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- [00:01]
Greg Davis
It's an environment that is defined by long contracting cycles and long kind of go to market timelines. It's an environment where the users are typically very risk averse and sometimes for bad reasons. If customers are kind of slow to adopt new technology, but often for very good reasons. That the missions that we support are mission critical. They're frequently life and death critical.
- [00:27]
Frontlines IO Host
Welcome back to another episode of Builders. As always, this show is brought to you by Frontlines IO, Silicon Valley's leading B2B podcast production studio. If you're bringing technology to market and want to learn from your peers, we have a library of more than 1200 interviews with Venture backed founders and marketers. Where they talk, all things go to market. Of course, if you want to launch your own podcast, we offer podcasts as a service to more than 80 tech startups. The idea there is very simple. You show up and host and we do everything else. Now with all that said, let's jump into today's episode.
- [01:01]
Brett
Our guest today is Greg Davis, founder and CEO of Overwatch Imaging. Greg, how are you?
- [01:05]
Greg Davis
I'm great, Brett, thank you for having me on the show.
- [01:07]
Brett
Of course. Looking forward to this one. So you're calling in from Hood River, Oregon. What's going on in Hood River, Oregon? Tell us about the history there and all that's happening in the economy.
- [01:16]
Greg Davis
Yeah, Hood River, I think is just simply the best place to live and work. It's a beautiful area, a beautiful small town, but also a real hub of drone technology and overhead imagery intelligence. So there's a lot of different companies that work in the space that have been born and raised in this area. So companies acquired into Boeing and Airbus and Raytheon as well as a number of kind of venture backed and private equity backed airborne imaging companies. It's also the windsurfing capital of America and a beautiful fruit farming town. So just an amazing place to live and still be able to contribute to kind of the leading edge of the technology that we work in.
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Brett
Do you windsurf then?
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Greg Davis
I do windsurf, yeah, I windsurf and also it's a great place to go skiing in the winter. So was just up skiing this weekend and yeah, see someone kiteboarding on the water just a minute ago.
- [02:09]
Brett
Nice. Amazing. Well, let's talk a bit more about the company. So at a high level, how do you articulate what the technology does and the problem it solves?
- [02:16]
Greg Davis
Yeah, so Overwatch Imaging is a imagery intelligence technology company. We focus on time critical airborne search, detection, tracking and monitoring. So what that means is Automating the role of the users of imagery intelligence systems. So typically, or the old way, there's an aircraft flying, whether that's a Coast Guard helicopter or that's a fixed wing aircraft used for law enforcement or for civil mapping or, you know, defense applications. And there's always somebody controlling the sensors on those aircraft, looking around, trying to make sense of the world as they're seeing it, trying to like mentally digitize a data set and trying to kind of simultaneously execute the mission, find things of interest, communicate about them, maybe also manage other sensors or mission equipment. And so Overwatch Imaging is committed to automating the role of the sensor operator. So we talk about sensor autonomy that uses AI enabled software to automate, whether it's our own airborne camera systems or automating third party camera systems as are already installed on lots of fixed wing and rotary wing and drone aircraft all around the world. So that our users can, instead of spending their time staring at a screen full of raw data, our users can just be delivered a set of answers using AI autonomy.
- [03:43]
Brett
As you say, all of that, I have to imagine there's lots of different markets and verticals that you could have moved into. Which vertical are you focused on right now or which verticals and then how did you narrow that down?
- [03:53]
Greg Davis
Yeah, so we're absolutely a dual use company. So we have customers working in civil and commercial applications as well as defense and intelligence applications and border security. We got there through this kind of defining theme of time critical wide area, small object of interest. Kind of the confluence of those couple things is where our technology really immediately is very valuable. Right. So we start with, you know, today's user before Overwatch can make really great decisions, really great at processing lots of different inputs, not as great at managing long, somewhat boring tasks like monitoring large areas to look for small things. So we look for mission sets that have that characteristic. So that could be things like maritime domain awareness where we're helping our users scan vast areas of ocean to find a single small boat that's creating a threat to, you know, border security or creating a threat to a maritime assets. We see a great application there and have enjoyed a great product market fit in wildland fire mapping and wildland fire detection. So it's another area where humans are not particularly good and the data is best delivered in a digitized map ready format. So if you're scanning a very large area of wildland forest and the desired deliverable is really a pin on a map to say, hey, here's where a fire has gotten outside of a fire containment line. That job is best done by software rather than by a person staring at a screen. So we find that as the kind of central connection point of all of our users. You know, there's law enforcement versions of that, search and rescue versions of that, infrastructure inspections version of that kind of go to market message. And in all those areas, there's a common theme of a time critical mission with a small critical piece of information in a large search area.
- [05:51]
Brett
And what's the split between the commercial civil side and defense? Is it 5050 or what does that look like?
- [05:57]
Greg Davis
Yeah, it is pretty close to 50 50. It varies kind of year in and year out. But yeah, we have a pretty good split between the two and also a pretty good split between what we call our smart sensors business, which is our software enabled hardware. We make our own camera systems that bolt onto aircraft and are purpose built for automated data collection. And then we also sell software only that applies on third party camera systems and enables those third party systems to become automated. So a good split between those and a good split between the different market application areas.
- [06:34]
Frontlines IO Host
This show is brought to you by
- [06:36]
Brett
Frontlines Media podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit Frontlines I.O. podcast. Now back to today's episode. What have you learned about navigating the defense, the government contracting side of the world? I know a lot of founders that are listening in are younger founders who are just getting into it. A lot of them are building in defense. But it's a complicated world from what I understand.
- [07:11]
Greg Davis
Yeah, it's a really complicated world where sort of the mechanics of contracting and integration and adoption are very significant, maybe as significant as the product features itself. So yeah, it's an environment that is defined by long contracting cycles and long kind of go to market timelines. It's an environment where the users are typically very risk averse and you know, sometimes for bad reasons. You know, if customers are kind of slow to adopt new technology, but often for very good reasons, that the missions that we support are mission critical. You know, they're frequently life and death critical. You know, we are helping to protect people, helping to protect structures on the ground, helping to, you know, save people at sea. So in that environment it's really important that the technology works as expected and also has the full trust of the users who are depending on it.
- [08:06]
Brett
How do you build trust?
- [08:07]
Greg Davis
Oh yeah, building trust in autonomous systems is a long game. So a lot of different ways. I mean primarily we focus on quality and excellence of our technology and we don't over promise, you know, we commit to what we can achieve. We've found applications where our autonomy is fully mission ready. We've been TRL9 exercising real world applications for almost the entire lifespan of the company. So we've been deploying Autonomy software for nearly 10 years and that helps to build trust that we can point to a lot of of past experiences with older versions of our technology. But our customers know that our tech works under pressure, we've delivered in real world life threatening situations and then just sort of keeping that up month after month, year after year, while reinforcing to the customer that there's real benefits to adopting new technology. You know, we're not just trying to prove that we are, you know, as capable as some other solution. We're trying to show hey, we can enable these superhuman capabilities simultaneously greatly reducing the workload of the crew. So we can definitely enable better mission outcomes. So trying to keep our customers focused on those better mission outcomes and then providing them all the assurance they need on their sort of risk mitigation side. I think that's been a formula that's worked well for us.
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Brett
What about on the marketing side? How would you describe the marketing strategies and philosophy that you have there?
- [09:38]
Greg Davis
Yeah, yeah, we've tried to stay grounded in real applications where we have real users and demonstrate, you know, we talk about our go to market message now is mission ready sensor autonomy, which I think is a different tone than some of the messages adopted by some other defense tech and certainly venture backed defense tech companies I think are promising really incredible ideas. And then you know, you sort of just like never hear about them again after they did that one pilot program or after they did that incredible demo, sort of never hear about it again. I think we try to focus on the operational impact that we're having and that is like cultural. That's sort of part of our company. That's part of how we introduce all of our new employees to the team. The thing that we value most is customer success and mission impact. And by keeping the team all focused on that, that bleeds over into our marketing message that contributes to every sales call we have with a customer. And so by the time we are in front of a Customer showcasing our tech. We're all on the same page that you know, we've under promised and we're going to over deliver and that you know the tech's going to work.
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Brett
Are you seeing that there's a lot of startups that are kind of overhyped right now or they're overhyping themselves? I would say yes.
- [10:54]
Greg Davis
I mean I think there is some truly incredible, you know, paradigm changing technology being created right now. I think we're in an incredible period of development and adoption of AI enabled capabilities. And I also think there are a lot of companies who are calling old ideas new by putting AI in front of it and you know, not really creating any additional value for users but just sort of calling it AI enabled. So yeah, we are certainly seeing that. I think our market, our customers are leery of that, you know, so you know, we frequently hear the feedback that like hey, we don't need it to be AI enabled, like we just want a workload reduction, you know, so that's sort of interesting experience that we've had that you know, there's a different message perhaps to investors than there is to users. And I think the mission critical users that we serve don't really appreciate being treated like investors.
- [11:50]
Brett
Makes sense. Yeah, I've heard that a lot that you know, founders or startups will have this big picture vision for what they're doing and then you go to their homepage and like they're just selling the dream and it's all about the vision. When the customers don't actually really care, they want to know can you solve my pain point? And that message that resonates with an investor is going to be completely different than the message that resonates with the, with the end customers.
- [12:11]
Greg Davis
Yeah, I mean I think that's a real point and I think companies have to kind of right size their place in that like you know, continuum between kind of pursuing a dream that is not mission ready and then you know, kind of undershooting and not really delivering enough differentiation to warrant customers making a change. So that's definitely been an area that we've focused a lot on at Overwatch Imaging. We're proud that we're a profitable company and also a venture backed company developing exciting new kind of game changing technology. And I think both those are important parts of our story.
- [12:44]
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- [13:04]
Brett
in your market, does that make it harder to sell and to acquire customers? Because there's a lot of hype and buzz. I was speaking with the founder earlier today and he said that most of his competitors are just very, very aggressive with their messaging and very much on the hype machine messaging. And he says that as he has conversations to try to sell it, that's almost diluting what they do, which he describes, of course, as, you know, they're solving real problems and everything's real that they're doing, but the noisy competitors are creating headaches for him. Is that something that you're seeing?
- [13:33]
Greg Davis
Yeah, I mean, I think that's true in our market. I think that's probably true in many markets, that there's always somebody out there creating a barrier to sale by talking about something, you know, perhaps that doesn't exist. But you know, this sort of sounds so good that it's worth waiting for. So yeah, that's a real issue that we see in our market. I think the, you know, something that we've done well here is trying to find that sweet spot between bringing real new technology that actually addresses user pain points, but that also is sort of aligned with these cutting edge themes. So we are hearing a lot of excitement among our user community about adopting autonomy in general AI enabled solutions. I think that creates a really exciting market opportunity that users know they need to adopt this technology and they're just sort of afraid about the potential risks or, you know, how they step into that. And we've really used that as the shaping function of the way that we productize our technology is allowing users kind of an on ramp that we don't require users to kind of throw away their whole multitrillion dollar fleet of existing assets. We allow users this on ramp that takes the existing fielded material solutions that are out there today and give them an easy path to bring autonomy to that existing hardware. So that's our go at it. I think that's an approach to kind of getting integrated into the market, that our customers appreciate that they don't need to sort of make this binary choice between old technology and then a fully autonomous drone, you know, drone swarm future. I think, you know, by offering an on ramp to say, hey, you could take your exact operation for today, except we'll just make the workload easier and make the performance better. And, you know, that message seems to resonate and cut through the noise of, you know, oh, well, you Know, what about this incredible future tech? You know, that future tech maybe or maybe doesn't work yet, but our tech kind of stands on top of all of the great stuff that's been developed and fielded and proven already.
- [15:34]
Brett
How have the conversations with investors changed for you from 2016 to today? Feel like now defense tech is cool? Did it feel cool back in 2016?
- [15:44]
Greg Davis
No. I mean, the evolution of defense tech as a venture investable category definitely has been something that's changed over the 10 years that we've been in business. No, I mean, Overwatch Imaging started as a bootstrap company because basically that was the only way you built a defense tech company was by kind of bootstrapping, bringing value through, you know, potentially services to get started and then building some products up. And that's, you know, that's in large part how we started. We were under contract delivering product to customers within a couple months of starting our business and have just evolved the product and the software since then. So, yeah, the investor landscape has certainly changed. There's a lot more excitement now around the sort of business opportunities in response to changes in defense acquisition. So, you know, there's a lot greater opportunity for companies developing exciting new technology through their own funding or investor funding to have, you know, good economic outcomes in addition to good mission outcomes for our customers. And yeah, the way we've had to talk about that with customers has evolved too, as we've shifted from kind of strategic investors to venture investors. We've had to sort of internalize and realize the bigger vision for the technology that we're developing and make a very explicit decision to kind of go for it in a bigger context rather than building kind of a smaller business, which was a good option for us earlier, but now we're sort of fully committed to a much bigger vision of making a really massive impact with our work. The evolving landscape of, like SaaS software has been, you know, part of the story as well, that, you know, SaaS had no place in kind of government contracting and then had a great place in government contracting. And now maybe we're moving to a third answer there. So, yeah, it's important to always stay agile, I think.
- [17:28]
Brett
And I think that's a good segue to the final question. And the final one is about the vision. What's the big picture vision that you're building?
- [17:34]
Greg Davis
Yeah, I'm really excited that the idea of automated sensor operation should happen everywhere that there is a sensor. So we should put smart sensors on everything that flies, and we should make every sensor operated by an Automated sensor operator. So I think that's really the big picture dream is, you know, aligned with a lot of autonomy and AI enabled technology. Once you clear this technology hurdle of kind of adding value and helping users move from human in the loop to human on the loop, once you clear that hurdle, then it really makes sense to put that technology everywhere that it applies. So we envision our automated sensor operator operating every sensor in every domain. You know, currently we're working in the air to ground space, but we see great opportunities for this to be a space based, a ground based technology. We currently work in the image data domain, but certainly opportunities to automate sensor operations in radar and signals data and other modalities of data as well. So I think that's the big picture dream is that kind of everywhere that data is collected, it's collected in a artificially intelligent real time way that collects better data and immediately makes great use of that data.
- [18:50]
Brett
Amazing. Love the vision. I really love this conversation. Before we wrap, for those listening in that want to follow along with you, where should we send them? Where should they go?
- [18:57]
Greg Davis
Yeah, thanks. So of course, our website, we're always posting things there. We make a real focus of posting a lot of company highlights on our LinkedIn page. So please follow Overwatch Imaging on LinkedIn. I sometimes share my thoughts there as well, kind of under my own name. But please make sure you follow the company. It's a great place. If nothing else, see beautiful imagery of the world and highlights of some of our missions that we're supporting.
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Brett
Amazing. I love it. Greg, thanks so much.
- [19:22]
Greg Davis
Thank you, Brett.
- [19:24]
Frontlines IO Host
Well, that's all for today's episode of Builders, brought to you by the Frontlines. If you want more amazing content like this, visit Frontlines IO where you'll find library of more than 1500 interviews with founders, marketers and other GTM leaders where we unpack the tactical lessons from their journey. And of course, as always, if you do want to launch your own podcast, we'd love to have a conversation with you. Visit Frontlines IO podcast as a service,
- [19:48]
Brett
mention that you listen, mention you love the show, and we'll give you a 10% discount. Thanks for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.