Emergent: Building the Future

In this episode, we hear from Nate Hamet, the co-founder and CEO of Quindar. Quindar is an aerospace startup redefining spacecraft operations with a SaaS offering that manages satellite uptime like servers in a data center. Nate started his career testing and launching billion-dollar government satellites at Lockheed Martin and later joined OneWeb as an early engineer focusing on broadband satellites. At OneWeb, Nate met his five other co-founders who helped build the software to operate the world's first mega satellite constellation.Key Takeaways* Learn about the product challenges that arise from managing satellite constellations that must maintain orbit and make regular contact with the ground in spite of temperamental connectivity and antiquated hardware.* Hear how Quindar has tackled the jobs of dozens of highly paid engineers and astrodynamics experts in one multi-module product* Understand Quindar's approach of treating satellites as flying servers, abstracting the complexity of different satellite types and operating systems, similar to traditional IT management, but in a cutting edge discipline.* Find out how a team of six cofounders jointly built conviction for the same product solving the same problems and achieved product-market-fit* Learn how Quindar decided to start with commercial sales instead of government ones* Hear how Nate balances using AI for autonomy while protecting safety, and his views on Starlink—Brought to you by:PropelAuthStartups and corporate innovation teams routinely waste months building core user authentication and authorization flows into their products. PropelAuth has automated all the most important pieces of the user management lifecycle. Instantly set up waitlists, magic links, social login, user impersonation, user management, Role-Based-Access-Control, SAML integrations for enterprise, team management and much more. With PropelAuth, each of these challenges takes just a few lines of code instead months of development and integration time. And with thoughtful control over design and skinning, it’s easy to keep your product fully on-brand. Get a generous free starter pack that scales through 1,000 Monthly Active Users or mention EMERGENT25 to receive 25% off for the first 6 months for more mature products. Get back to building you actual product and let PropelAuth handle your user management needs. Visit www.propelauth.com to learn more.Tonic.aiTonic intelligently transforms your sensitive production data into realistic test data that is safe to use across your lower environments, to accelerate your engineering velocity while safeguarding data privacy. We’ve all experienced the pain and wasted cost of building features with unrealistic data in staging or development environments. Mismatches between prod and test data leads to costly bugs in production, poor user experience, and, when it comes to RAG or LLM applications, even incorrect answers. Moreover, as the data scale increases, it becomes difficult for developers to test their features with high fidelity. Tonic’s products streamline data synthesis, subsetting, and provisioning to get developers the realistic data they need, when and where they need it. Get on-demand access to safe, high-fidelity versions of your structured, semi-structured, or free-text data to shorten sprints, catch more bugs, and ship better products faster. Visit Tonic.ai/emergent to learn more and receive 15% off in your first year.—In this episode, we cover:* Introduction (01:02)* Quindar's Mission (03:19)* Satellite Industry Persistent Challenges (04:30)* Quindar's Approach (06:07)* Operational Challenges of Flying a Constellation (07:17)* Why Satellites Require Constant Intervention (09:30)* Challenges in Maintaining Contact With Earth (12:32)* How the Industry Dealt with Challenges Pre-Quindar (18:15)* Rise of Mega Constellations (19:59)* Quindar's Co-founder Dynamics and Building Joint Conviction (25:27)* Deciding Which Modules Matter Most and Continuous Learning (31:36)* Getting Access to Hard to Reach Early Adopters (35:20)* Hardest Parts of Building Quindar and Heterogenous Systems (39:10)* Hiring Outside the Industry For Competitive Advantage (44:29)* Deciding to Start with Commercial, Not Government (45:10)* Quindar’s Take on Starlink’s Autonomous Constellation (48:27)* Quindar and Generative AI (51:30)* Getting in Touch With Nate and Quindar (54:40)—You can connect with Nate Hamet through the following platforms:* X: https://x.com/NateHamet* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhamet/* Website: https://www.quindar.space/—You can connect with Adam through the following platforms:* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-judelson/* Substack: https://www.emergentproduct.com* X: https://twitter.com/Ajuggles* Website: www.firstprinciples.la—Where to find Emergent Newsletter and Podcast:* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@emergentproduct* Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5TMMwU5zoSlX5Ex1A4vl9D* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamjudelsonemergent* Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adamjudelson* Website: https://www.emergentproduct.com—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast or becoming a guest, email adam@firstprinciples.la.—Get full access of the Emergent’s Newsletter at www.emergentproduct.com/subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.emergentproduct.com/subscribe

In this episode, we hear from Ari Rosner, the Head of Product at True Anomaly. True Anomaly is building a constellation of satellites that perform Rendezvous and Proximity Operations (RPO) in space and a suite of software simulation tools to support these complex missions. His company is focused on how to safely navigate close to other satellites, a challenge where relative velocities can hit 15 kilometers per second in an austere environment. Ari is a CalTech graduate, a former NASA Jet Propulsion Labs Engineer, a COVID-era product founder, a former deep tech venture investor at Riot Ventures, and is now responsible for making this vision a reality at True Anomaly.Key Takeaways* Learn about the changes in the space industry that made it possible to build a constellation with such advanced capabilities in 18 months for orders of magnitude less money.* How to earn sales for a hard tech product before it’s built* Understand how to visualize relative satellite motion in three dimensions when positions are known only probabilistically* How they got user feedback in an environment where most customers won’t talk about their missions* Learn how they think about satellite autonomy and the future of spaceflight.—Brought to you by:PropelAuthStartups and corporate innovation teams routinely waste months building core user authentication and authorization flows into their products. PropelAuth has automated all the most important pieces of the user management lifecycle. Instantly set up waitlists, magic links, social login, user impersonation, user management, Role-Based-Access-Control, SAML integrations for enterprise, team management and much more. With PropelAuth, each of these challenges takes just a few lines of code instead months of development and integration time. And with thoughtful control over design and skinning, it’s easy to keep your product fully on-brand. Get a generous free starter pack that scales through 1,000 Monthly Active Users or mention EMERGENT25 to receive 25% off for the first 6 months for more mature products. Get back to building you actual product and let PropelAuth handle your user management needs. Visit www.propelauth.com to learn more.Tonic.aiTonic intelligently transforms your sensitive production data into realistic test data that is safe to use across your lower environments, to accelerate your engineering velocity while safeguarding data privacy. We’ve all experienced the pain and wasted cost of building features with unrealistic data in staging or development environments. Mismatches between prod and test data leads to costly bugs in production, poor user experience, and, when it comes to RAG or LLM applications, even incorrect answers. Moreover, as the data scale increases, it becomes difficult for developers to test their features with high fidelity. Tonic’s products streamline data synthesis, subsetting, and provisioning to get developers the realistic data they need, when and where they need it. Get on-demand access to safe, high-fidelity versions of your structured, semi-structured, or free-text data to shorten sprints, catch more bugs, and ship better products faster. Visit Tonic.ai/emergent to learn more and receive 15% off in your first year.—In this episode, we cover:* Introduction (00:45)* True Anomaly's Mission and Innovations (01:17)* User Feedback and Sales Strategy (01:41)* Challenges in Space Security (03:04)* Technological Advancements in Space (06:08)* Product Development Challenges (08:19)* User Experience and Visualization (13:16)* Hardware-Software Integration (14:40)* Program Management vs. Product Management (17:20)* Internal and External User Feedback (19:56)* Rapid Development and Iteration (22:35)* Pre-Selling and Customer Engagement (25:57)* Evolving Product Strategy (29:27)* Balancing Automation and Human Oversight (39:55)* True Anomaly’s Future Plans (41:47)—You can connect with Ari Rosner through the following platforms:* X: https://twitter.com/rosner_ari* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ari-rosner/* Website: https://www.trueanomaly.space—You can connect with Adam through the following platforms:* X: https://twitter.com/Ajuggles* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-judelson/* Website: www.firstprinciples.la—Where to find Emergent Newsletter and Podcast:* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@emergentproduct* Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5TMMwU5zoSlX5Ex1A4vl9D* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamjudelsonemergent* Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adamjudelson* Website: https://www.emergentproduct.com—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email adam@firstprinciples.la.—Get full access of the Emergent’s Newsletter at www.emergentproduct.com/subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.emergentproduct.com/subscribe

In this episode, Tim Raftis, the Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at TAP (Training All People), discusses how their product up-skills workers in technical fields, particularly in manufacturing careers, using Extended Reality (XR). The conversation delves into the unique challenges of building products in a 3D world, the ideal use cases for mixed reality environments, and the importance of the sensory experience. The episode also covers the product development process for XR, the way they conceptualize features in multiple dimensions, the role of XR subject matter experts, and the limitations of the Meta Quest and the Apple Vision Pro for B2B use cases.In this episode, we cover:* Introduction (02:52)* The Mission of TAP (03:07)* Understanding XR (Extended Reality) (05:47)* Unique Product Challenges in XR (06:48)* The Importance of Sensory Experience in XR (08:04)* Ideal Use Cases for XR (12:39)* The First Use Case for TAP (16:14)* The Product Development Process in Extended Reality (19:16)* The Importance of Subject Matter Experts in Extended Reality (23:27)* The Role of Hardware in XR (34:29)* Future Directions for TAP (38:01)—Presented to you by:Tonic.ai Tonic intelligently transforms your sensitive production data into realistic test data that is safe to use across your lower environments, to accelerate your engineering velocity while safeguarding data privacy. We’ve all experienced the pain and wasted cost of building features with unrealistic data in staging or development environments. Mismatches between prod and test data leads to costly bugs in production, poor user experience, and, when it comes to RAG or LLM applications, even incorrect answers. Moreover, as the data scale increases, it becomes difficult for developers to test their features with high fidelity. Tonic’s products streamline data synthesis, subsetting, and provisioning to get developers the realistic data they need, when and where they need it. Get on-demand access to safe, high-fidelity versions of your structured, semi-structured, or free-text data to shorten sprints, catch more bugs, and ship better products faster. Visit Tonic.ai/emergent to learn more and receive 15% off in your first year.PropelAuthStartups and corporate innovation teams routinely waste months building core user authentication and authorization flows into their products. PropelAuth has automated all the most important pieces of the user management lifecycle. Instantly set up waitlists, magic links, social login, user impersonation, user management, Role-Based-Access-Control, SAML integrations for enterprise, team management and much more. With PropelAuth, each of these challenges takes just a few lines of code instead months of development and integration time. And with thoughtful control over design and skinning, it’s easy to keep your product fully on-brand. Get a generous free starter pack that scales through 1,000 Monthly Active Users or mention EMERGENT25 to receive 25% off for the first 6 months for more mature products. Get back to building you actual product and let PropelAuth handle your user management needs. Visit www.propelauth.com to learn more.—You can connect with Tim Raftis through the following platforms:* X: https://twitter.com/raftis_tim* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/traftis/* Website: tap3d.com—You can connect with Adam through the following platforms:* Newsletter and Podcast: www.emergentproduct.com* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adam-judelson/* X: https://twitter.com/Ajuggles* Website: www.firstprinciples.la—Where to find Emergent Newsletter and Podcast:* Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@emergentproduct* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adamjudelsonemergent/* Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@adamjudelson* Website: https://www.emergentproduct.com—For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email adam@firstprinciples.la.—Get full access of the Emergent’s Newsletter at www.emergentproduct.com/subscribe. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.emergentproduct.com/subscribe