我要谈另一家公司，它不是家喻户晓的名字，但业务很有意思，叫Planet Labs。如果你以前没听说过这家公司，Planet Labs运营着全球最大的地球成像卫星群。这包括200多颗小型Dove卫星，它们每天共同对地球几乎全部陆地面积进行成像，精度最高可达约3.7米。
Planet Labs并不只是出售这些图像，而是以订阅方式向农业、林业、保险以及政府部门等客户出售对这个不断更新的档案库的访问权。他们支付经常性费用，以监测灾害损失、森林砍伐、作物健康状况和基础设施建设等领域随时间发生的变化。
当然，由于无论有多少客户使用这些数据——无论是政府机构还是其他客户——卫星星座的成本总体上是固定的，因此Planet Labs每增加一个订阅用户的维护成本非常小。这使公司在扩张过程中具备了一定程度的运营优势。
这真的很有意思。我的意思是，如果你考虑到Planet Labs所做的就是出售探测变化的能力。你知道，比如一张农场的卫星图像，如果你是农民，单张图像本身几乎不能告诉你任何有用的信息，但同一地区多年来的每日图像能准确告诉你作物何时开始变坏，或者竞争对手是否扩建了设施。
所以，这里有很大的价值，当然对政府客户尤其如此，对那些与他们签约的较小客户也是如此。
I'm going to talk about another company that isn't a household name but is an interesting business called "Planet Labs". If you haven't heard of this company before, Planet Labs operates the world's largest fleet of Earth imaging satellites.
This includes more than 200 small Dove satellites that collectively image almost the entire land area of the Earth every day with an accuracy of up to about 3.7 meters. Instead of simply selling these images, Planet Labs sells access to this constantly updated archive as a subscription to customers in the agriculture, forestry, insurance, and government sectors, of course.
They pay recurring fees to monitor changes over time in areas such as disaster damage, deforestation, crop health, and infrastructure development. Naturally, since the cost of the satellite constellation is generally fixed regardless of the number of customers using this data, whether they are government agencies or others, the cost of servicing each additional subscriber on Planet Labs is very small.
This gave the company a certain degree of operational strength as it expanded. This is really interesting. I mean, if you consider the fact that what Planet Labs does is sell the ability to detect changes.
You know, a single satellite image of a farm, for example, if you're a farmer, doesn't tell you almost anything useful on its own, but daily images of the same area for years tell you exactly when the crop started to go bad, or whether a competitor has expanded their facility.
So, there is a lot of value here, and of course for government clients in particular, as well as for some of those smaller clients who contract with them.