This was a strategic napalm drop across the SATCOM landscape. Vulnerability, wit, and ruthless specificity make this a rare entry that’s actually worth the time. If you’ve ever been bored by an exec Q&A, Jim Hooper is your antidote.
What’s the one decision you made in the last 12 months that kept you up at night and would you make it again?
Agreeing to do Michaël’s Interrogation Room, even after having read countless of his posts and finding myself laughing out loud many times (almost to the point of tears rolling down my face on occasion). That laughter is not only because the writing is usually a combination of cutting past the industry posturing (aka BS) while being legitimately hilarious … but also because SATCOM is a relatively small industry. And so I have pictured in my mind the faces of Michaël’s “victims” as they read these posts and react … ranging from those who can take a joke and laugh at themselves … to those who would pout or try to disguise their feelings while actually stewing in a quiet rage (and perhaps even some who might rage, but not so quietly). And so, with that, why say anything at all to Michaël and then have those guns trained over onto me? Dumb bravado and still getting myself into trouble, when should be getting wiser/more cautious at my age.
Joking aside (kind of), I would say the decision to switch over to a new company last year after being at SES for 13+ years. Kept me/keeps me up at night sometimes, naturally, going from a comfort zone over to something entirely new, a bit riskier, and in a different part of the industry — where the footholds are much more tenuous. Do it again? Yeah, probably. Had I stayed in the old job, would have had the benefit of working with an extremely capable team of people plus many of the best engineers in the business – at least until the SES acquisition of Intelsat closed and many of them either volunteered to go or were impacted by “synergy” headcount reductions. But that would have entailed a tremendous amount of time internally focused during the acquisition period, coupled with playing a lot of “defense” externally given all that is happening in the market. Moving over into a new company, it’s all about disrupting the market, taking the fight against the slow/complacent/unskilled, trying to move hard and fast to take advantage of a moment in time, create some momentum. Really going hard on “offense.” There is a lot of fun and joy in being on the offense. So, don’t regret that and hope I would still have the guts to make the same decision again.
What’s a hard truth about your company or sector that you think most of your peers are still avoiding?
In the traditional SATCOM sector, everyone is (rightfully) focused on the threat of SpaceX today and what will happen once Amazon Kuiper finally enters the market in force. Ultimately, unless and until you can beat them, toe-to-toe, and stand your ground when it is necessary, you will be put out of business. Being capable of going toe-to-toe is going to come down to technology, product, and innovation. Putting your primary focus on cost-cutting campaigns, corporate restructuring and M&A, financial moves, etc. – or bludgeoning your line organizations and sales teams into a bloody pulp to try to squeeze ever more growth in the absence of strong technology, product, and innovation – are signs of a business that probably won’t make the cut over the long-term (at least not as a viable commercial entity).
What’s your actual plan if your main supplier, satellite, partner, or market access disappears tomorrow?
Luckily I don’t have to worry about suppliers and production – that is more for my colleague/friend Pu Jian and others in the company to lose sleep over! And Pu is very competent and resilient, which I frequently put to the test when we conduct technical training workshops with our partners and customers – full day working sessions, usually with 20+ engineers in the room, diving very deep into the technology — with Pu on stage in the “hot seat” all day, fielding questions from very smart people, from every possible direction. Meanwhile, I have the pleasure of making jokes and teasing her throughout the day (Unmercifully! It’s fun for me being Ed McMahon while Pu has to be Johnny Carson).
But partners/customers and market access are things that I do think about (worry about) quite a lot. In any business, you have to make some calculated bets on where to put focus and resources of course. You hope you have chosen wisely those areas with the greatest payoff, while hedging in other areas that have promise (e.g., keeping some options open). Then you adjust and shift focus/resources as you go, depending on how things unfold and where unexpected opportunities emerge. Right now, if one of our main partners/customers disappeared, we would have to shift focus rapidly into Plan B and Plan C. There is sufficient breadth and depth in our pipeline, and the business is at a stage today, where that would be painful but definitely not fatal. In business, if you aren’t capable of absorbing a punch (as well as being able to deliver one) you probably should go find something different to do.
In terms of market access, anything that makes it more difficult to execute business in the United States will certainly have a big impact on our business. Uncertainty this summer over tariff rates in the US, for example, was a factor when we were finalizing business negotiations on a couple contracts. Luckily, our customers operated like business partners (not antagonists or opposing sides, sitting across the table during negotiations like negotiating a treaty with the Soviet Union and arguing every term & every condition, ad nauseum. Quite the contrary). And so we worked side-by-side together to address the uncertainties and potential risks with tariffs, and then shepherded the contracts to signature with some shared risk.
Moving from the general topic of market access in the US overall to the government sector specifically (which is an important part of our business) here it is always more complex. There are a number of mandatory (largely compliance-based) steps any business supporting the Government must comply with. Those steps entail complexity, take some time, and have some costs – but they are fairly well defined and can be approached much like a to-do checklist. The bigger, more important, and more challenging aspect is having an organization that really understands how the government works, creates deep relationships with key end-users, can bid/win major programs, and then execute in their environment (to avoid beating around the bush too much, in DoD this means an organization that can support military users on a battlefield). Most companies in the SATCOM industry really aren’t good at this, even those that want to be in the defense and security market (or at least say that they do, and might even sincerely think they do).
Which buzzword do you pretend to understand in meetings but secretly don’t or wish would disappear forever?
I’m new to the field of optical communications. So there is a long list of technical concepts and terminology in optical communications (some analogous to RF, others not) that I’m still learning. Might never fully master and understand them! (I realize this answer is a bit different than your question about “buzzwords” … but sometimes I do nod along and smile, as our technical staff briefs customers on some nuance of optical communications technology).
Switching gears a bit, the concepts of Low Probability of Intercept (LPI), Detection (LPD), and Exploitation (LPE) are things I believe I actually do understand. But now I keep hearing those terms used by government officials (some of whom are fairly senior in DoD) and industry in regards to systems/capabilities that I would categorize as being exactly the opposite (e.g., actually High Probability of all of the above). This has gotten to the point that now I’m wondering – are LPI/LPD/LPE now just the new “buzzwords” in SATCOM? Or is it possible I just don’t fully understand the concepts myself? I think it’s the former rather than the later (which may be too arrogant, but I’ll own that – and then brace myself to take a hit or two on that score from Michaël if need be).
How often do you hear honest feedback from the lowest level of your organization and what was the last thing they told you that stung?
Fairly often. We are a small company (155 people or so at the moment), so there isn’t a lot of bureaucracy. Conversations tend to be blunt/direct.
One of our senior optical communications engineers, with a PhD and fairly significant industry experience, recently told me a long story about setting up a certain type of test bench, all his careful calibrations, etc. and that his test bench at a previous company tended to be a magnet for executives to lean against, bump into, or otherwise ruin weeks’ worth of experimentation and data. All of that was a nice way of warning me not to blunder stupidly and touch the equipment he is planning to install. I wasn’t stung by that – I have a fairly thick skin and actually thought it was pretty funny as he wove tales of blundering executives in their suits and ties walking into a lab. But told him, next time, he didn’t have to create an elaborate story (unless he wanted) and could just say directly: “Don’t do stupid [stuff] like touch my test bench.”
If your main competitor hired away your top three people tomorrow, what’s the first thing that breaks?
Three projects for customers in the US would be immediately impacted. So then you would have to triage, do a lot of juggling, and scramble hard to avoid things falling apart rapidly until backfills can join. Even then, it’s probably 6 months of being in a more defensive posture, treading water, stabilizing, and trying to avoid losing momentum — rather than pressing forward hard on the “offense”.
This question actually reinforces the need in my mind for us to finalize some job reqs in the US and continue building out the organization, now that you have me thinking/worrying about it (thank you for that Michaël, I think).
What’s one strategic bet you made that hasn’t worked but you’re still publicly defending?
There are some critical needs and associated use cases, in both the government and commercial sectors, that will drive adoption of optical communications. However, the technology has only recently matured to the point where it can be deployed into the field and put into operations. Meanwhile, sensing the business opportunities (and perhaps underestimating the technical challenges and barriers to entry that exist) a number of new entrants have jumped into the optical communications market.
So, here’s my strategic bet re: market demand. On the government side: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rapid military buildup in Mainland China demonstrate both the nature and speed of the military threat — and so, soon, both the US and European defense establishments will (must) pick up their pace and begin deploying real systems and capabilities. If you think that the threat is here and now (rather than 5-10 years in the future) than it doesn’t make a lot of sense for defense establishments to continue spreading a lot of money around on basic R&D projects or “reinventing wheels” (using taxpayer funding to create things that private industry has already fielded). On the commercial side: The need to compete with the giants like SpaceX and Amazon Kuiper similarly creates a near-term imperative across the industry to innovate and move rapidly. And so, given the nature of capitalism and what is currently happening across the space industry, I’m betting that smart, aggressive commercial companies will make some innovative plays.
Optical communications is an emerging market and I just moved over to my new role a year ago, but I’ll sticking to that bet and glad to continue defending it (haha!). Is it possible that I will be wrong? Yes. I’ve done work in the Government sector for a very long time — and rationality in decision-making and speed of execution are not necessarily what you get with defense acquisition processes (in fact, it’s usually considered the safe bet to assume the opposite). But at some point the nature of the military threats from Russia and the PRC should cause people to not only wake up, but start driving decisions and rapid movement. Meanwhile, on the commercial side, private companies by their nature can pivot very rapidly when they need. And there is probably already some interesting activity along those lines happening behind the scenes, actually.
What’s your private prediction about your industry that you haven’t said out loud… yet?
My comments above were focused on market demand. On the supply side, there are a number of very capable optical communications companies. But, there are also some weak players in the industry. Additionally, there are also some large defense contracting companies in both the US and Europe that have IRAD programs focused on optical communication capabilities. For the large defense primes, if they put sufficient resources and time into it, they have the organizational depth and could probably develop capable optical communications systems — but they must manage a portfolio of IRAD investments and ultimately make their own bets. For them, is it worth spending a lot of money, scarce engineering resources, and time to develop second-best or “me too” solutions?
So, focusing very narrowly now on space-to-ground optical communications, I expect some of the weak players in the industry to fold. And then, at the large defense contracting companies, I would predict some of the IRAD programs and internal divisions to be disbanded and the money shifted into higher-priority projects. This will help provide some clarity in terms of the competitive field and the market leaders … probably around the time that enough hardware has been launched into space or is on the manifest to go that the question shifts from capability (can you execute space-to-ground missions, at increasingly higher data rates?) to capacity (do you have production lines and the ability to scale up?). At that point, another group of companies probably can’t make the next cut. And, meanwhile, it’s likely a bunch of M&A activity plays out in the background.
What’s the one thing you’ve said in interviews or panels that you didn’t actually believe?
I don’t recall ever saying anything in an interview or panel that I didn’t actually believe at the time (aka, deliberate lies and misrepresentations). But I have said a number of things over the years when making predictions about the future that didn’t unfold the way I expected (aka, I was wrong). Mainly, regarding the speed of adoption of new technologies; how the intersection of multiple technologies would play out over time; in some cases underestimating the complexities/challenges when deploying new NGSO satellite constellations (and the inevitable hiccups); and then (in the case of SpaceX) completely underestimating how quickly their engineers would overcome the same technical challenges and deploy Starlink … for not only commercial customers but also adapt it for government applications (naval, airborne, and for ground tactical operations, in a wartime environment). Wish I could say my crystal ball was 100% accurate, but not even close.
You’ve just been given truth serum and 60 seconds on a live mic. What do you say to your board, your clients, or your rivals? Pick one.
I’ll pick clients (all of whom know I can’t actually restrain myself to only 60 seconds. But I will try for you,Michaël).
I should summon my best Don Draper and say, “Each year at this time, whether you know it or not, I look at the faces in this room … and I say prepare to take a great leap forward. Prepare to swim the English Channel and then drown in champagne. There are six weekends between now and the pitch. We are going to spend them all here. We will see Christmas here. We will ring in the new year together. And in the end, we will represent Jaguar, and it will be worth it.”
I’m not as inspirational as Don Draper, and I kind of prefer to spend Christmas with my family. But I do guarantee we will do some interesting and powerful things for our end-users together. We’ll shake up the industry a bit. And it should be fun in the process.