VP Sales Americas, Commercial Division

The Company

Becoming the leading content provider of geospatial imagery for mapping & monitoring applications

Our client has its roots in rocket science… literally.   Since the first image was collected from space over 30 years ago by classified government imaging systems, only a limited number of people have been permitted access to highly detailed photos of the Earth, and the industry was tightly regulated.  Since its deregulation in the 1990’s, our client is changing this historical usage of Earth information through the commercialization of high-resolution satellite imaging and an innovative approach to conducting business with customers, partners and resellers. The company was founded in 1992 to launch satellites into space for the purpose of taking high-resolution photos of the earth for defense and intelligence, government, and commercial use.   In early 2000, the US government awarded its first significant contract for satellite imagery to the firm.  Currently, the company offers the world’s highest resolution commercial satellite imagery, the largest image size, and the greatest on-board storage capacity of any satellite imagery provider.  In addition, the company’s comprehensive ImageLibrary houses the most up-to-date images available.

In 2004, our client struck an exclusive portal agreement to supply much of its satellite imagery to Google’s new product launch, branded Google Earth.  This deal served as both validation for a broader explicit push as well as anchor tenant into the non-federal government, commercial sector.

The company is headquartered near Boulder, Colorado, with other offices and facilities in key geographies throughout the world.  Commercial division headquarters are in Needham, MA. More…

Several times a year, we get a group of venture-backed CEOs-only together to share experiences over cocktails, dinner, and a topic that they often pick. Our role at BSG Team Ventures is to host it and recruit the best panelists possible. This Fall’s topic was Managing the Board – Best Practices in Board Management through Turbulent Times. We assembled a panel and facilitated an interactive discussion with three veteran venture-backed CEOs-

Scott Griffith, CEO of Zipcar (www.Zipcar.com).

Scott has been CEO of Zipcar from it’s angel funding stage more than 4 years ago to today, growing the company through several rounds of venture funding including investors Benchmark and Greylock and a recent merger with FlexCar that broadens Zipcar’s offering to more than 10 cities, both here in the US as well as the UK.

Jill Smith, CEO of DigitalGlobe (www.Digitalglobe.com)

Jill has been CEO of several companies, including venture-backed eDial ultimately sold to Alcatel, and COO of Micron Electronics, a $1.5B PC manufacturer. All of this ultimately led her to take the CEO role at DigitalGlobe 3+ years ago, an imagery company providing both satellite and aerial imagery for the likes of products like GoogleEarth, the U.S. Government and other mobile, commercial, location-based services companies, and nations around the world interested in geospatial information management.

Jim Mahoney, CEO of Novomer (www.Novomer.com).

Jim early in his career was an executive at Baxter, then moved into several general management & CEO roles in biotech including CEO of SurfaceLogix. Recently Jim has taken the helm as CEO of a cleantech-renewables industry start-up targeting green chemistry funded by Flagship Ventures and several others.

In recruiting these three to the panel, we were looking to find three veteran CEOs who had been in both public and private company settings, had assembled experience in CEO positions across the growth stage spectrum of technology and science-driven companies from seed-stage funding through S1/IPO. Also, we wanted to assemble CEO panelists who had been in the CEO chair a number of times, and thus had experience with a number of boards-boards with founders on them, venture capitalists and other investors on them, as well as outside and strategic investors.

The podcast below is the audio from the evening offering some thoughtful input and CEO-to-CEO questions and answers from the audience.

The audio last a bit more than 70 minutes, and you can graze it by streaming it here, or download for car, train or plane ride listening.  Enjoy.

Venture-backed CEOs talk about Best Practices in Board Management