Nine years ago, Clara Sekowski was part of the engineering team at Planetary Resources, a Seattle-area startup that planned to mine precious metals on asteroids. Six years ago, she joined other veterans from Planetary Resources at First Mode, another trailblazing startup that focused on clean energy for industrial applications. Now she’s the CEO of Special Teams, a consulting firm founded with fellow engineers from First Mode.
“Third time’s the charm, right?” she says.
Both of those earlier startups attracted high-profile backers for their ambitious plans, only to face setbacks as reality set in. Special Teams is starting smaller, but it’s gaining traction: The bootstrapped venture and its team of just over 10 engineers recently moved into a 7,400-square-foot office and workshop facility in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood — and it’s already exceeding its revenue target.
“In our first year, we’re almost at $2 million, which is above and beyond a goal we had set for Year One,” she told GeekWire.
The Special Teams roster includes engineers with experience in aerospace, software development, and even the gaming industry.
“We use systems engineering to bridge the gap between innovation on paper and operational deployment,” Sekowski said. “We design and build prototypes and custom simulations to prove that concepts can work in real-world conditions.”
Special Teams’ to-do list includes helping BHP lay the groundwork for deep-mining automation; working on a confidential nuclear project; and advising Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus, a high-performance car company, on its plan to create a hydrogen-powered pickup truck.
“I have worked for decades with top engineering and design companies around the world … on highly complex and challenging projects,” Jesse Glickenhaus, Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus’ CEO, said in an emailed statement. “SpecTeams is by far the most incredible team I have worked with when doing something new and technologically challenging needs to be paired with significant safety and environmental concerns.”
Special Teams’ tangled origins
Sekowski and her teammates have had to deal with their share of technological challenges over the past decade. Redmond, Wash.-based Planetary Resources initially planned to build a fleet of spacecraft to seek out and mine asteroids, and then widened its focus to include Earth observation as well. But funding eventually ran out, and by the end of 2018, Planetary Resources was history.
Some of the engineers who left Planetary Resources started up First Mode. Initially, the engineering consulting firm played a supporting role in a variety of space projects, including NASA’s Artemis moon program and the Perseverance rover mission on Mars.
As time went on, First Mode tightened its focus to concentrate on clean-tech power systems. It established a proving ground for those systems at a former coal mine in Centralia, Wash. Then, in 2023, the Anglo American mining conglomerate took a majority interest in First Mode and accelerated its drive to develop hydrogen-fueled and hybrid powertrains for heavy trucks.
Last year, First Mode opened a 40,000-square-foot factory in the SoDo district — but the company also had to trim back its workforce to adjust to the market demand for clean tech. Months after the factory opened, Anglo American cut off funding for First Mode, setting the stage for a bankruptcy filing and an asset acquisition deal with Cummins, an Indiana-based power solutions company.
Molly Puga, First Mode’s general manager, said the company is continuing to pursue its decarbonization mission as part of the Cummins Power Systems global network.
“Since the acquisition of First Mode, Cummins has been hard at work bringing hybrid solutions for mining to reality,” Puga said in an emailed statement. “We have announced a partnership with Komatsu to scale our hybrid solution, received a grant from TransAlta to support operations at our proving grounds in Centralia, and have shipped product to South America to be commissioned at a mine in the next several months. First Mode continues to employ about 70 employees globally, with the majority of them based in Seattle.”
Special Teams has also been hard at work at its new SoDo facility.
“We are excited to be in the space that we have. It’s a great mix of space where we can build hardware and have a forklift and move around and make noise, and office space where we can get the rest of our work done,” Sekowski said. “SoDo is a great spot for that, because this is really the only area where you can have hybrid spaces. We are going to be here until our hardware doesn’t fit in the building anymore.”
Startups sparked, lessons learned
Special Teams isn’t the only startup founded by First Mode alumni: Last year, former CEO Chris Voorhees and former chief operating officer Rhae Adams established a think tank called Sol Zero Group to support new engineering ventures — including Special Teams.
Civic Forge, which advises businesses on government affairs and public policy strategies, is another venture in Sol Zero’s family of companies. It was founded last year by Conor Duggan, First Mode’s former director of government affairs; and Adam Day, who previously served as First Mode’s senior government affairs manager.
This year, Duggan took on a new role at a clean-tech startup called Vaulted Deep, and Day took charge as Civic Forge’s CEO.
“Civic Forge works alongside Special Teams when a challenge has both policy and technical dimensions,” Day told GeekWire via email. “Together, we pair engineering with policy, which helps clients de-risk designs, win public support and hit milestones faster. Our combined goal is simple: Help organizations move faster across dimensions so they can focus on building.”
Sekowski said that she gets “so much joy” from seeing former colleagues do well, at First Mode and at new ventures. “I think that’s part of the legacy,” she said. “It’s not just Special Teams, but it’s all of us, taking what we learned there and putting it into the next things that we do.”
She’s grateful for the experience she gained at First Mode. “Some of the things I learned at First Mode are important to us here as well,” she said. “Doing work in a broad domain, not just in space, but across energy and other industries, helps us do better work. And so that’s something that we’ll continue.”
Sekowski is even grateful for the setbacks she and her teammates encountered along the way. “I learned so much through the process of being a part of Planetary Resources, and then what was a strong correction to some of the funding issues there with First Mode, and now getting to put some of those lessons together to build this team,” she said. “You don’t get a lot of chances to grow in that way. … We’ve got the battle scars. We know where we want to go, what we don’t want to do, and how to get there.”
