delight and gives a lot of really good advice on building and especially with hiring and how you want to make sure that, you know, the team culture stays intact. And so that's really good. And we've gotten a lot of good support from each one of
Jordan Crook 42:20
the less explosive. Yeah, I
Darrell Etherington 42:21
think most explosive, but generally useful, especially if folks are looking around to buy Yeah, yeah, the ones that Lord didn't mention are all bad.
Laura Crabtree 42:33
No. We recently. Yeah. So we took on two rounds last year, and Mack and stage with Alex Rubalcaba came on early. And then later, we took on an extra investors, village, global Soma, capital, and locks. And they've all been really, really helpful. And we've also been working with Blume Ventures as well. So it's really, really cool funds. And then obviously, the pioneer Fund, which is yc. Founder. Yes,
Darrell Etherington 43:03
we love. Yeah, we didn't even really talk about you. We're almost out of time. But do you have anything to say about the YC experience? Because now Yeah, it is becoming a theme. So maybe we'll put together like a clips episode of YC
Laura Crabtree 43:14
YC founders advice? Yeah. You know, I joined YC because I needed to learn how to run a business. And I don't have business school experience. I don't know how to build. I know how to build a team. But yeah, it's a lot of the business side of things that I decided that I needed to learn. And YC really helped us scale, my experience and my exposure into how to run a business and how to build. And that was a pretty invaluable experience. And it's very hard and very fast. It was a quick three months of nonstop, I don't think I slept very much during yc. But I learned a ton. And I utilize a lot of the knowledge that they gave us during those three months. And we still meet with our primary group member there kind of every month just to check in and ask his advice on things.
Darrell Etherington 44:04
Oh, cool. Yeah, the network in the connection seems to be like something that is invaluable there. Right. But you were in one of the remote classes, right? Why see summer toys, awfully
Laura Crabtree 44:15
remote.
Darrell Etherington 44:16
It was all remote
Laura Crabtree 44:17
for the kids. I wouldn't have been able to do it if it was on site. So it was actually really nice. That was all removed because otherwise it wouldn't have even thought to apply. Because I there's no way I could live in San Francisco for three.
Darrell Etherington 44:29
Yeah, no, I think that's it's really broad and kind of like who they can work with and appeal to, which is like, great, right? But and I haven't heard anything about you know, like, what anything, it's like you do miss out on some in person networking stuff or whatever. But like, by and large, the experience seems to be like No, you still get a lot of those kinds of connections and whatever regardless, so
Laura Crabtree 44:51
we've developed a lot of connections with people in our area. So a lot of the YC startups in the Los Angeles area, sort of in similar verticals. like space or aviation, those are people that we've developed really strong relationships with. And that's been really nice because now I have a network of people to call on if I need advice or you know, just want to talk through some things, and I really like that I've been able to pull from that community a lot. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 45:16
no, it's a great community down there and growing to like, really a lot of activity. A lot of new companies popping up as, yeah, I think people kind of like, jump out, leap out of the SpaceX or whatever. And then they're like, I'm gonna go build my own thing, which is super cool. Yeah, I think well, yeah, that's about our time now. But Laura, it's been fantastic. Talking with you. I want to ask, Would you accept? Let's say, let's say one of the company's flying commercial passengers was like, Look, we want to use your software, but we want to like a half price deal or something, and then we'll just give you a turnkey deal. Is that Is that gonna work?
Laura Crabtree 45:52
Without question? This would be like an automatic. Yes. And this is like a ask, I hope my husband is not listening. But this would be like ask for forgiveness, not for permission.
Darrell Etherington 46:03
Just to tell him after you've been to space or
Laura Crabtree 46:07
no, I'm going to tell him after I've already accepted. Right.
Jordan Crook 46:11
And the last will and testament sorted out. It's like Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Do you hear about this? I got really mad at him like, Oh, yeah. Not caught up on actual
Laura Crabtree 46:20
space. Although he is still taking another mission. No, he's
Jordan Crook 46:24
going to Yeah, like they worked it out. But she was really mad because he bought a ticket and didn't talk to her about it. And she was like, we have two children and like, you could die in an airlock. And he was like, well,
Laura Crabtree 46:33
that's my husband. Yeah. I mean, so anyway, and I said, Well, you know, I worked I worked on one of the vehicles. So clearly, I would not have sent people to space in the vehicle if I would not have flown.
Jordan Crook 46:46
Yeah. Gaslight me a little bit and be like, Do you not trust me Do not trust my work?
Laura Crabtree 46:50
Yeah. I like hey, I've been through the wringer with this vehicle, and I've made sure that it's safe. And so therefore, I would fly on it. Yeah. So if somebody came and asked me, will you fly on Dragon? The answer is yes.
Darrell Etherington 47:02
Okay, that sounds
Jordan Crook 47:03
good. Sure. Can't say the same thing. So
Darrell Etherington 47:06
hopefully, hopefully, you get some calls.
Jordan Crook 47:10
After this conversation, I myself feel right.
Laura Crabtree 47:13
Oh, I'm definitely an astronaut. Okay.
Darrell Etherington 47:15
Well, I
Laura Crabtree 47:16
can also I can also provide other services in flight because I've been through a lot of that training already. Because I wrote it. You generally
Darrell Etherington 47:24
use the scale
Jordan Crook 47:25
commercial passenger. Yeah, hybrid.
Laura Crabtree 47:29
I do have some useful skills that I can be happy to put to work. You don't even have to pay me while I'm there. I'll just teach.
Darrell Etherington 47:36
Hard. I mean, journal will write poems or something. Yeah,
Jordan Crook 47:41
definitely. Entertain. I have some fish stand up if that's helpful for the other passengers as they look upon the moon in the stars. Whatever, fish yeah, like fish names.
Laura Crabtree 47:52
You know, if you ever thought about that, you said you were gonna bring your fish to space.
Jordan Crook 47:57
Stand up comedy, like a little
Darrell Etherington 48:00
about fish names.
Jordan Crook 48:01
I mean, they are. If you think about it there. You know, like tuna. Why? I mean, think of any name like any fish and ask yourself why. And that itself. Wow, sturgeon.
Darrell Etherington 48:15
This is amazing. This is the least useful skill sets.
Laura Crabtree 48:24
But it's a great skill set.
Jordan Crook 48:26
Appreciate it. There has been pretty negative to me. I need to
Laura Crabtree 48:29
listen to the fish. The fish stand up podcast. Yeah. Yeah, I could get you the next one.
Jordan Crook 48:37
Well, this has been great. Again, really tight ending real clean. Yeah. Yeah.
Laura Crabtree 48:42
But definitely, this has been very fun.
Darrell Etherington 48:44
has been super fun. Yeah. Yeah. Good job, Laura. Thanks.
Laura Crabtree 48:48
Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Darrell Etherington 48:55
All right, Jordan, that was our chat with Laura. So what do you think? Are you ready to launch some rockets now? Do you feel
Jordan Crook 49:02
expert level? So like if I wanted to, I could, because of the software software
Darrell Etherington 49:06
makes it so easy. Anyone could do it? That's not the world
Jordan Crook 49:09
and space. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think Laura was really cool. You always, I mean, you expect maybe this is like, something I should really look at and myself. But whenever you're like, hey, we're gonna do a podcast about this super sciency technical, nerdy thing. I always expect the founders to be really super sciency technical, nerdy. And they're not like not that but they're also like, really funny, cool people too. And I need to look at myself in the mirror.
Darrell Etherington 49:36
I think it's like no, necessarily, it's not something that everybody has is a built in skill. And I think there is a lot of work especially the founders do around if they are come from like a specifically very technical background to like amplify that part of the massage. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, I mean, for sure. was fantastic. Chatting with Laura. She's very funny and candid and open and whatever, but like it was great. to hear about parts of her experience doing this, he or she has a long, long career in the aerospace industry, right and has worked in both in their industry is referred to as like the new space versus the old space, new space is essentially SpaceX. And anybody that's cool, and that old spaces like, oh, you know, those boring old ones, like bowling? And, you know, it's, it's kind of a distinction that's like, actually, they share a lot of the same, you know, everything else, but it's definitely when you look at the way that they approach marketing and stuff, you can see where the differences are also, technically two, but a lot of it is just perception, right. But she was great about explaining, like, a lot of the same problems still exist across both, and they wanted to address that. Right. And they did, yeah. What was that? Because for me, I know that stuff, because I've spent a lot of time covering it. Right. But like, were you surprised? Yeah. I mean,
Jordan Crook 50:55
I mean, no, it's one of those things where it makes sense when you hear it, right. You know, you think of like the old school space players. And then some of these new companies that are sprouting up and you're like, they must be so different, operate so differently, but like, at its core, there only is what there is right? Like you use what exists in many cases, especially when it's something that's complex that would take building from the ground up, like particularly startups probably aren't doing that anymore. Because of the resource.
Darrell Etherington 51:23
Focus, right? We talked to tons of founders, but focus, and so you focus on the things you can change that will make material differences to you now and other stuff you kind of backburner or don't change because it doesn't really affect it, or whatever. Right? Right.
Jordan Crook 51:35
So like, it makes sense to me that the status quo exists, and it just is what it is. But then what I thought was most interesting was like, and it'll be interesting to maybe circle back with her, but like, she's doing a lot of the selling right now. It's not like all of it, again, that like speaks to just her very dynamic personality, right? Being able to like get into the weeds on the technical stuff, but also be charismatic. But then there's also the piece where like, you would think the product doesn't necessarily have to be super different from one company to the other. But maybe the selling strategy does, like the pricing does. And I thought that was interesting that it's clearly something she's like, constantly working through, right. And like thinking about because the approach itself has to be tailored, not necessarily the profit.
Darrell Etherington 52:18
Yeah, that was interesting, because I was assuming that there was going to be a wide difference depending on where the customer sits in kind of the space value chain, like whether a launch operator or whether they're a satellite integrator, but she said it's actually quite similar. And you're right, but most of their work is done, like making sure that the pricing is right for who they're talking to. And the feature set is right and commensurate with that price. Right. Which is, it's a problem. I think, a lot of sass. Not a problem. It's a something that a lot of sass companies have to address and like get right. Yeah,
Jordan Crook 52:51
yeah, it's a sticking point. I think not even just for Sass companies. It's just like, if you're selling something, pricing should probably is probably always gonna take up a little wedge.
Darrell Etherington 52:59
Yes. Charge with a market out there. It's easy.
Jordan Crook 53:03
It's simple, straightforward.
Darrell Etherington 53:06
That's how we work right? Like TechCrunch.
Jordan Crook 53:09
We work? No,
Darrell Etherington 53:11
that's how we
Jordan Crook 53:14
fun easy troll. Thank you. What did you think what stood out to you, man?
Darrell Etherington 53:18
No, I think it was cool. When she was talking about how she like went into the founding of the company kind of thinking like, oh, like, we can just do this in our off hours or whatever. Like, because if I ever put myself in the shoes of a founder, right, like, the biggest thing for me is this risk of like, jumping off the cliff so to speak, right? You're just being okay, already. Cliff. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Because they're coming in, I know, the checks come in. And it was clear that she wanted that, especially, you know, having a family at the time, right. And like, just wanting to be like, Okay, this I can count on. And I can do this, which is my real ambition. And then hopefully, it'll come to life over time, but then realized very, very quickly. It's not the way we're going to be able to do it. Like it's just not going to work if we do it that way. And so going to venture out instead, right, which I think was probably a scary moment for her. But it sounded like, you know, she was advised by smart people who had her best interests at heart who were able to convince her to do that. Right.
Jordan Crook 54:17
It sounds like she really likes her investors. Yeah, so yeah, I mean, that's always a good feeling. Yeah,
Darrell Etherington 54:22
definitely. Yeah, we don't talk to many founders who are like, I universally don't like my investors.
Jordan Crook 54:28
No, I mean, nobody's willing to say but like, you know,
Darrell Etherington 54:31
yes. You Didn't Know You know, will tell you get a sense for it in this part of the recording and future episodes. If we ever get the sense that somebody really
Jordan Crook 54:39
feel like they probably don't like yeah, we'll just starve so
Darrell Etherington 54:44
the Lord does and that's definitely nice. is great, no shade for many other reasons. But it is really one of these things where once you hear about it, it's like of course, of course this would be needed. I think that they have lots of room to run in terms of different customers to serve. I don't think that markets Sighs is gonna be a challenge for them but I'm very interested to continue to watch their progress.
Jordan Crook 55:04
Me too.
Darrell Etherington 55:06
Yeah. All right, let's go to space. Bye bye Jordan
Jordan Crook 55:09
later aliens.
Darrell Etherington 55:10
Oh no alien truth or five founders, those two by myself TechCrunch news editor Darrell Etherington and TechCrunch Managing Editor Jordan crook. You shot it. McCarney is our executive producer. We are produced by Maggie Stamets and edited by Cal Keller TechCrunch. His audio products are managed by Henry pick of it. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and on twitter@twitter.com slash Ben. You can also email us at found@techcrunch.com and you can call us and leave a voicemail at 510-936-1618. Also, we'd love if you could spare a few minutes to fill out our listener survey at bit.li/bound listener survey. Thanks for listening and we'll be back next week.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai