Munich Startup: What does your startup do? What problem do you solve?
Gregor Langer, Talos: Talos designs and supplies satellite-based IoT solutions that use tiny transmitters on the ground to locate objects or small animals. We want to use this to enable researchers and scientists to track migratory birds globally, for example, to track their movements across continents. This can be used to determine, among other things, the impact of climate change on the animals' migration patterns, for example when droughts or water shortages force them to change their routes. Movement profiles also make it possible to detect diseases early, for example, when a wild boar is carrying swine fever. Tracking data could also help predict natural disasters. It is known that animals react before scientific instruments can detect anything.
In addition to tracking wildlife, our system is also suitable for tracking vehicles, containers, or even tropical timber, to name just three examples. The possibilities for such a system are endless. Our initial customer groups, however, will be scientists and researchers who use wildlife tracking. In the long term, we want to offer a complete system as a service with Talos, i.e., tracking-as-a-service.
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Gregor Langer: Like other providers, we use GPS, but first store the data in the transmitter and then send it in aggregate to a LEO satellite. At the moment, this is done daily, but can be scaled depending on the number of satellites. This means our transmitters consume very little energy, which makes them significantly smaller than other technologies – only the size of a little finger and extremely light, weighing less than five grams. Another key feature of our transmitters is that they are configurable even during operation. In other words, the transmitter's behavior can be changed depending on the situation. And something like this actually doesn't exist yet. This allows Talos to address use cases that haven't yet existed even with larger transmitters.
In the future as small as a finger puppet
But we want to go even smaller. We're continuing to work on our technology and aim to get from the size of a little finger to a fingertip. This will then be followed by our idea of completely passive tracking, which will allow us to achieve a virtually infinite lifetime for the transmitters.
Munich Startup: What is your founding story?
Gregor Langer: We are eight founders, some of whom have known each other for years. We come from academia and research, and our engineers have developed antennas and tracking systems, among other things. Ultimately, what brought us all together was our strong interest in the topic—and positive signals from industry indicating a need for systems like ours. The result was the founding of the company in July of last year.
With our technology we also have the SeRANIS Startup Challenge from the Bundeswehr University Munich last year. This gives us the opportunity to launch a payload onto a university-funded satellite. This is a huge achievement for us, and one we are very proud of. It also gave us the opportunity to present our business model to a jury with a wealth of experience. This was not only a reality check for us, but if the jury members, with all their experience, think this will be a success, then that's also very positive.
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Gregor Langer: In addition to the usual startup challenges like liquidity or general customer acquisition, the market is a particular challenge for us. We want to address the global tracking market. And somehow gaining a foothold in such a gigantic market, establishing ourselves, and not just occupying a niche – that's a huge challenge.
Talos wants to offer tracking-as-a-service
Munich Startup: Where would you like to be in one year, where in five years?
Gregor Langer: Of course, we want to be on stable financial footing within the next twelve months. That's always our first and most important goal. We want to have secured our first contract and laid the foundation for further orders.
Later, in three to five years, we want to be able to offer tracking-as-a-service with our own satellite. We also want to diversify our market segments by then, meaning we'll be active not only in wildlife tracking, but also in fleet management and container tracking. Our passive system should also be ready by then, with the first orders from satisfied customers.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Gregor Langer: Munich is a great location. We have established startups here that have already taken the path and shown how it's done – Ororatech, Isar Aerospace, Lilium are names that are familiar. There are universities of excellence like the TUM, which support the startups through the UnternehmerTUM It brings people together, promotes them, and also raises awareness. And, of course, there are many more who shape this community and ultimately lay the foundations for successful startups. Then there are events like Bits & Pretzels in the fall or the DLD in early January. There are several things that clearly speak in favor of Munich, and we are very satisfied with the location.
Munich Startup: Quick exit or long breath?
Gregor Langer: We still have so many ideas we want to implement and many hurdles we can overcome. Several companies are interested in our technology, and in my customer meetings, I always notice how the ideas just bubble up. So we can still invest a lot of time and effort here. So, I'd definitely say, we need to be patient.
