Spectrum, Satellites & Strategy: The Rivada Playbook - Francis O'Flaherty

Welcome to Space Insiders. My name is Tony Sewell, and as usual, here with my partner in cry, Rob Ryriak. How are going, Rob?

Great, Tony. Good to see you again.

Yeah. You too. Man, it's been a busy couple of weeks. I don't know what time time it is. I've been in hotel rooms and planes. We actually recorded this interview when I was in a hotel in in Sydney of all places. So but it was a good one.

Was it good to be back?

Yeah. It is good to be back. But just in time for Father's Day.

So Yeah. That's good.

You know,

I used

to spend some time with the family this weekend.

Yeah. It's good.

And what about you? What have you been up to this week?

Oh, this week was busy. We have we had our AWS public sector. Well, they call it the DC Summit now. So it was always, you know, always busy meeting with customers and and learning and and and also trying to see a lot of our colleagues that we work with. So it was really good.

customers.

So it was good. It was super crowded. So it was good to see all those people.

Yeah. I was seeing a seeing a a few of the stories on the social. So no. That's cool. That's a big that's a big show. So we've got a great interview today. We we've all we've as I said, we recorded it last week. We're meeting this week with Francis O'Flaherty. He is the managing director of Revada's space. So Francis has been with Revada since the start.

Yeah. He's he's a nice guy, and and I just love that accent. It's great.

Yeah. He's he's a lot of he's a lot of fun. He he's based in Atlanta, so we get to hang out a bit. So this was a Yeah. This is a a fun one. Before we get to that, just wanted to cover off on one of the news stories that just popped up in the last couple of days that I thought it was kinda interesting on, and you know a little about a bit about these guys. So Voyager Space, their IPO went public, I think, yesterday or the yesterday, the twelfth. Yep. Mhmm. And it was pretty I mean, it was a

This is this company is cool because personally have an interest in the intersection of investment and the space domain various technologies, whether it's hardware or software. So it's interesting to see how these we talked about this before with some venture capital firms investing in smaller startups, but this one's really interesting. There's another company, Redwire. It's kind of a I I don't wanna claim it's the same, but it's a similar kind of model where Voyage has started off as a holding company wanting to, roll up and pull together complementary technologies in the market around space like space suppliers, defense suppliers. And it's been interesting to see them kind of mature into or or start to gain a lot of focus specifically around how all of those assets can be pulled together for very specific missions.

heard

of. Then a company called Altius Pioneer. There's like seven of them that I think they've acquired over time. In the prospectus, they talk about not only the fact that they want to continue doing M and A, but they're really organized around three major focus areas where they do want to do more of those acquisitions and then focus on selling to defense and national security customers, both as a which I thought I also thought was interesting, both they called out as a prime as well as a merchant supplier or a or a sub to a lot of those primes. So very flexible, I think, strategy, but yet focused.

And

formal I looked on their website this morning, actually. They they now have these formalized verticals with a president or lead for each.

Saw that.

Yeah. Which is which is pretty interesting. But like you said, you know, they raised, I think it was, like, a $380,000,000, I think. Right? And they said that they wanna use it for, quote, unquote, strategic projects, mostly in defense and space.

I mean, I you I mean, just the the, Obviously, market activity on the IPO just shows people are thinking about the intersection of space and defense, and then you look at what's going on in The Middle East overnight. It's going be interesting just to see how these national security companies perform and how the market starts thinking about it. It's definitely had a big impact. I mean, the political situation has definitely had a big impact on defense and space companies in Europe. We've talked about that before.

Did you happen to read about Elon's tweet about the space station the other day? Think

you got it yesterday. I didn't see that one. I can't give up.

Well, I wanna bring it up here because it's it's it's it was so it couldn't have been, like, more timely, but also somewhat of a sad purpose or reason for it. Know, Acxiom, another commercial space station company, has had to indefinitely delay their AX four private astronaut mission.

Oh, really?

Yeah. NASA came out and said, I think it was yesterday, said that they're going to yeah. They're gonna indefinitely halt all private astronaut missions because there's a there's this leak

against in the Russian module.

I did read that. Yeah. Yeah. So, Elin Elin, Elin, posted that, yep. Now is the time. We gotta escalate. Not escalate. Accelerate the decommissioning of the space station, and he was he's calling for two years. Now for those that don't know, SpaceX is the awardee for this for for designing space yeah. For designing the spacecraft to deorbit the station. How convenient. Which is supposed to be by twenty thirties, but still, it's not that far away.

It's not far away.

No. So, I don't know. You know, a company like this that, you know, acquired, Nanorex, and there's kind of now they they they have a joint venture with Airbus, and I think it's NBA Space and Mitsubishi. There it's gonna be that's great for these guys, you know Yeah. For sure.

Yeah. For sure. Alright. Well, I think let's get to the interview with Francis. He said I think this is a this is a it was a really fun discussion, and I think people are gonna enjoy it. So we'll see you in a minute.

Yep. Let's get after it.

Welcome back to the show, and welcome, Francis. Hey, guys. Good to see you again.

Yeah. Great to see you, Tony. Good to see you again, Rob. Been too long.

Francis. Yeah. Great to see you again. Thanks for doing this.

Appreciate it. Thanks for having me.

Yeah. You guys, you guys are doing some really cool stuff. So, we thought this would be a great, be great to learn about learn a little bit more about you and and and what you're doing at Revada. So before we get into the mission, I mean, so you've been at Revada, I think, since the start. And you didn't start off as a space company and you didn't sort of come from the space industry yourself.

Sure. Well, it's it's funny. I've been with Revada for twenty years now. It's twenty years when we started the company, and just a little bit of background before that, I was always in comms and high-tech. Started out my career with McKinsey, actually in Australia, of all places, and then joined the Accenture Strategy team out of London.

It's pretty amazing, like, with you sort of getting close to launching your satellites and you talk about the security and the sovereignty aspect. I mean, it's kind of prescient given sort of where we are today, like geopolitically. There's there's so much attention to to data sovereignty and and national capability. So, I mean, it seems like a like you guys, whether you did it by accident or on purpose, I mean, you you've really kinda found the met the moment, I think, with this capability.

Yeah. And look, there's obviously Starlink and, to a lesser extent, Kuiper gets all the headlines. But we always get the question, Well, how are you different? But from our perspective, even though they could be viewed as a competitor for us, they've been phenomenal because, one, just given the nature of their owner and the amount of press it gets, it's shone a spotlight on this sector and on this market that otherwise may not have been the case. And secondly, just what happened in Ukraine really proved the need for these type of capabilities and this type of service.

Yeah. So Francis, for those that are not familiar, when you talk about Sovereign and you talk about, I guess, Ukraine as an example, what is it about the architecture you guys are providing, that supports those specific requirements? Really kind of what are they just for those that are really unfamiliar with this particular market and technology?

Sure. So the big difference between us and the other LEO providers, and indeed some of the other satellite providers, is that we don't look to offload traffic to a gateway or a ground station ever, actually. So it's a direct point to point network if that's what the customer wants. Now, if they want a ground station somewhere, we can obviously accommodate that. But really, the compelling factor and what makes us different is, as opposed to the others, is that we keep that traffic, all of the customers' traffic, essentially on their private network in space.

You made a comment earlier. I thought it was good, like how, like, space is not the appetizer anymore. It's the entree. But, like, for a for a for any company, like, launching a a a constellation like this is a is a massive undertaking. Technically, financially.

happy to hear And look, there are big numbers. There's no question about that. But don't forget what you're building is a global capability. It's a global network. And to put it into context, anytime you see a cellular market issue licenses, for example, four gs, five gs, they sell in each jurisdiction for hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars for one country.

analogy to sort of what you're experiencing in telco, though, and wireless networks is really interesting. I haven't sort of heard it talked about that way before, so and that's obviously you brought that core capability.

Yeah. And look, essentially what we're building is a network in in in the sky. It's essentially lifting that fiber network and making it much more secure by locating it and, you know, effectively cell sites in space. Now, they're all laser connected, obviously. There's differences.

So, Francis, you you mentioned government. Like, how hard has it been to try to sell to government? And what's been the process to for doing so, especially as you're building the capability right now?

Yeah. It's been mixed, I would say. There's been a reliance in Europe on some of the old guards, and I think there's a realization, an increasing realization, that it's just they're not going to get the job done, not in the timeframes that they want to or need to or within the budget. Everybody is familiar with the challenges that Iris Squared is having at the moment, and trying to get consensus from two dozen European countries on what the priorities should be and where the investment should go is always going to be daunting. That's been a little bit more frustrating than we would have liked, but the upshot is a lot of the European countries are now kind of realizing that they need this capability and can't wait for Iris Squared.

But one Francis, one thing I'm interested to ask you, like, there's not necessarily, like just from a financing and resource perspective, like, being a big and thinking about defense market. Like, being a big company, like, getting this getting something built, like, has its advantages. But I think there are companies like SpaceX that are saying that there's there's a there can be a lot of baggage that come that that comes along with that when when different sovereign countries look at, oh, do I really wanna get into bed with that company? So, like, are there advantage there must be some advantages, I guess, for for you guys being a bit more under the radar, a smaller smaller company.

Well, I I yeah.

Have to do do oh, are they I mean, is that an advantage in some in some ways?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Well, actually, we got out on a call yesterday with a with a government customer who cited that exact scenario. So it can work to our advantage, obviously, in some cases, but it's not always the case.

So I would think, Francis, talking about the end customer and the capability to build, do you think that the way to sell your capability is with a broader or specific solution to a problem or is it just capacity and secure networks? What is the way to sell what you provide? And the reason why I ask that is I think when we've talked to a lot of people, especially startups or smaller companies, they have something that they're really focused on selling to a particular customer, but for, let's say, government customers, sometimes they're not really looking for just satcom capacity, or they're not just looking for a geospatial analytics platform. They're actually asking for, you know, tell me where the bad guy is, or, you know, tell me how to get from point A to point B and all those kinds of things. Or do I have a secure communication where I can talk about whatever that might be?

Yeah. Look, it's a really interesting question. And some of the conversations that we're having with some really large global customers, enterprise customers, are exactly that, we're talking about bundling the capability and then selling to their customer base or their partners. And that's certainly a fascinating approach, and it's one that we're exploring with a small number of large global enterprise customers. And then on government side, look, I would say it always comes back to the security of the network.

of So looking

Sorry, Tony, just one other So for example, we spoke to the team at John Deere when they were looking to issue that RFP for I think their initial deployment was for some of the assets they have in Brazil. And look, it was a really interesting exercise, but we weren't the best solution. We told them this. There's others who can provide you with this solution for far cheaper than we'll be able to do it. It's not the best use of your capital and it's not the best use of our resources.

Tony, can I ask

one last question?

Sorry, sorry.

Must let you So I just wanted I mean, okay. You go. We've a bit of this connection to Sydney is Yeah.

It's okay. You're far away, dude. One last question, Francis, because again, this is a whole area that I'm so interested in and don't have a lot of background in. But I would also think though that if based on the capability providers, the security part that I understand, but if there's less interaction downlinking with the ground segment and terrestrial infrastructure, I would feel that your margins are going to be preferably You're not going to have as many costs associated with passing and cost to pass on to a customer, I'm assuming, because if you're going to either build a ground segment or you're going to partner with companies that have it, you have to pay for it. And I would think that, yeah, I'm wondering, you know, is it true that you actually would be a more, a cost effective alternative potentially for certain companies, like let's say it is an energy, it's an energy company that has all these remote well sites, like what's their alternative for connecting them?

No. Yeah. Yes. Certainly. Look. By by by taking out the ground station I said the gateway element of the network, that's an expensive piece of cash, right? That's a cost that obviously we don't have to accrue and the capital expenditure that we would have otherwise spent on that

Well, and the licensing and all that as well, it's like, it's a huge

It is, it is. And not having to plan for that or design for that is also a big saving on resources. We probably do spend more on the payload itself and on the security capabilities of the network. So it certainly is a plus that we don't have that capital requirement on the ground. And your point about oil and gas, it's interesting because we're talking to a couple of companies at the moment who can't get capability at all.

I just remember OneWeb. Like, there was an army of lawyers. Like like, there were hundreds of, like, hundreds of guys that were just like, that was their job. Like, is if you with with a consolation like OneWeb or Starlink, I mean, you're deploying hundreds of ground sites, and every jurisdiction has different rules and there's different partnerships. And, yeah, it's massive, massive undertaking.

Yeah. Know, Adam, we only have to worry about the market access licenses, which are

Challenging as

Yeah. So I dread to think what it must be like for the guys who are deploying dozens or hundreds of ground stations as well. Mate, this has been

a real It's been really interesting kind of learning about this and going a little bit deeper. I know, like, like barking for rebarter on this. I it's just, I think it's such a unique idea and I love the value proposition. It's really good.

Yeah. And just to one of the other things, you know, and I'm going to go back a little bit in history here, but we were designing a cellular network in Latin America in 2016. It was just around the time that OneWeb was making a lot of noise and bringing that capability to the market. And I remember speaking to some of the management team at the time, I've been really, really excited about what they were doing because it solved a big problem for, especially for first responders and some really, really difficult to access Latin American markets. So now I've been in a position where we're designing and building and deploying these things to be able to deliver that capability ourselves is really, really interesting, especially from a humanitarian perspective, from a disaster recovery and relief perspective, as well as the enterprise and government use cases as well.

Yeah. Mean, look, big picture, Rob, I mean, this makes me think about the discussion we had with Brett Alexander last week and sort of talking about, like, how the opportunity for for innovation and new business models in space is really is, like, so different now than where it was sort of twenty or thirty years ago. And, like, just the fact that that some of some of these really big audacious ideas, like companies big and small can can take them on.

Yeah. And I and it's the other thing too is I am fascinated by the private equity VC world and how a lot of those leaders in that industry kind of think through what they call their investment theses and all this kind of stuff. And I think it's a pretty wild time to try to figure out what those different theses could look like because I think they're wide and vast and I think there's a lot of things that we still don't know right now. So when we do have a lot of these constellations and they're turning a lot more of the world population online, I I think there's going to be a lot of interesting businesses that spawn out of it. A lot of it's going to be all because of this particular industry, the space industry.

haven't forgot. Yeah.

The one though is where are you from originally? That accent from Francis? Like we know, but no one else knows listening.

Yeah. The hint the hint is in the name. It's from from the West Of Ireland. Small town called Galway in the West Of Ireland.

Yeah. Very cool.

And you used to have family to launch site. I I I I'm I'm Oh, I bet. Yeah. I must build a launch site off of the West Coast. Nothing but the nothing but the Atlantic. Yeah. So, yeah, that's where I that's where I grew up. That's where I'm from originally, and I get back there, pretty frequently.

And you could ease the anxiety of of launches by drinking as much Guinness as possible.

So you can get us a plane Yeah.

And restore and restoring and and and restoring land drivers.

That's There you go. Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

Whenever you guys wanna come over and have a an authentic experience in a 30 year old status symbol that would break down and leak oil, let me know.

Yeah. Nothing like working with machinery when you're half in the bag on a bunch of alcohol.

Exactly. Alright. Yeah.

Last last question, Francis. I don't know if you if you're if you're into space as a kid, but we're all we're all sort of similar vintage. So I gotta ask, star wars or star trek?

I was never a big star wars fan. I had the little Lego models and and that kind of stuff. But, yeah, star trek, I used to watch. So star trek for me. Yeah.

Alright. Trekking. Alright.

Yeah.

What about you, Rob? I've never asked you that question.

I've always been a Star Wars guy. Me too. I can't even remember the period. Maybe it was in the eighties where Star Trek had its movies. Those I That a good one. Wrath the was Yeah, the Con was good. Return of Spock, were fantastic. The show, I feel like I would dive in and out, but Star Wars was always my favorite. Yeah.

They had the they had the superior action figures too. I had yeah. I'm Star Wars Star Wars. I same to you. I I watched the the Star Trek movies, but I never got into the into the the, like, the the new generation all that. Yeah. Cool. Well, Francis, before we, before we wrap up, if people wanna learn a little bit more about you and Revada, where should they go?

Revada.com is the the obvious place. But yeah, I'm on LinkedIn. Reach out to me, send me a message, and I'll be happy to have a conversation or reply to whoever is interested in learning more. Got a fantastic team. A lot of our engineering team are based out of Europe.

Good stuff. And we'll link to Francis' LinkedIn and Roberta in the in the show notes. So, look, thanks again, Francis. Great spending time with you and Rob today, and and thanks thanks to our listeners. And, look, remember, if you if you if you like what you hear, please please write us. And and if you feel so inclined, write a review. It'd be it'd really help us get the the spread the news about the about the podcast.

So Tony Tony and Rob, I I love what you're doing. I think it's fantastic. Really, really appreciate you inviting me on. Honored to be a guest, especially in, you know, two, five, ten years time when it's a massive success. I can say that I was, you know, one of the guys to be on the show, and I knew these guys before they were.

We'll we'll remember we'll remember you.

Thank you. Alright. Well, thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it.

Yeah. We'll we'll see you next week. Cheers.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. Bye bye.