The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
Mobile communication is among the main achievements of the previous century. There’s nothing to prove here, we all like it, it’s good to have it, it’s bad not to. But, unfortunately, mobile communication doesn’t work everywhere – you find yourself a few kilometers away from civilization, and you’re out of towers. Or, say, the electricity is gone in the city – and mobile phones turn into bricks, the towers don’t work.
Lynk Global, the American startup of the day, offers to launch the mobile communication towers into space. This way much less of them is necessary than on Earth, and in theory, you can provide a much denser coverage. And the electricity won’t run out on a satellite. As a result, any phone – be it an iPhone or Nokia 3310 will keep functioning at regular rates but in most irregular places.
The startup has already launched its first satellite and made arrangements with mobile providers in the Bahamas and the Central African Republic. In the Bahamas, Lynk advertises safety as its primary advantage. In other words, another hurricane will blow everything away, but the phones will keep functioning and it will help fix everything faster and save everybody.
The African part is scheduled to launch later and the startup boasts about it less. Apparently, it will be served by the three satellites that are yet to be launched – naturally, just one satellite will not work for both regions at once.
The startup didn’t bring in that much money – all the technology has been developed for USD 10M, Lynk brought in its scaling round quite recently. The amount didn’t leak into the press, but some mention dozens but not hundreds of millions.
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.