Minds Behind Maps

Ep 10 - Charles Blanchet - Finding focus, Building a scalable product & Dedicating time to thinking

Dec 1, 2021

01:29:46

Charles Blanchet is the VP of Solutions at Iceye. Charles has over 20 years of experience building start ups, more recently in companies focused around data. Iceye owns a constellation of Synthetic Aperture Radar satellites, and is also working on providing flood monitoring insights derived from the images these satellites take.

We talk SAR, how Charles joined Iceye, the importance of finding focus as a company, and how thinking is an important task in itself.

Charles Blanchet:

Show notes:

Time Stamps:

04:00 - Episode begins: Charles presents himself
8:45 - Finding product-market fit in Earth Observation
13:10 - The importance and need for focus
17:00 - Is the space industry different than any other field?
21:30 - Is SaaS a good model for companies like Iceye?
26:30 - "Deriving value out of imagery and turning it into information is a tough business"
36:20 - Can there be too much focus?
39:00 - Charles thoughts on Iceye’s current focus on flood monitoring
41:46 - Building startups over and over again
48:30 - Assembling a team
58:10 - The life story interview question
1:08:40 - How Charles joined Iceye
1:12:20 - Charles’ next 5 years
1:14:10 - Taking dedicated time to think
1:25:25 - Media recommendation

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