CELEBRATING OUR FIRST YEAR OF SIGNIFICANT AND SUSTAINABLE GROWTH WITH OUR CUSTOMERS
OUR CUSTOMERS ARE SUPERSTELLAR
Thanks to the contributions and many successes of our customers since we graduated Y Combinator just one year ago, Epsilon3 has had an unprecedented year of growth, acceleration, team development, and overall expansion. We are wildly excited to see how our customers have utilized Epsilon3’s checklist software to literally reach for the stars and beyond.
Our customers have generously sent us their valuable feature wishlists, and we’ve grown our team to help us create a product for procedure management and integrated command and telemetry that meets their ever-evolving needs. We couldn’t have come this far without our customers, and they’ve given us decades’ worth of experience and feedback that helped us build a foundational product that’s become an integral part of successful manufacturing, integration, test, launch and mission operations.
Y COMBINATOR LAUNCHED US INTO A YEAR OF SUCCESS AND GROWTH
Y Combinator was an honor to be part of and is an incomparable experience for any startup. They pushed us to grow quickly and sustainably, and growth has continued at a rapid pace. At the heart of our product development is listening to our customers and addressing their needs.
We’re committed to continuing to show appreciation for the people and groups that helped us get this far already. Keep reading to find out how we’ve kept the momentum going, and what’s ahead for Epsilon3 and our customers.
In this article, you’ll read about:
• Epsilon3 team growth and development
• Major product improvements
• Customer success stories
• Roadmap for the rest of 2022: where we’re going
• Why and how we’re here in the space industry for the long game
EPSILON3 MAJOR ACCOMPLISHMENTS OVER THE PAST YEAR
5X TEAM GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
GROWTH
Over the past year, our team has quickly grown to 5X its original size thanks to the demand and success of our customers. It’s been extremely important to us that we sustainably meet the accelerating pace of the aerospace industry to support our customers and their innovation.
DEDICATED SUPPORT AND DESIGN
It’s been crucial to our mission that the support we give matches the growth of customer needs. We now have dedicated teams for customer support and design beyond product engineering. These teams are able to free up our engineering team to build new capabilities quickly.
MAJOR PRODUCT IMPROVEMENTS
You could say one of our most valuable investments has been taking the time to listen to our customers and their needs. Every member on our team expressed excitement to work with customers before we even hired them. We’re committed to listening to and collaborating with every team that uses our product.
Here are the major highlights of product features we’ve added in the past year thanks to open and honest feedback from our customers:
Conditional flows to change your procedure as events demand
Integrations with your tools to speed and automate your development and operations
More than 10X improvement in speed allowing the team to coordinate without delay
Don’t see features here that matter to you? Check out our changelog to see what other improvements we’ve made, or, even better, we’d love to hear from you personally about the procedure software features of your dreams! Surprise, surprise, we’d love to chat.
CUSTOMER SUCCESS
Astrobotic helps get your technology or product to the Moon. If you need to send science instruments, new technology demonstrations, rovers, satellites, or simply a piece of history, you can send it to the moon in one of their MoonBox capsules. You can store whatever you need on the Moon in one of their capsules for centuries to come.
This year is big for Astrobotic. They’re launching their first mission, Peregrine, as a company after all the months and years of planning, testing, and developing. They’ve also got other missions like Griffin and Cuberover in the pipeline for companies that still want to book a spot on a capsule mission to the Moon.
“Epsilon3 has been an integral part of planning and testing for our first mission launch,” says Alex Van Hoven. We’re incredibly excited for Astrobotic to have finally reached their first mission launch, and beyond honored that they chose Epsilon3 to help them streamline their procedures and operations.
Astrobotic has been using Epsilon3 for both real time space operations as well as offline operations for situations when they’re not actively communicating with spacecraft. Epsilon3 has allowed them to communicate across teams operating with in-flight experience. The software has been equally user-friendly for those with experience doing real time operations as well as for those who are new to the experience.
Prior to using Epsilon3, Astrobotic was using various Atlassian software platforms, trying to leverage and tailor different components to bend to their needs. In the end, this process was not ideal for real-time operations. Using Epsilon3 for operations and procedure software allowed them to work and communicate more efficiently with a better-tailored tool.
MAKING AIR TRAVEL WICKED FAST
Venus Aerospace is leading the transformation of air travel for us humans right here on earth. How would it be to get to the other side of the world in just one hour? The team at Venus is not only making one-hour global transport possible but cost effective as well.
One of their driving core values is “Home for Dinner.”
Everyone should be able to pursue their dream career while also building a thriving personal life full of meaningful relationships. Both career and relationships take time. Why not be a significant leader in the travel industry that helps people spend more time with the people they love doing the things they love? Why not be able to get halfway around the world in one hour, spending less time traveling and more time doing things that matter most to you?
They walk the walk with their own team, allowing everyone enough flexibility to have a meaningful life outside of the workplace. How do they do it? They hire the right people for the job–people who are passionate
Home for dinner is also more than just work-life balance. It’s inclusivity. It’s a core value that allows for caretakers of children and aging parents to be part of the aerospace industry like never before.
VENUS + EPSILON3 PARTNERSHIP
30% of the Venus team is remote, which means they needed a way to make a hybrid model work to help them collaborate during operations where multiple people can be immediately updated. It’s especially crucial for high-stress operations so the entire team can get a clear picture at any moment during testing.
Ben Henderson, Director of Tests, emphasized that Epsilon3 provides an environment that is the most complete procedure package they’ve come across. Ben came from a background with different companies where they’ve used in-house tools, wrote procedures in a Word document, and worked out of notebooks.
When he started with Venus, he knew they’d need an integrated procedures solution that would allow them to access everything from multiple places. He thought they’d have to build something in house, but then he found Epsilon3 which streamlined everything into one place.
It’s also been crucial that Epsilon3 is not only receptive to feature requests, but that we consistently implement updates before Venus has need of them. Overall, the partnership has been an integral part of their journey as they’re now releasing their first concept vehicle.
Vaya Space is a hybrid rocket company and leader in sustainable space access. They developed a breakthrough and patented 3D printed hybrid engine that can deliver 25% lower cost and is fueled with recycled plastics, utilizing more than 2 million plastic bottles per launch.
Epsilon3 is more than thrilled to be part of their operations. The partnership has allowed both companies to scale and develop products that are leading the space industry into the next frontier.
Epsilon3 is electronic/digital checklist software that is “ready for prime time.”
• Able to catch any issues or anomalies early on in operations, which can be easily flagged
• Positively impacted time to market and helped accelerate product development
• Streamlines test program and see changes in real time with suggestions stored for future missions
• Ability to rapidly conduct operations with 100% reliability with knowledge of what every member of the crew has done
• Helps reduce errors and gives engineers and techs ability to look at procedures and review them during live testing
• Helps catch assembly and manufacturing errors before testing which saves money and reduces risk
• Streamlines things and makes them faster on the first try
CUSTOMER GROWTH AND EXPANSION
ALL SIZES IN MULTIPLE INDUSTRIES
We’re incredibly thrilled and honored to be supporting customers with teams of several hundred people as well as small teams of a dozen. It’s been extremely important to us to make our operations software available and valuable for any sized team and help to increase the number of successful missions they’re able to accomplish in a year.
We started in the aerospace industry, and in the last year we’ve also started supporting other missions such as:
Ocean exploration
Transportation
Robotics
Finance
CUSTOMER MISSION OPERATIONS IMPROVEMENTS
We recently surveyed our customers, and here’s what they had to say about how using Epsilon3 has improved their workflow, product development, safety, and risk management:
“Our biggest improvement is not having to come in early to print huge stacks of procedures on unreliable printers. The reliability of having the tablets is extremely helpful as well. No more lost procedures or procedures that get left out and could be compromised.”
“Epsilon3 has allowed us to complete Mission Control Readiness procedures effectively and accurately. The ability to see who completed what section, at what time, allows us to maintain a real-time status of actions completed towards mission readiness.”
“It's made not only writing procedures significantly easier, but running our tests has become much smoother (ability to transcribe data, follow steps, and ensure proper buy-offs).”
WHAT’S NEXT FOR EPSILON3 IN THE COMING YEAR
We’ve created a momentum that keeps us all passionate as our team expands to make sure we meet growing demand from existing and new customers. And we’re not slowing down. Here’s what we’re looking forward to adding to our product as we approach the last few months of 2022:
Sub-step syncing that will allow you to coordinate even more closely with the team in real time
Automated insights will allow you to better catch issues before they occur
Hybrid deployments will let you take advantage of the best of cloud and on-prem
Customizable automation can help save your team even more time
WHY AND HOW WE’RE HERE FOR THE LONG TERM
Many of our team members have been in the aerospace and mission operations industry for decades in various capacities. Not only do we have the first-hand experience to know what the strengths and weaknesses are, but we are a team of space nerds through and through. We’re pinching ourselves that we get to work with customers who are just as passionate as we are about making our dreams a reality.
This is science at its best. Imagination, Passion, and a whole ocean of grit brings us all together to propel the growth of this industry into the next frontier. We’re careful, and we’re playful. We’re committed, and we’re here to help every single one of our customers reach their goals and become competitive players in this rapidly growing industry.
Thanks to our support and training at Y Combinator, we have a solid foundation to keep us steady with sustainable scaling and growth.
And now, we’d love to hear from you. What are your best, well thought out skepticisms, and what are your most hopeful possibilities?
