SpaceX's early mission operations exposed a fundamental problem: mission-critical teams were executing complex procedures across Excel spreadsheets, PDFs, and fragmented communication channels, creating dangerous gaps where hardware gets destroyed and critical data falls through the cracks. Laura Crabtree, Co-founder & CEO of Epsilon3, built Epsilon 3 to solve this after watching teams flip through paper documentation at T-minus countdowns instead of focusing on root cause analysis.
Her platform now digitizes operational decision-making across aerospace, defense, and robotics, enabling real-time visibility across distributed teams without voice loop confirmations, automated conditional branching that redirects operators to the right procedures when failures occur, and full lifecycle traceability from parts inventory through testing to flight operations. The shift from "try it indefinitely" to paid adoption came down to proving 10x value over internal development costs calculated across 5-year customer lifecycles.
Topics discussed:
- Identifying market gaps through fact-finding interviews that showed no commercially available software teams actually wanted to use.
- Digitizing mission control operations beyond Excel to enable real-time distributed team visibility, automated conditional branching, and centralized documentation.
- Expanding platform from launch operations into testing workflows, hardware traceability, parts inventory management, and full lifecycle component tracking.
- Pricing strategy using 10x customer value calculation compared to internal development costs amortized over 5-year lifetime projections.
- Navigating government contracting complexity through multiple partners for SBIR/STTR vehicles while finding actual DoD buyers remains harder than users.
- Achieving FedRamp compliance despite lengthy, expensive process to establish data security trust signal.
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