Editor note: In our 2022 Startups to Watch feature, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times present startups and founders doing unique things in the San Francisco Bay Area. Muon Space is one of 20 that we have profiled — to read more about our mission and the other startups we're featuring, click here.
Muon Space Inc. is making it easier for organizations to get a clear picture of the Earth's climate — a crucial service in the era of global warming.
"The need for more and better data in the context of the climate problem is acute." said Muon Space CEO Jonathan Dyer. "We still have a very poor understanding of a lot of the core climate systems."
Besides building satellites and sensors that get sent into orbit, Muon Space also integrates with existing ground stations and processes incoming data. It effectively creates a "Missions-as-a-Service" platform that any company can use.
The speed at which companies can deploy sensors will be critical to determining whether humanity can win the race against climate change, Dyer said.
"If we can build a platform that's reusable enough and applies to many different needs in this space, it will catalyze an expansion in the type of data that's collected," he said. "It really has the opportunity to have a huge impact in the relatively near term."
Muon Space Inc.
- Founded: 2021
- Founders: Paul Day, Jonathan Dyer, Dan McCleese, Reuben Rohrschneider, Pascal Stang
- What it does: Builds satellites and sensors that an organization needs to gather the Earth's data
- Headquarters: Mountain View
- Employees: 22
- Total raised: $10 million
- Investors: Costanoa Ventures, Space Capital, Congruent Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, South Park Commons, Climactic
What’s the pitch for Muon Space in seven words? Revolutionize insight into Earth's environment and ecosystems.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in building your startup? Distilling what is a very complex, multi-layered story to the point that it can easily be understood by investors, potential hires and the public.
Who was the first person or organization you asked for money? One of our investors (Space Capital) was actually the first group we spoke to when we were just starting to explore taking venture capital. It was, net-net, a fantastic experience — Space Capital understands this area so well and our mission so clearly resonated with them that they became very excited and encouraged us to take money immediately.
This response was a bit of a blessing and a curse in that it made us think what we are doing would be obvious to anyone. Instead what we found is that we really have had to tailor our story to other investors and customers that don't have the same clear visibility into the space ecosystem and needs around climate data.
How are you going to scale your business? We have an 18,000-square-foot facility in Mountain View that we need to fill up!
In all seriousness, a lot of our focus right now is on building a strong base of customer engagements and deepening those relationships quickly. A lot of our mission is enabled or driven by scale in both number of sensors and diversity of those sensors, and we are focusing internally on developing a common core of technology that will support that diversity and scale, and applying the technology to deployments we're doing with customers.
We anticipate raising more capital this year to accelerate much of this work as we continue to see traction and opportunity well beyond our initial hopes.
