A Year of Resilience: A Letter from Fiona Spruill
As the year comes to an end and we look forward to 2025, there is one word that encapsulates where we’ve been and where we’re going at Overstory, and that is resilience.
Last December, I took over as the CEO of Overstory when our co-founder and original CEO, Indra den Bakker, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer. Two months ago, we lost Indra at the age of 35 after a brave battle with a terrible disease. If you had the privilege of knowing him, you know what a uniquely special person the world has lost. Our hearts ache for his partner and Overstory’s co-founder, Anniek Schouten, their amazing young daughter, as well as his mother, father and sister.
Leadership transitions can be a jolt for a team even when they’re not a complete surprise, as this one was a year ago. The Overstory team has been truly resilient in the face of this change. They stepped up and intensified their focus. As a result, 2024 has been the most successful in Overstory’s history. We have doubled the number of customers we serve, tripled the number of miles of power lines we analyze and nearly quadrupled our revenue.
The thing that motivates this amazing team is knowing our work has a real impact on reducing the risk of power outages and wildfires. We’re solely focused on electric utilities because, without a resilient grid, there can be no energy transition and, quite simply, lives and livelihoods are at risk. We truly believe that AI presents a huge opportunity to solve these problems, and that Overstory will be the leader in AI-driven resiliency for utilities.
Recently, I was out in the field with one of our customers. Our product had identified a dying tree that could fall on a power line, causing an outage or wildfire. The customer said, “A human could easily have missed that.” Indra loved moments like that. He and Anniek started the company because they saw the potential to use AI to help solve our climate crisis, and they were determined to do so in a way that made business sense for our customers.
Indra’s brilliant mind and big heart will forever be a part of Overstory. His humanity, his sense of humor, his curiosity and his humility are all characteristics that are woven into the company’s values and on full display in our team today. I learned so much from him and feel lucky to have called him my friend.
If you’d like to join us in paying tribute to Indra, please consider contributing to the Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, the cancer hospital where he was treated. We will honor his legacy every day by continuing to prove that Overstory is a wildly successful business that has a deeply positive impact by creating a more resilient world.
Fiona Spruill
CEO, Overstory
