Skymapper — Pre‑Seed Investment Memo (Jan 2025)

A space observation network powered by a fleet of smart telescopes, delivering astronomical & satellite tracking data at structurally lower cost.

By Escape Velocity · January 2025

Executive Summary

  • First DePIN for outer‑space imagery. Skymapper captures, aggregates, and standardizes astronomical & satellite‑tracking data via a network of smart telescopes. Commercial use cases include asset tracking, regulatory compliance, and insurance; public sector use spans space traffic management, national security, and SETI.
  • Growing demand tailwinds. Active satellites projected to grow from ~13K to ~60K by 2030; interactions scale ~n2, increasing the need for granular, low‑latency positioning data.
  • Lower structural cost. Community‑owned telescopes plus low‑cost hardware attachments reduce per‑observation cost from ~$150 to <$30; validators run Proof‑of‑Space‑Observation before serving data via API.
  • Go‑to‑market via key partners. Unistellar bootstraps supply from tens of thousands of amateur astronomers; SETI Institute showcases scientific capabilities and legitimizes the brand globally.
  • Round. EV3 is leading the pre‑seed alongside Volt Capital and BoostVC.

Founder & Team

Franck Marchis, renowned astronomer (400+ publications), discoverer of the first triple‑asteroid system, Senior Planetary Astronomer at the SETI Institute, and Co‑Founder/CSO at Unistellar (25k+ smart telescopes, $50M revenue). Long‑time collaborator Stefaan Vervaet (ex‑Protocol Labs; founder, Akave) seeded early development and brings crypto/data infrastructure expertise.

How Skymapper Works

  1. Task routing: Customer requests are routed to telescopes with line‑of‑sight.
  2. Capture & upload: Telescopes record short videos and send them to validator nodes.
  3. Validation: Validators run Proof‑of‑Space‑Observation to verify accuracy and serve results via API, with premium pricing for higher detail, redundancy, frequency, or anonymity.

Day‑One Partnerships

  • Supply — Unistellar: Signed LOI to onboard telescope owners through the Unistellar app, enabling rapid network growth; initial R&D focuses on a low‑cost enclosure + smart controller for 24/7 outdoor operation.
  • Demand — SETI Institute: Signed LOI to leverage citizen‑science for novel research; provides credibility and global visibility even if direct revenues are modest.

Top 3 Reasons We Have to Invest

  1. Missionary founder with unique space credentials and deep relationships across academia and industry.
  2. Bootstrapped supply & demand via LOIs with Unistellar (supply) and SETI (demand/credibility).
  3. Picks‑and‑shovels for a multi‑decade growth curve as satellites proliferate and interactions rise non‑linearly.

Market Opportunity

We estimate a narrow market for optical‑telescope space imagery at roughly $500M/yr in the near term, with potential upside as satellite count and interaction complexity grow. Pricing today ranges from ~$150 per observation; Skymapper targets ~$60 for basic observations with tiered pricing up to ~$1K for the most sensitive use cases.

Insurance: Satellite insurance was ~$550M GWP in 2023 with challenging loss ratios; better data unlocks responsible underwriting and new products, potentially reaching $5B/yr by 2030 and spending ~$100M/yr on space data. Adjacent earth‑insurance use cases (e.g., asteroid/NEO risks) could contribute another ~$100M/yr.

Developers: Long‑tail use cases include risk assessments, light‑pollution tracking, AR/VR, model training, premium amateur tools, and EdTech.

What Do You Need To Believe?

  • $175M/yr satellite‑tracking revenue on 60K satellites, one obs/week, and ~$60/obs pricing.
  • $200M/yr insurance data revenue (2% of $5B premiums) plus terrestrial property‑risk data of similar scale.
  • $75M/yr from ~60k developers at ~$100/mo.

At ~$450M addressable revenue, Skymapper returns the fund at 15% share (8× revenue multiple), 6% (20×), or 1% (100×).

Can Skymapper Beat Centralized Competitors?

Space awareness solutions compete on sensitivity, range, accuracy, frequency, latency, and reliability across a 2×2 of terrestrial vs. orbital and optical vs. radar. While radar has performance advantages, terrestrial optical benefits from rapidly improving camera economics and lower deployment costs. Its historical drawbacks (clouds, latency, LEO frequency) are mitigated by density: at 10–100× more locations (≈400–4K), optical networks become more performant and cheaper overall.

DePIN shows this scaling is feasible (e.g., Helium IoT >15× the next LoRa network; Geodnet, Starpower, WeatherXM, Helium Mobile, Wingbits all beyond 1k deployments). Engineering priorities: weather‑resistant telescope enclosures for “set‑and‑forget,” trust‑minimized coordination/verification, and cost‑efficient processing of high‑volume imagery (~1GB/min/telescope).

Appendix

How Are Satellites Tracked?

  • Radar: Active RF; resilient to weather but power‑hungry, expensive, licensed spectrum; best for LEO.
  • Optical telescopes: Passive sunlight; cheaper to operate with similar accuracy but sensitive to weather; GEO easy, LEO windows at dawn/dusk.
  • Orbital sensors: Avoid terrestrial weather but are costly; used mainly for deep‑space imaging or earth‑observation, not routine tracking.

Who Tracks Satellites?

Government agencies led by the US Space Force (Space Surveillance Network, SpaceTrack TLE) and a handful of commercial vendors. Commercial networks are sub‑scale today, with <~400 sensors at the high end; density is the key unlock.

Resources

Get the PDF version of the original investment memo:

Skymapper — Pre‑Seed Investment Memo (Jan 2025) by Escape Velocity

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