Within the ERC PoC Project "SatStart", ZfT and its partners (University of Regensburg) and the TGZ (Technologie- und Gründerzentrum Würzburg) have developed a business plan.
The project was started as a non-technical extension of the still ongoing ERC Advanced Grant project "NetSat". Of particular interest to ZfT is a timely commercialization of its small satellite technology. SatStart, together with the expertise of the partners, provided a large amount of useful precursor work in this direction.
There were several countries selected for potential patent registration, such as China, India and the US, on top of EU-wide patents. Following the consultation advice, patent research was conducted and the registration of a patent using the PCT procedure was initiated. This will allow registering patents in the mentioned countries. The countries chosen are relevant based on activities related to small satellites.
Regarding the valorization route, it was decided to go for the direct sale, both with satellite components (subsystems) as well as complete satellites. Licensing of other parts, such as software, is still considered possible as a second priority. However, it is technically difficult to license blocks of software, which rely tightly on specifically designed hardware in order to gain its advantages. Hence, the business model is focused on direct sale.
During the run-time of the project, ZfT established contact with several parties interested in buying components and satellites. These contacts were mainly established as a consequence of the networking of the PI, and all meetings were shaped by a custom set of presentation slides based on a mixture of material available at ZfT and available to the PI. There was no information package as such generated. The main reason for that are the very different interests of the potential customers. While one may be interested in one subsystem only, another one may be interested in another, while a third one might eventually plan to use the entire satellite bus within a project.
Apart from new contacts established during the project, also existing cooperation partners (joint projects, which already existed or which have been kicked off in the meantime) were contacted. Some of them are interested in obtaining subsystems to be included in their satellites. However, this process is rather slow, as the designs of two worlds must be made compatible. While ZfT solely uses the UNISEC standard within its satellites and components, some partners still rely on the old PC/104 standard. Nevertheless, there are ongoing communications for using ZfTs subsystems also in satellites built by cooperation partners.
It became clear during the run-time of the project that deciding on the business strategy, writing a business plan, establishing a cash flow plan and networking with partners belonged to the most important topics. The ERC PoC grant is not intended for technical work. Hence, the idea of compiling a technical report was abandoned shortly after the project has started. The points originally raised in the proposal were found not to have happened during the run-time of the project. In more detail, no technical issues were found, and it was in particular decided to sell components as they are without technical modifications.
