Thomas Grübler is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of OroraTech, Germany's pioneering space-based wildfire detection company that has secured over €70 million in funding.
In this episode of Rockets and Radars, Thomas shares his journey from building satellites as a university student to creating a company that provides fire intelligence to firefighters worldwide. He reveals how a simple question - "how can a fire burn for three days without anyone finding it out?" - led to pivoting from hardware to software, securing their first international contracts during COVID, and launching multiple thermal imaging satellites on SpaceX. Thomas discusses raising €37 million in Series B funding, expanding to the US market in Colorado, and his vision for a 100-satellite constellation capable of detecting fires within 30 minutes globally.
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Want to invest in OroraTech? https://tally.so/r/mRa0xJ
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Chapters:
(00:00) Introduction
(03:28) University Origins & Space Passion
(10:05) Advice for Academic Founders
(12:50) The Pivot & Customer Discovery
(19:22) Building the Founding Team
(25:45) Angel Round & Going Global During COVID
(31:16) Series A & Business Model Evolution
(40:40) CEO Transition & US Market Entry
(47:20) Series B & Scaling to 100 Satellites
(56:10) Technical Challenges & European Ecosystem
(01:02:30) Future Vision & Wisdom
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Takeaways:
1) Personal passion drives persistence through challenges
Having deep personal connection to your problem space gives you unique insights and motivation to push through inevitable obstacles.
2) Talk to everyone about your idea - secrecy kills startups
Thomas met his co-founder Björn by openly pitching his "very, very bad pitch deck" at a conference.
3) Start with free money before touching equity
OroraTech secured EXIST grant, ESA contracts, and competition winnings before raising their first equity round.
4) Customer confusion forced a crucial pivot
"Nobody understood when we were talking about satellites and thermal... Instead they aggregated 25+ existing satellite data sources into one unified product customers could actually understand.
5) Engineer mindset can blind you to market realities
"We were talking with firefighting agencies and they told us, there's a fire burning for two or three days. People assume existing technology is being used optimally - often it's not.
6) COVID accelerated global sales strategy
"We needed to sell and we found out that we need to take advantage of this that everyone is happy of taking video calls. Their first major contracts came from Chile and Australia during the pandemic.
7) ROI trumps technology coolness for customers
"The ROI for someone in Chile who has their own firefighting agency, a private one, who is losing money every season... needs to protect their shareholders' interest actually."
8) Space doesn't make you special to investors
"You shouldn't talk about space too much. You are not selling to space, and your investors are not doing space." Focus on the problem you solve and market you serve, not the technology that enables it.
9) Series B requires bulletproof numbers, not just vision
"In Series B, they check all the numbers. The due diligence is not only based on a few customer interviews, but they really dig into the numbers" OroraTech had to prove scalable product-market fit with hard metrics, not just early customer traction.
10) US market entry demands local presence and patience
"All the statistics say that you're not successful if you don't have a local entity there and local people there. It's a different culture." After years of struggling to win US customers remotely, OroraTech finally established their Colorado subsidiary in 2024.