How Overstory Cuts Outages and Wildfire Risk for Utilities

Fiona Spruill is CEO of Overstory, a company helping electric utilities reduce power outages and wildfire risk using satellite imagery, aerial data, and AI-powered vegetation intelligence. Since joining as employee number 10 and later stepping into the CEO role, Spruill has helped Overstory evolve from a vegetation mapping startup into a resilience platform serving many of North America's largest utilities. In this episode of Inevitable, Spruill explains why vegetation management is one of the largest operating expenses for utilities and how improving grid resilience starts with better risk prioritization—not simply collecting more data. The conversation explores how Overstory combines satellite imagery, computer vision, and customer data to help utilities identify vegetation threats, wildfire fuels, and infrastructure risks before disasters occur. Spruill also discusses selling into the utility industry, the growing importance of resilience as climate risks expand beyond the western U.S., and how the company navigated an extraordinary leadership transition following the loss of co-founder and CEO Indra den Bakker. Note: Overstory is an MCJ portfolio company Episode recorded on July 22, 2026 (Published on August 11, 2026). In this episode, we cover:  (0:00) An overview of Overstory (4:44) Why vegetation management is one of utilities' biggest expenses (6:17) How Overstory helps prevent outages and catastrophic wildfires (7:33) From vegetation mapping startup to grid resilience platform (9:14) Why utilities need better prioritization (12:03) What utilities see inside the Overstory platform (14:12) How satellite imagery, aerial data, and AI power the product (17:31) Supporting wildfire prevention and public safety power shutoffs (19:16) Where Overstory fits within utility resilience strategies (21:21) Lessons from selling climate technology to utilities (25:18) Serving both rural co-ops and North America's largest utilities (28:21) How wildfire risk is expanding globally (30:26) Fiona's leadership journey and Overstory's evolution (34:44) Building a global remote-first company and culture (38:21) Overstory's fundraising journey and investor partnerships (42:09) Measuring climate impact through operational change Enjoyed this episode? Please leave us a review! Share feedback or suggest future topics and guests at [email protected] with MCJ:Cody Simms on LinkedInVisit mcj.vcSubscribe to the MCJ Newsletter*Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant