UrTHECAST COrp. 16 BCBusiness April 2014
W
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b . C .' s n E W s a n d v i E W s
F r o M i n d U s t r Y s E C t o r s
04/14
front
lınes
t E C h n o l o G Y
F
rom his offi ce tucked under the Vancouver Conven-
tion Centre overlooking Coal Harbour, Wade Larson
pauses every time a seaplane takes off from the water
behind him. Slightly fi dgety, dressed in slacks and a
frayed button-up, the former Canadian Space Agency
bureaucrat is an unlikely entrepreneur. Nevertheless, it was
Wade who stumbled upon a $100-million idea that just might
disrupt business models that have defi ned the aerospace
industry for decades.
Wade, along with his brother Scott and a team of venture
backers, are the founders of UrtheCast Corp., the Vancouver
company that last year launched a pair of cameras into space
with the aim of selling streaming imagery to state agencies
and commercial users.
Today the company has 65 employees, a market capital-
ization above $150 million and offi ces in Washington, D.C.;
St. Louis; San Francisco; and Moscow.
The idea was born fi ve years ago, when Wade, then a VP of
business development at MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associ-
ates Ltd., told his brother Scott that he had been presented
with an opportunity by
RSC Energia, the main contractor to
Roscosmos, the Russian space agency. Earlier that year,
The Sky's the
Limit
UrtheCast founders see unlimited
commercial potential in streaming
images from space
by Jacob Parry
p16-23-Frontlines_april.indd 16 2014-03-07 1:20 PM
