After reading Elyssa Heng’s blog on UrtheCast, I also wanted to make comments on one of the speakers we have heard this week. This past week, the Co-founder & Executive Vice President of UrtheCast, Wade Larson, was invited to our COMM 101 class for entrepreneurship experience-sharing. Wade gave us a breakdown UrtheCast’s mission, and provided us insights into entrepreneurship and into his company.
Wade Larson
“By developing the first high-definition streaming video platform of Earth, UrtheCast plans to change the way we view the world. With the help of prominent aerospace partners like RSC Energia, UrtheCast is building, launching, installing, and operating two cameras onboard the International Space Station.”—the UrtheCast Mission
Wade Larson shared with us the huge Business opportunities that come with the development of UrtheCast. UrtheCast’s profit will mainly come from Earth observation data sales, media content sales (CNN, BBC, FOX), application platform sales and web advertising (for example, companies like Starbucks can pay to have a logo in the true space video). However, the most promising opportunities will be UrtheCast’s massive social media value.
one of UrtheCast’s possible media usage (showing instant messages in its website interface)
To record live video directly from space has never been done before. Mr. Larson told us he started this company because he saw the huge potential behind such an endeavor. So far, many social media companies like Twitter and broadcast channels like Discovery Channel, BBC, FOX have shown great interests to cooperate with UrtheCast and make use of its live space video for multi-purposes. UrtheCast is estimated to profit totaling 100-120 million dollars per year judging from the letter of interests so far. And the market demand for UrtheCast is still growing tremendously.
UrtheCast is about to launch in 2013, provided that it has raised enough funds till then. It is now a very hard time for UrtheCast due to the huge amount of fund this project requires. Hearing Mr. Larson’s experience of founding UrtheCast, I begin to realize how big a risk entrepreneurs must be willing to take in order to succeed. And also, it is important for entrepreneurs to combine the new technology within areas in our daily lives in order to make profits. If we have the technology of streaming video from space but don’t know how to connect it with social media and other usages, then UrtheCast is unlikely to be profitable.
To be an entrepreneur, we need to learn from Mr. Larson, to follow the trend and to create the future trend by taking risks and doing things differently.
UrtheCast: Visions from space (video)
Video: Introduction to UrtheCast
Video: Wade Larson speaks at ACADECAPCISS
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