Arjen Vrielink - Getting to Zero Deforestation with Satellite Images - MBM #22

Minds Behind Maps

Arjen Vrielink is the Director & co-founder of Satelligence, dedicated to stopping deforestation by leveraging satellite imagery. They work directly with commodity companies who sell things like cacao or coffee to understand the causes of deforestation and how alternatives can be found.

About Arjen:

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Satelligence

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Episode Sponsors:

• Radiant Earth Foundation: Apply for the 2022 Radiant MLHub Impact Award for agriculture-related applications for Africa - with a $5,000 cash prize.
• Element84
  • Dan Pilone’s appearance on the podcast

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Shownotes:

• Zero to One by Peter Thiel
• Kate Raworth’s Doughnut Economics
• Planet Acquiring Vandersat
• Range by David Epstein
• Steve Ballmer
• Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction by Bret Victor
• xkcd: Adjective Foods
• Superforecasting by Philip E. Tetlock, Dan Gardner
• Book recommendations:
  • Man’s Fate (La Condition Humaine) by André Malraux
  • The Stranger (L’Etranger) by Albert Camus
  • The Plague (La Peste) by Albert Camus
  • The Mandarins by Simone de Beauvoir

Timestamps:

00:00 - Introduction

02:55 - Conversation Begins

07:56 - Arjen quoting me to describe work environment

13:02 - The origin story of Satelligence

17:45 - What Satelligence does

19:05 - Remote Sensing to solve deforestation: Solution looking for a Problem?

26:48 - Data comes in to convince bosses

34:38 - Financial incentives & shareholders

40:27 - How Satelligence makes money & long term vision

45:02 - Why Satelligence decided to raise a first round after a few years

51:25 - Downsides to raising

55:14 - What happens to the mission after an exit?

59:30 - Creating a work culture

1:03:43 - Lunch is more important for your culture than your Strategy day

1:13:17 - Hiring

1:17:47 - Why Arjen hired me as an intern

1:29:48 - Open Source in Geospatial

1:42:28 - Importance of technical knowledge in leadership roles

1:44:36 - Layers of Abstraction

1:51:16 - Committing to one specific thing

1:57:18 - Why maps aren’t (always) the best way to communicate insights

2:06:43 - Geospatial is incredibly niche

2:12:57 - Book recommendations

2:21:15 - Asking for advice

Feel free to reach out!

• My Twitter
• For news about the podcast
• Website