Military operators must make decisions quickly in high-stakes environments, but they are often faced with technology that is incapable of providing accurate information about their surroundings. Military leaders have made it clear that they prioritize “decision-making dominance” of troops, but it can be more difficult to convey new technologies and get them into the hands of end users.
Reveal the technology is a remarkable element in this effort. The 6-year-old startup worked with multiple branches of the U.S. Department of Defense to get its flagship software product into the hands of carriers. This software, called Farsight, can quickly convert drone video into 3D maps streamed to a smartphone. The company is already in production with a number of programs with the Army, Special Operations Command, Marine Corps and some foreign militaries.
Farsight offers major advantages over the status quo, which typically consists of smartphones preloaded with two-dimensional maps. These maps are often generated from years-old satellite data and often don’t reflect the changing nature of a battlefield, Reveal co-founder and CEO Garrett Smith explained in a recent interview.
“If you’re playing an opponent, a number of things could change in that environment. They could block a road, dig a line of trenches…none of that will be reflected on a map,” he said. “Farsight solves all of this by giving you a new, high-resolution, three-dimensional model of the operating environment, instantaneously, and then allows you to measure it, analyze it, make decisions and understand the environment.”
Smith should know: he is a United States Marine Corps officer who has been deployed to Afghanistan, South Asia and South America. He left active duty about 12 years ago and has been in the reserves since then. Being in the military had incredible benefits, Smith said, “but these experiences also highlighted a profound lack of technological preparedness on the part of the U.S. Department of Defense.” Technologies that businesses adopted years ago, like cloud computing, were still on the adoption curve.
“Recognizing that while I was in danger was a pretty crazy accomplishment,” he said.
After Smith left active duty, he went to Stanford University and decided to enter the startup world. Smith was able to leverage his experience operating drones in the military to work with companies in the commercial drone industry. What he noticed was the rapid rise of cheap commercial drones alongside cheaper consumer smartphones. “There was an opportunity there to generate software value,” he explained.
He and three colleagues launched Reveal Technology in December 2018 to create the software tool that is now called Farsight. In addition to generating maps, the software can also simulate an opponent’s field of view, provide route planning, determine height and distance, and provide other analytics.
“There is a huge and growing amount of visual information collected in these operating environments, and we’re just trying to be the software layer that reduces the cognitive load on the human operator to make decisions,” Smith said .
Along the way, the startup also acquired DFL Technology to integrate its product, Identifi, a primarily smartphone-based biometric and human identity data collection and verification system. The link between the two Reveal products is the element of decision domination: providing tactical information at the edge and in mobile environments. If Farsight is all about navigating physical terrain, Smith said, “Identifi is all about human terrain.”
Investors have been paying attention: the company just closed an $11.2 million Series A led by Next Frontier Capital, with participation from defy.vc and 8VC, to scale its team and expand its product line – to do nothing less than, as Smith put it, “dominate mobile and peripheral space”.