Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #0279_ Adam Bry — AI Drones, Skydio & the Technology China Fears

Transcript

#0279_ Adam Bry — AI Drones, Skydio & the Technology China Fears · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Adam Brie, welcome to the show, man.
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Very excited to be here, Sean.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Very excited to have you.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: What do we have?
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit. We have a third joining us.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: So this is the Skydio R10.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: So this is our brand new indoor tactical drone designed
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: to get into dangerous situations. You don't have to send
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: a person. And as you can tell, it's got a
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: speaker on here. It's detected a threat. Attention, attention. Please
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: exit the area immediately.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: I repeat, please exit the area immediately. Is somebody behind
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: that or is that programmed in there?
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: So you can do two-way communication. So you can actually
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: like perch this thing and establish two-way communication if you've
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: got a barricaded suspect or something like that. Or you
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: can just have pre-recorded audio where it says whatever you
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: want it to say.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: No shit. Yeah. That is bad. So in case you
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: haven't figured it out, we're talking about all things drones today.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: You're the founder of Skydio. Yeah, you guys are doing
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: all kinds of badass stuff with drones, so I can't
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: wait to dig in. So this one, So this one
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: is an indoor drone and will rove around whatever you
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: put it in.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, we basically built it because a lot
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: of the most dangerous work that our customers do happens indoors.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Like in law enforcement, you got a barricaded suspect. You
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: don't know what's in there. You don't know if they're
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: armed or not. And typically you'd have to send a
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: police officer in, you know, gun drawn. They don't know
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: what they're heading into. And this is the root cause
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: of a lot of tragedies. So if you can send
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: a drone, you get perfect situational awareness. You can deescalate
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: the situation. You can establish two-way communication. So the general
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: mantra is, like, send the robot, not the person. So
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: this is a brand-new product for us.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Dude, that is cool. Can you put a gun on
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: that thing? I know you can. I know you can.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Well, in the U.S., it is illegal to put any
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: kind of weapon there. on a drone well that's dumb
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: and fly it in civilian airspace uh just kidding but
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: uh you should you should talk to our friends at
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: axon about the possibility of putting a taser.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: On it axon i think we have talked to them
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: uh maybe.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah they're they're the inventors of uh of the the
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: taser and body camera.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Dude so this nobody's seen this yet.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Well, this product is brand new. We just announced it
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: about a month ago, and it's just getting into customer
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: hands now. So it'll be a steady build, but it's
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: actually flown real missions in the hands of some of
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: our early access customers.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Congratulations. Who is the market for this? Is this going
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: to be in everybody's home?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: So initially- Shopping malls? Yeah. Initially, it'll be heavily law enforcement.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: And right now, drones are used by indoor drones like
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: this would be used by high-end SWAT teams. And we
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: certainly expect that the R-10 will be used by SWAT
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: teams in high-stakes situations. But our real goal with this
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: is to build something that's much more accessible for kind
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: of everyday patrol officers, because they're the ones that oftentimes
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: find themselves in the most dangerous situation. They don't have backup.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: They're out there by themselves. And so this thing really
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: becomes like a flying robot assistant. So we expect it
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: to be heavily adopted in law enforcement. But we also
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: expect are seeing incredible interest in critical infrastructure inspection. So
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: we work with energy utilities that have all kinds of
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: gnarly indoor infrastructure in generation plants and so on, where
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: they have to do really dangerous, slow, expensive inspections. They
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: have to shut the whole plant down. They have to
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: build scaffolding. Somebody has to go and climb around to
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: look for cracks and defects. And so for them, just
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: being able to put a drone in the air, fly around,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: see this stuff super quickly, super efficiently is a total
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: game changer. And then Over time, we also expect this
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: to be adopted by the military for confined space type
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: situational awareness work.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: Man, your customer, I mean, we had talked about this
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: off camera right before the interview, but my old buddy,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: Jake Johnson, who apparently did some work for you guys,
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, he gave me a little bit of inside baseball.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: on everything you guys are doing. Your customer is pretty
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: much everyone and anyone, seems like. I mean, from inspecting
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: naval ships for rust, to power lines, to cell phone towers,
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: to SWAT teams, to clearing buildings. It's crazy, man. You
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: have so many markets.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: The thing that is exciting to me like the way
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: that I think about it, we really serve the critical
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: industries that our civilization depends on. And historically, Silicon Valley
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: has generally been oriented towards like, you know, tech and
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: finance and social media, and that stuff is all important.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: But I think there's really something very special about building
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: technology to serve the hardcore physical industries and the people
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: that do hardcore physical work. And that's really what our
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: products are all about. You know, it's the most basic,
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: sort of fundamental piece is digitizing the physical world, like
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: putting sensors in really important places, get useful information to
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: help people make better decisions and get better outcomes. And
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: that applies across a very broad range of sectors. And
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: it's just an amazing set of people to get to
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: work with that I think have historically been underserved by technology.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And we're in a position now where we're building this
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: cutting edge AI robotics. I mean, really like the bleeding
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: edge of tech, but we're deploying it to these like
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: these traditionally slower moving physical industries And it's just a
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: super fun thing to get to work on.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: Man, I love what you're doing. I love what you're doing.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: Appreciate it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Everybody gets an introduction here.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: So let me give you yours. Adam Brie, co-founder and
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: CEO of Skydio, America's leading drone company revolutionizing autonomous flight technology.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Visionary engineer who turned a passion for robotics into a
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: unicorn enterprise valued in the billions. A former Google X
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: innovator contributing to To Project Wing. Testified before Congress in
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: 2021 on autonomous drones' role in national security and in
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: 2024 on countering China's strategy on semiconductor shipbuilding and drones.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: Driving force behind drones that fly themselves, making them safer
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: and more accessible for military, public safety, and commercial applications.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: You've been building stuff that can fly since you were
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: five years old. Quite the intro here. And, you know,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: later on in this interview, we're going to have some
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: pretty badass show and.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Tell, which we already did. We already did. Lots more
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: flying to come. I always like to say that, you know,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: the flying robots are the real stars of the show.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: So we'll have lots of flying robots.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Apparently I'm a threat now.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: I think your crew suggested that that's how we should
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: address you.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they might not be wrong about that. I'm
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: just kidding. Dude, that thing is super cool. Yeah. So,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: all right, I got a couple of things to knock
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: out before we get too in the weeds.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: On the interview.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: So, one, everybody gets a gift. I got you a
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: couple here, Adam. First, those are Vigilance Elite gummy bears.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: Gummy bears. Made in the USA. Still legal in all
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: 50 states. Awesome. Awesome. Should be good to go.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: And....
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: You're in California, right? I am. All right. We got
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: you a special model SIG here.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: California compliant. Go ahead. Open it up. It's not loaded.
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: You like firearms, right?
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: It's been a long time since I've shot a firearm,
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: but I was very into it in summer camp.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Good deal. All right. So that is the SIG P365 Legion.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: It's all metal. It's got those little slits up front,
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the barrel up top. Up top. There you go. For
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: gas dispersion, helps with the muzzle flip. It's actually the
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: normal version has 17 rounds in the magazine plus one.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the California compliant model has. I
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: think it might be 10. But it's got a little
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: cut there if you want to put an optic on there. Anyways,
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that is like the latest and greatest everyday carry gun.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: That's the rage everybody's going on about. And so we
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: thought you might like. That's amazing. That's my life one.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I really appreciate it, Sean.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: My pleasure.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: I'm allowed to take this back to California with me.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah, at least right now you are.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: All right.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: But, uh, great. And then, um, I have a Patreon account.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: It's a subscription account. We've turned into, into quite the community.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: They've been here with me since the beginning. And, and
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: they're the real reason that I get to sit down
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: with you today. So, One of the things I do
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: is offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: So this is from Leland King. What kind of range
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: or flight distance do drones like Skydio X-10D have during
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: autonomous missions? I'm curious about this because I often consider
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: how challenging it would be to have a swarm of
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: drones launching and landing at your position while attempting to
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: conduct reconnaissance on a nearby enemy force without being detected? Yeah.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: So the military variant of our product, the X-10D, is
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: what's called a short range reconnaissance system. So the typical
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: range is out to six, seven miles, kind of like
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: max flight distance, max flight time. Most of the missions
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: are shorter than that. Most of the missions tend to
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: be in the kind of like one to two mile range.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: In the civilian sector, our drones fly with LTE modems
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: on them. And so they can basically go anywhere that
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: you have LTE coverage.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: And we've done flights that are 10, 15 miles in
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: LTE conditions.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah. These are all autonomous? I mean, nobody's controlling this?
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: So you can fly them in a bunch of different ways.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: You can fly them quite manually. You can hold a controller.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: You can push around the joysticks. or you can operate
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: them autonomously. You can give them a mission, they'll fly
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: out and do waypoints. You can give them a task,
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: like follow this person or thing, inspect this area, map
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: this structure. So there's a whole bunch of different ways
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: that you can control the drone. The thing that we've
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: really invested heavily in and what we really see as
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: the future of the industry is just more and more autonomy.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: We kind of say, you know, the drone should work
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: for the person, not the other way around. So one
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: person should have like five, 10, 50 drones doing useful
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: work on their behalf. And the only way you're going
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: to get there is with AI and autonomy, making the
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: thing smart enough to fly itself. And so that's what
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: we're really focused on.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: Right on.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, before we get too deep
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: into it, I have a gift for you as well.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: I love gifts.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: So what you see here is the R10, which is
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: the new drone. This is our flagship drone. This is
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: the Skydio X10. So this thing is out there kicking
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: butt at scale in the world today. But this is
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: a very special X10. This is not a normal X10.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: So you see that there?
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: So that's a bullet hole.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: And this X10 was shot in the line of duty.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: So this was used by the Oklahoma City Police Department,
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: and it was shot serving a homicide warrant.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: So it kept flying. It completed the mission. But honestly,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: when we see stuff like this, when we see a
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: drone that's been shot, that is great news, right? Because
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: it's better the drone gets shot than a person. So
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: we thought you might like to have this.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: This is fucking awesome. Throw him with a purple heart. Dude,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: this is cool. So what was this doing?
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: So it was, they were serving a homicide warrant. So
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: they were going out to arrest somebody. and it's actually
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: surprisingly common that our drones get shot at in the
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: context of law enforcement because oftentimes you're going after a
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: bad guy, the bad guy's got a gun, they see
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: the drone show up and they start shooting at it.
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: But as I said, from our perspective, it's all good news.
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: That's the whole point of the drone is that it
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: can take the risk and get the awareness rather than
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: having to put a person in harm's way.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: Man, that is cool, man. Thank you. Yeah. So being here,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: I guess we'll hang it from the ceiling.
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: This is awesome. Put it wherever you want. Thank you.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Very cool. And this is the X10.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the Skydio X10.
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: Man, that's cool. Thank you. All right, so I want
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: to do a little bit of a backstory on you,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: see what captured your interest in drones and stuff anyways,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and talk about all the products that you guys are
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: coming out with, what they do, and all that kind
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: of stuff, and then And then there's a lot of
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: discussion about what's going on in Ukraine with the drones
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: and especially China. So I'd love to probably end with
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a decent chat about where China's at with drones and
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: kind of what drone warfare looks like in the coming years.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe get into all of it.
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Cool.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: So where did you grow up?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: So I grew up in Denver, Colorado. My mom grew
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: up in Colorado Springs and her father, served in the
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Air Force, so he was stationed in Colorado Springs. So
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: she wanted to have kids in Colorado. And I've really
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: been obsessed with stuff that flies since I was a
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: very young kid. I think some of it came from
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: my grandfather, my mom's dad. But really, from as early
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: as I can remember, I was building the little balsa
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: wood airplanes, the rubber band powered stuff. And then I
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: got into radio controlled airplanes, which are really the predecessors
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: to drones. when I was 10 or 11 years old,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: and I was just obsessed with it. I spent most
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: of my childhood in my basement building the things and
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: then out at the flying field flying them. I took
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: it way too seriously. I traveled all over the country.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: You won some national championships, right?
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, most people don't even know that this world exists.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: I didn't know.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: It's kind of a niche hobby within a niche hobby,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: but it's pretty cool. I mean, you're basically building aerobatic
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: airplanes And then you fly set sequences and maneuvers, and
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: you get judged on how precisely you do everything. And
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: it's a little bit like NASCAR, where it's a combination
• 15:36
  Speaker 2: of how good is the machine, and then how good
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: are you at flying it. And so I got very
• 15:42
  Speaker 2: into optimizing every little detail of building these things. And
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: then I also, I mean, in order to be good
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: at it, it's like anything else. You spend a lot
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: of time practicing. So I got very good at at
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: flying these systems. Uh, and I, you know, I wasn't
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: doing it at the time cause I thought it was
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: going to be a career. I thought it was just
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: like fun, cool stuff to be working on.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: How, how, how old were you when you started that?
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: Uh, so I was like, I think I probably first
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: flew when I was eight or nine years old. And
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: then I like, they call it soloing, like being able
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: to fly completely by myself. I think I was maybe
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: 10 or 11. Um, and then I started competing when
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: I was 13 or 14 and then won national championships,
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: I think when I was 16 and Holy shit. So
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: I was, like, in that world, I was kind of
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: a little bit of, like, the child prodigy, you know, like,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: kind of coming up flying these things. But I think
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: I was just super fortunate, because I got exposure to
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: this stuff at a very young age and really developed...
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: Before I had a formal engineering education, I developed, like,
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: a really deep intuitive sense for how these things work
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: and how flight dynamics work. And, you know, when you're
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: flying it yourself, the control system is all in your head.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. But.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: that kind of like deep intuitive understanding is one of
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: the things that I think has enabled me to do
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: both the research that I later did as a grad
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: student and then do some of the things that we're
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: doing at Skydio. Like one way that I think about
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: what we're doing is we're building the skills of an
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: expert pilot into the drone. And the foundation of that
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: for me really started with like my skill as a
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: radio controlled airplane pilot.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: When did you start thinking about autonomous Drones versus, you know,
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: versus RC planes.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: So, um, so I, it was pretty obvious, like basically
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: from the beginning that I was going to be an engineer.
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: I mean, I, I loved building and flying RC airplanes
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: and I also loved kind of physics and math. And
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: I had some formative experiences, uh, in high school really,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: where I first got exposure to this idea that you
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: can do kind of like theoretical analysis and and math
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: and optimization that results in something cool happening in the
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: physical world. So, you know, everybody does like the high
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: school physics bridge competition where you like, you know, you
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: build the bridge out of popsicle sticks to see how
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: much weight it can support. And, you know, I had
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: some experiences on that, like figuring out how to optimize
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: this thing and make it really efficient. I think probably
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: in undergrad in engineering was the first time that I
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: got to write software that does something in the physical world,
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: which I, at the time and still today, find to
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: just be a magical experience. When you sit there and
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: write code, you give the computer instructions, and then you
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: see those manifest in real world with the behavior and
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: action of a robot. So the first robot that I
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: worked on was a tractor. It was an autonomous tractor
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: that could drive itself around in an orchard, which was
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: a very fun project, and I learned a lot doing that.
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: And then I was a grad student in the computer
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: science and artificial intelligence lab at MIT, which is where
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: I met my co-founders for Skydio. And that's where I
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: really got exposure to writing software for autonomous systems. And
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: this was like the research program in the lab that
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: I was in started in like 2007. I got there
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: in 2009. So it was before drones were really seen
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: as a major technology category. The only drones that really
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: existed at the time were the very high-end expensive military systems.
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: And that, that was just completely addicting to me. I mean,
• 19:16
  Speaker 2: writing software and transferring a lot of those kind of
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: intuition that I built as a, as a human pilot
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: into AI systems that could fly these things. Uh, and
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: then seeing what that could create in the physical world
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: is just amazing. Like the, the main output of my
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: master's project at MIT was an airplane that could fly
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: itself around in a parking garage, uh, which the culmination
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: of that was kind of 2012. So it was still
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: before the drone industry. I really existed.
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: So you started flying, you said eight or nine years old?
• 19:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And then took maybe a small... detour with the tractor
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: and then right back into flight with autonomy, right? Yeah.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: Um, that's, that's, yeah, that's pretty, my hope.
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's not that many people that focused. I'll
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: say that.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Well, it's one of these things, you know, in hindsight,
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: it all lines up perfectly. And I look, I'm, I'm
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: super lucky in a bunch of ways. Like my dad,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: my dad had wanted to do radio control airplanes when
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: he was a kid and his parents just weren't that
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: into it and they didn't really support him in it.
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: And so he didn't get to do it. And so
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: he had a ton of pent up energy of like
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: wanting to do radio control airplane stuff, uh, which he, uh,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: he took out on me, which was incredible, you know? So,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: you know, so I did it with my dad growing up, like,
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: you know, we spent a ton of time building and
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: flying these things together. And then I was just fortunate
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: to be starting grad school. right around the time when
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: you could take radio-controlled airplanes. I mean, a lot of
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: the hardware that goes into drones really grew out of
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: the radio-controlled airplane, the RC helicopter, kind of the toy industry.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: So I was starting grad school basically when you could take,
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: you know, radio-controlled airplanes and the computers and sensors were
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: getting light enough and cheap enough and powerful enough that
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: you could put them on RC airplanes. And then the
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: big unlock once you do that is you can write
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: the software to get the thing to fly itself. And so,
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: you know, I think it was like, just a fortunate
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: kind of series of timing and exposure at the right
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: moments to be into this stuff that's enabled now what
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: we're doing at Skydio.
• 21:22
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  Speaker 1: subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now. How did you,
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, so how did you meet your co-founders?
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: Uh, so, uh, our CTO, our chief technology officer at Skydio, uh,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: Abe was my lab mate at MIT and he was
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: the senior person in the lab when I got there.
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: So he'd already been at it for three years. Um,
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: so he was one of the first people I met
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: when I was starting in the research lab and it's actually,
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: so he is, I mean, he is the most gifted
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: problem solver I've ever met in my life across any domain, hardware, software. radios, cameras, anything.
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's one of these people that can just
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: intuitively figure out how the system is working, how it
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: needs to work, how to fix it. And he's also
• 24:29
  Speaker 2: an incredibly nice guy, but he has kind of a
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: rough edge. And so my first experience with him in
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: the lab was feeling like, you know, who is this guy?
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: And I don't know what I'm doing. And he's kind
• 24:39
  Speaker 2: of scary and intimidating. And so it was kind of
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: like a rough first intro. And it's actually funny now
• 24:44
  Speaker 2: because I get to see this play out constantly at Skydio.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: Like every time we hire a new engineer, they're like,
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: they're kind of freaked out and scared of Abe. Um,
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: and I'm like, yeah, yeah, it's fine.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: Abe is wonderful.
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: You'll get used to it. Like, um, and I, so I,
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: I can empathize with him though. Cause I've been on
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: the other, other side of it. Um, and then our
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: third co-founder Matt was actually in the MIT media lab, um,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: which is, is adjacent to the computer science and artificial
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: intelligence lab. Um, and so he was working on a
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: lot of like human computer interaction stuff and the, you know,
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: the bet for the company was just kind of the
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: combination of like the hardcore science and robotics combined with
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: like different user interaction paradigms would be an interesting recipe
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: to kind of try to build the next chapter of
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: what drones could become.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Damn. So all you guys share obviously a fascination with drones.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: So how did the, so what was the original concept
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: of Skydio?
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: So the original concept, so we were Abe and I
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: were lab mates together through 2012. After that, we got
• 25:47
  Speaker 2: the opportunity to go and start Google's drone delivery program,
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: Project Wing. So the two of us, along with our professor,
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: our advisor from MIT, moved out to California, started working
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: on the drone delivery stuff. This was like 2012. That 2012,
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: 2013 were kind of the era where people were starting
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: to think, well, yeah, maybe there's this new category of
• 26:10
  Speaker 2: drone thing emerging, like electric propulsion, autonomy. It seems interesting.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: And we were then in Silicon Valley working at Google.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: And I think we just started to look out there
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: and see that there was a lot of excitement around
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: drones for all kinds of different applications, for capturing cool video,
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: for doing critical infrastructure inspection, for delivering packages, for public safety,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: sort of maybe a new wave of drones for defense.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: And we felt like the possibilities of what the tech
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: could do were incredible. Like the impact that could be
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: had was amazing, but none of it was going to
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: work the way that people really wanted if you needed
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: to have expert drone pilots flying the thing the whole time.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: It's just a very high barrier to entry. And I
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: knew this because I was one. You know, I grew
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: up and I spent thousands of hours becoming a skilled pilot,
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: but it's just not accessible and it's not going to
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: be useful. in the way that you want it to be.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: And we knew a ton about the autonomy technology from
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: our research at MIT. And it felt like that was
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: going to be a foundational layer, kind of a big
• 27:10
  Speaker 2: unlock to move the industry forward. And that was really it.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, the big bet that we made was that
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: computer vision, AI, autonomy would be kind of a foundational
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: tech layer that would make the products more useful to
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: more people in more places. The first product that we
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: built was a consumer product. basically like a flying GoPro
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: that could follow you around and weave its way through
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: obstacles and capture amazing video. And we did that because
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: we felt like the consumer market was probably going to
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: develop the first because there's just, there's kind of less
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: that has to come true. Like you don't have to
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: convince a big enterprise to change the way they work
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: and adopt some new system. You can just say like, hey,
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: there's a cool thing that you can go and buy
• 27:52
  Speaker 2: and capture some cool video with and it's going to
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: be fun. So it's a little bit of like a
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: lower friction entry point, and then we also felt like
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: the consumer product ethos of small and light and integrated
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: and easy to use, rather than big and clunky and complex,
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: would be the right foundation to serve other industries as well.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I think we were right about some of that, maybe
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: wrong about other pieces of it. I was actually reading
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: the blog post that I wrote when we announced the
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: company in 2014. Um, I would say the, like the,
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: the vision has really stayed exactly the same since the
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: beginning of like, make these things super smart to make
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: them more useful to, to more people. Um, you know, it's,
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: it's always hard to imagine when you start, like where
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: you're going to end up, but the, like the central
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: kind of bet was the same.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So, I mean, how did you, I mean, how
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: did the customer face develop into what it is with, with,
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, actually. Before we get to that question, how
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: many other drones were out there at this time period
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: that were able to follow people and dodge.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: Obstacles? One of the interesting aspects of the drone industry
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: is that it's always very easy to imagine the concept of,
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: it would be great to have a drone that does this.
• 29:13
  Speaker 2: It's typically pretty easy to make some kind of marketing
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: video that shows what that might look like. At the
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: time and still today, there's always a ton of companies
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: that are like talking about various aspects of this. So
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: when we started, there were probably like 30 other companies
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: out there that were talking about like sort of a
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: follow-in film type drone. And I think like a fair
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: assessment is like basically none of it worked. Like, we
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: were the only ones that were able to, like, solve
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: the hard technical problems... Oh, shit. that it actually took
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: to make this thing come together in a reliable, scalable way. Um,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: and the technology foundation that we developed there has served
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: us extremely well as we expanded to serve other markets. So,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: you know, we started in 2014. We decided we were
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: going to do the consumer product first. It took us
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: four years to develop the first product. One of the
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: things that I think people don't understand about this stuff
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: is it really is a cutting-edge aerospace device. I mean,
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: it's small, but it's got aerodynamics and propulsion and vibration
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: and thermals. And we've got the whole computer vision and
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: AI system. Like a lot of the software and hardware
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: is similar to what you find in a self-driving car.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: We've just had to shrink it down to something that
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: weighs a couple of pounds, which actually makes it even
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: harder because you have less margin to work with. So
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: it's a very hard technology build. Um, it took us
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: four years to get to our first product, the Skydio R1, uh,
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: which was a kind of the first instantiation of a
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: consumer follow film drone. Um, and I, I kind of
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: described the R1, like it was a, it was a
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: technology success, but a commercial failure. Like everybody that saw
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: it said like, that thing's amazing. I can't believe you
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: guys pulled that off, but nobody bought it. So, so
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: it was, why do you think that is too expensive
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: or it was, it was too expensive. Um, so it
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: was 2,500 bucks, which is a lot for a consumer product. Um,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: and it also had too narrow of a feature set.
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Like we basically, and we, this was an intentional decision.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: We focused very narrowly on like the autonomy system on
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: this thing needs to be mind blowing and awesome and
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: do things that nothing else in the world can do.
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: But the wireless range was not very good. The camera
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: that went on it that actually recorded the video was
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: not great. The like breadth of different things you could
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: do with it was pretty narrow. And all these things
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: were intentional choices. And honestly, I would probably make the
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: same trade-offs again. Cause like when, you know, when you're
• 31:31
  Speaker 2: a startup, when you're doing something new, unless you can
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: break through in some way and do something that is
• 31:35
  Speaker 2: really like better and different than everything else out there,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: there's just no reason for anybody to care at all
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: about what, what you're doing. So we had this kind
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: of huge spike in autonomy capability, which we use to
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: raise money, venture capitalists, and, you know, attract the team
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: and kind of get the whole flywheel spinning. And then
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: it's a period of years afterwards to kind of build
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: out everything else that has to be great to have
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: a great drone, like the radios, the cameras, the form factor,
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: the propulsion system, and so on. But yeah, we were
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: in kind of an interesting position in 2018 because we
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: launched this product. Everybody thought it was amazing. Nobody bought it.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: We had just enough money in the bank to develop
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: a second version of it, which became the Skydio 2.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: And so we really had our backs against the wall there.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: for like 18 months or so, where it's like just
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: enough money to get through, take one more shot at this,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: take everything that we've learned and turn it into a
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: better version of the product. And this was also when
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: we started to get a lot of inbound interest from
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: enterprise customers. You know, it's kind of been a steady
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: build in enterprise. Like in 2014, the big companies were
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: talking about using drones, but very few of them were
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: actually doing anything. It was all kind of slideware. By 2018,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: more of them were kind of starting to poke around
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: and actually had started some drone programs. When we launched
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: the R1, even though it was a consumer product, I
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: think a lot of the leading enterprises in law enforcement, defense,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: as well as energy utilities and so on, they kind
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: of saw this and said, like, that thing isn't designed
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: for us, but the technology in it looks like it
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: could be very relevant for us. And so we started
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: to get a lot of inbound interest, which started to
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: impact what we were doing from a product perspective. So
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: when we launched Skydio 2, it was still mainly aimed
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: at consumers, but there was more kind of enterprise thinking
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: built into it.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: Who, what enterprises were reaching out? What did they want?
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: Well, we started to, we started to hear from the
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: DOD and that was, that was, you know, one of
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: the big opportunities that got a lot of attention and
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: that we spent a lot of focus on. You know,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: that's a, we could talk about that whole trajectory. So
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: that was a big one. You know, there were insurance
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: companies that wanted to use the drone for inspection of
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: houses and other assets. There were our first law enforcement
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: kind of interest came inbound because they saw the capabilities
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: of the R1. And, and I think they, they probably
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: imagined like if you could, you know, if you could
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: take the R1 and make what has become the R10,
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: like that would be an incredibly powerful thing for us. Um,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: so it was very broad, which was actually great because it,
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: it just having this kind of core technology that got
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: a lot of people's attention exposed us, uh, to a
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: lot of the needs and opportunities that, that people, uh,
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: had and were wanting to do with drones.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: Man. So, I mean, what specifically are they asking for?
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, are they asking, like, when you're talking about,
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: so here's what comes through my mind. When you're talking about,
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: you know, a drone that does inspections for an insurance company,
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking like roofing inspections after a hurricane, shit like that.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, I wouldn't think you would have to make
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: very many modifications to the drone to be able to
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: do that. I mean, it's... Here's a drone with a
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: camera on it.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, it depends on how you want to do
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: it and how well you want to do it, but
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: it's true. And one of the cool things about drones
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: is that it's really a technology platform. It's like a
• 35:00
  Speaker 2: laptop or a phone or something where you can use
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: it for a ton of different stuff. And with different software,
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: you can specialize it for different tasks. So one of
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: the general patterns is that the hardware is very general purpose.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: And if you're flying it manually, you can do a
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: lot with it because the adaptation for the application basically
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: comes from the pilot. You know, the pilot's like, okay,
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: I want to inspect this thing. And so I will
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: do the things that I need to do flying it
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: manually to inspect this thing. If you want to automate it,
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: you typically need to write more custom software for different applications.
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: And so we did both those things. Like we would
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: enable our customers to operate it manually to do whatever
• 35:38
  Speaker 2: they wanted to do. But we'd also, as they were
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: operating it manually, we'd learn like, all right, what are
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: they actually doing? What kind of algorithm is running in
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: their head? And how can we turn that into autonomy
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: software such that we can do it in a more reliable,
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: scalable way? So one of the examples of this, we
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: have a product called 3D Scan that we built because
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: we basically saw that one of the fundamental kind of
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: primitives that many of our inspection customers were doing was
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: basically digitizing a 3D structure. And it could be a bridge,
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: could be a cell tower, could be a crime or
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: an accident scene even. And so we built a piece
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: of software where basically you just say like, here's the
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: thing that I care about. And then the drone will
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: autonomously explore and map and capture high resolution imagery of
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: the whole thing. And so that was kind of an
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: example where you could do it manually, but the better
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: way to do it is autonomously. And it took us
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: a little while to like to write the custom software
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: to do it autonomously. You can almost think of it
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: like apps on your phone, right? Like the phone is
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: general purpose and then you get specialized software to do
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: different specialized tasks.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: Makes sense. Actually, that makes a lot of sense. So
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: how many different models of drones do you have?
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: So right now we have three major products. We've got
• 36:53
  Speaker 2: the X10, which is the flagship, and we're huge believers
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: in that category of drone. The kind of medium-class quadcopter,
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: it's small enough that you can take it with you anywhere,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: but it's big enough to be super versatile, super powerful.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: It carries great sensors, so it's got a thermal camera,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: it's got a zoom camera that can read a license plate.
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: at 800 feet. At 800 feet? Yeah. So for that
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: size of drone, it's crazy the level of optics that
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: you can get in there. So the X10 is kind
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: of like the workhorse platform. But now that we've done that,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: and for a long time, our product strategy in the
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: enterprise was like, we need to nail that thing. That's
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: going to cover the most applications for our customers. It's
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: going to deliver the most value. We've got to get
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: that thing great. It's got to be awesome and reliable.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: And we'll probably look at some of this stuff later.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: There's other accessories around it that enable even more exciting capability.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: But now that we've got that amazing core of technology
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: and it's out there in the world operating at scale,
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: we can kind of take a lot of the core
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: pieces of it and reconfigure it into different form factors.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: So the R10 is the next major example of this,
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: where we've basically taken a subset of the hardware from
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: X10 to get it into a smaller lighter, less expensive package.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: So this is designed for indoor operation. And then maybe
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: I'll leave it till we see it live. We've got
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: another thing that we're working on, which is still in
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: prototype form that unlocks much longer range, much longer endurance
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: kind of missions. And I really, I think those three together,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: we think of as sort of the family of robots
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: that solve the vast majority of the data capture needs
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: that our customers have. Wow.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: Interesting. So can we go through each one and what
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: all of the purpose of each application for these drones are?
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Sure. So the X-10 is really the workhorse, and it's used...
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, it depends on the industry that we're serving.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: So for law enforcement... It's used in two major modes
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: of operation. One we call kind of drone in the trunk,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: where you put these things in patrol cars, and if
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: somebody's out there and they run into a situation where
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: aerial situational awareness would make a difference, they can take
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: it out of the trunk, launch it in the air,
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: and just kind of get real-time awareness of whatever they
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: need to see. The other mode of operation, which is
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: really the future where all this stuff is going, is
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: having the drone live in what's called a docking station,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: which we'll see here in a bit. And the dock
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: turns the drone into a fully autonomous device. So the
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: dock is a network connected charging base station. It's got
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: a whole HVAC system in there, so it can be
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: out in any kind of weather and basically keep the
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: drone ready to fly at a second's notice. Um, and
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: it's super powerful and this is a big part of
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: like autonomy and making these drones useful to more people. Uh,
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: because you can have somebody who's just in an op
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: center somewhere and say like, oh, there's a 911 call here.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: I want to send a drone. They just click a button,
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: drone autonomously launches, gets there in a few seconds. Uh, and, uh, and,
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: and can oftentimes change outcomes.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Um, so, so are these, so are these, what cities
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: are using these? A bunch.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, all over the U.S. at this point.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: New York City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Oklahoma, Albuquerque. I mean,
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: most major cities in the U.S. are in some stage
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: of deploying Skydio drones.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: As part of law enforcement.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Are these cameras? They are, yeah.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: So the hardware there, yeah. So the thing on the
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: front is the gimbal. So we call those the user cameras.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: So those are the cameras that capture the data that
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: our customers are going to see. That's like, there's a
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: thermal camera, there's a zoom camera. Um, and, uh, then
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: there's kind of a wider field of view camera and
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: it's on a, if you, you can pop off that
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: red clip. Yeah. So the gimbal, you just, you can
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: kind of wrench it out of the gimbal there. If
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: you can pull it out of the, the red thing
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: out of the, yeah. So the, the gimbal is three
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: axis stabilized, so there's three motors. that keep it perfectly stable.
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: So even as the drone is moving around, those things
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: are stabilized, they'll stay locked on to whatever you want
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: to look at. But then the other cameras, good observation,
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: there's three on top and then there's three on bottom.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: So those are navigation cameras.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 41:27
  Speaker 2: And this is the part, this is basically like the
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: self-driving car part. So those are fisheye cameras. They have
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: a 200 degree field of view. So the top three
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: see the whole top hemisphere of the drone, the bottom
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: three see the whole bottom hemisphere. So the drone has,
• 41:38
  Speaker 2: you can basically think of it's got eyes that see
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: everything in every direction. It's got a very powerful Nvidia
• 41:43
  Speaker 2: CPU GPU on board, which is running all of our
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: AI software. And it's basically doing like what a self-driving
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: car does. Like as it flies, it's constantly mapping the
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: space around it, predicting into the future, avoiding obstacles and
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: doing all the things that like a skilled pilot would do.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: So when these, so do these cities, I mean, So
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: obviously they are connected to law enforcement dispatch. Yeah. So
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: do they have these staged all over the city in
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: various locations?
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we actually have some examples we could look
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: at if you're up for it.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would love that.
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: What this actually looks like.
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: All right. So the way this works is you have
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: the drones in the docking stations. And then as you say,
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: you distribute these all over the city. Typically they go
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: on the roof of fire stations because fire stations are
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: kind of nicely spread out for faster response time. And
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: they typically are installed in what we call hives where
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: you have like three docks on one rooftop because that
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: gives you capacity to respond to more calls. Like it
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: ends up being driven very similar to just how you
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: staff an agency with officers based on the call for
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: service volume. That's how you staff it with drones too.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: So if you have, a high crime area or a
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: high density area, you need a lot of drones in
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: that area to respond to all of the incidents. And
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: it just becomes part of the 911 dispatch flow.
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: How do you make that determination of how many drones
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: a precinct would need?
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a great question. So this is actually something
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: I'm very passionate about. So I have come from an
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: engineering background. I love data and algorithms. And so I
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: don't get to do as much engineering on the drone
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: itself anymore. Um, but I, I, we got asked this
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: question all the time by cities, like how many drones
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: do I need? Where should I put them? And so
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I actually wrote a simulator where you can ingest historical
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: 911 call data. So you get like time location priority,
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: and then we can simulate through it, like literally second
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: by second and say like, all right, if we had
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: a drone here, here's how long it would take to respond. Um,
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: and that's become a useful tool for us to, to
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: work with our customers on like, here's where we should
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: put them in the, the real output that we care
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: about is the response time curve. Like what percentage of
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: calls are we going to get to? how quickly, and
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: so based on the crime patterns and the call data,
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: we can sort of optimize that whole thing.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: So are you just going off of, well I shouldn't
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: say just, are you going off of previous 911 calls
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: or population size mixture of both?
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: So 911 calls are the primary driver because that's the
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: primary job of the drone is to respond to calls
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: for service and respond to incidents. Even though I love
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: the data and the tool, at the end of the day,
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: the judgment of the experts, of the people who live
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: in that city, is the thing that matters most. So
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: we kind of use that as a starting point. But
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: there's always just infinite kind of local knowledge within the
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: police department of like, oh yeah, this is a tough neighborhood,
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: and if we put this here, we'll be able to
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: respond to this kind of incident. And so that ends
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: up being, in most cases, kind of the primary factor
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: at the end when we're fine-tuning these things for what
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: the deployments look like.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: What kind of 911 calls are they responding to?
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: So we should look at... So it's all different kinds.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: It's basically as diverse as 911 calls are, which cover
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: a huge range of things. So if we look at
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: a couple of examples here. So this is from the
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: Oklahoma City Police Department. Is this my gift here? No,
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: this is not the one that was shot. So this
• 45:19
  Speaker 2: was a situation where there was a train operator Um,
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: that called 911 in a panic, afraid that they might've
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: hit somebody who was on the tracks. So they launched
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: the drone, they get there in a few seconds, they
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: can fly up and down the train. This is like
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: a multiple mile long train. So it would have taken
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: like 15, 30 minutes, an hour, maybe with the drone.
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: They saw, unfortunately there was a homeless person asleep on
• 45:40
  Speaker 2: the tracks, but they found him in, in just a
• 45:42
  Speaker 2: couple of minutes. And because they found him so quickly,
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: they could guide in first responders and they saved this
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: guy's life because of the drone. Uh, because in these situations,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: the seconds matter. Um, so that's kind of one example. Uh,
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: we've got another one here. This is from the San
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Francisco police department. So same situation, drone is launched from
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: a rooftop. This was one where there was a stolen vehicle. Um,
• 46:06
  Speaker 2: so they had a report of a stolen vehicle. They
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: launched the drone and now they can just go out
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: and follow a stolen vehicle from the air. And this
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: guy has no idea that he's being followed. Um, so
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: they knew that oftentimes these folks would steal license plates.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: It's called cold plating, but they never actually caught anybody
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: in the act. With the drone, they see him, like,
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: pull up, steal the plates off the vehicle. And then,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: you know, once he's got the new plates, he's going
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: to put them on the car. He actually holds the
• 46:29
  Speaker 2: plate up here so you can read it from the drone.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: Holy shit, man.
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: So he puts the plates on. Now he's window tinting it.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: So he went down to Dead End Street and he's
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: putting window tint on. And this is, like, this is
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: the beginning of bad news, right? This is a crime spree.
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: It's a stolen vehicle. He's cold plated it. He's tinting
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: the windows. Like, he's going to go off and do
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: a bunch of bad stuff. Uh, but they know exactly
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: where he is. They know exactly what he's doing. They
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: send out a play plainclothes unit, they roll a spike strip.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: So now his tires are flat and it's basically game over.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: He can't go very far. They go in and, and,
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: and pick him up. Um, and videos like this, I
• 47:03
  Speaker 2: find just like deeply satisfying where the criminal is just
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: kind of screwed. You know, it's like, there's, there's just
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: a huge asymmetric advantage that the officers have and it's
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: safer for everybody. I mean, it's safer for the officers.
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: It's safer for the community. It's honestly even safer for
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: the perpetrator. because there's a much lower chance that the
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: officers are going to need to use force when they
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: get to pick the time and the place to intervene.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: So it's like, for me and for our customers, it's
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: pretty awesome to see this stuff. And the impact in
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: San Francisco is incredible. I mean, San Francisco has had
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: a rough run over the last three or four years.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: And fortunately, the voters voted to allow drone technology. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: since they've deployed this, along with some license plate reading
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: cameras around the city, I mean, the statistics are staggering.
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: I think crime is down overall, like 30%. No kidding. Yeah.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Properties. How long, how long of a timeframe?
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: Like less than a year.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: Cause you, you, I mean, you just can't get away
• 47:58
  Speaker 2: with it, right? Like there's, there's, they, you know, they
• 48:02
  Speaker 2: will find you, they will follow you with the drone, uh, and,
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: and they will stop you before you can do anything, uh,
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: anything more. Um, so it, it really just completely changes
• 48:13
  Speaker 2: the game. We hear this, they'd like game changer. We
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: hear that all the time from our law enforcement customers. Like,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: you know, we've had people say it's the, the biggest
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: change in policing since the invention of the radio, um,
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: because it just totally changes the nature of, uh, of
• 48:26
  Speaker 2: first response.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Man, I mean, any... Is this another example?
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we've got another example here. So this, this was
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: really like a tragic situation. This was in Albuquerque. Um,
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: so these are a couple of nine-year-olds in their parents'
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: backyard with a gun. Um, and they were, you know,
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: the neighbor basically reported that there were shots fired in
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: the backyard. So they sent the police out because they
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: have the drone, they know exactly what's going on. So
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: they can see that it's a couple of kids rather
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: than adults. They can use the information from the drone
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: to deescalate the whole thing. So you'll see they do
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: a couple of things here to distract the kids and
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: kind of pull their attention away. And there's just no
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: mystery for them, right? Like they're watching this live feed
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: the whole time. They know exactly what they're dealing with
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: and they can use that to make better decisions. Like
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: rather than guessing, they know exactly what they're dealing with,
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: so the officer goes in there, grabs the gun, and
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: the sheriff actually said, if not for the drone, they
• 49:27
  Speaker 2: probably would have had to shoot these kids because they
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have known what they were dealing with. But with
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: the drone, it's just a completely different situation.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: Man. I mean, what about violent crimes? violent crime like,
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know, some type of a domestic call. I mean,
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: are these responding to stuff like that?
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: They're responding to everything. This is in public, so I
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: probably can't say the customer, but I was visiting a
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: customer a couple weeks ago where they had a guy
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: in kind of a low-income apartment complex. He was drunk.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: His neighbor was playing ping-pong. in the parking lot, which
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: was pissing him off, apparently, and he shot the guy. Fortunately,
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: he didn't kill him, but he shot him. Everybody heard
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: the shots. They called 911. The drone got there in
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: 20 seconds, and it got there.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: 20 seconds?
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it got there just in time, just in time
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: to see the guy with the gun walking back towards
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: his apartment, putting it away, and walking into his apartment complex.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: And so the difference in response here is transformative, right?
• 50:34
  Speaker 2: Without the drone footage, All the officers know is that
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: somebody got shot, they have no idea who did it,
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: they have no idea where he is, they have no
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: idea if he's still armed, so they probably need to
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: lock that whole place down, they probably need to go
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: door to door, guns drawn, the chances of something tragic
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: happening is non-trivial, right? But because of the drone, they
• 50:53
  Speaker 2: knew who it was, they knew where he was, they
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: knew that he was still armed, so they basically can
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: just surround his apartment complex, yell at him, tell him
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: that he's busted, he has no options, and he eventually
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: came out and surrendered himself. Um, and that stuff like
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: that is happening all the time. So we, uh, by
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: the end of this year, we will be doing close
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: to a million flights per year rate. Um, so close
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: to a hundred thousand flights per month. Um, and so
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: it's literally like almost every minute, something like this is
• 51:23
  Speaker 2: happening somewhere in the country where the drone is responding
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: to an emergency.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Uh, I mean, I just feel like these, I mean, uh, well, one,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: this would have totally alleviated the Charlie Kirk. assassination yeah
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: be great if you know was it salt lake was
• 51:40
  Speaker 1: salt lake in utah yeah it's salt lake or park
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: city yeah i don't know which one but um yeah
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: it'd be great if they invested in skydio for the
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: next you know outdoor event yeah but i mean so
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: i mean i just see so many uses for the
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: stadiums shopping malls yeah outdoor parking lots police stations soft
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: any military unit that's going to clear a building or
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: a ship or yeah i mean.
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah it's you're 100 right i mean you've got exactly the.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: High speed chase goes too long then i mean what
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: are the how what's the uh well that's late time
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: on these.
• 52:19
  Speaker 2: So uh max flight time is up to 40 minutes
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: practical real world conditions it's closer to 30 minutes and
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: then the top speed is 45 miles an hour So
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: it can keep up with cars in kind of urban
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: and suburban areas, but it's not going to keep up
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: with a car on a highway. It's not fast enough
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: for high-speed chases. But that is one of the motivations
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: for the other form factor that we'll look at in
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: a bit here to fly much faster, much longer range,
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: much longer endurance. Because the only stories that I don't
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: like when we're looking at what's happening in public safety
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: is where the guy gets away And the cases where
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: we see that happening now is where somebody just gets
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: on the highway and speeds away. And so we're building
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: another drone to take care of that.
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: Right on, man. I mean, and then, I mean, these,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: so these can just switch each other out too.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: If it's taken too long.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: Switch each other out in the middle of the chase
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: or whatever.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: With the autonomy, it really, one of the ways that
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: we think about it is historically, flying a drone has
• 53:22
  Speaker 2: been like playing like a first person shooter video game
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: or something, right? Where you're like, you're in the character,
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: you're driving it around. And we want to make it
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: more like playing a strategy game where, you know, you've
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: just got a lot of assets and you can say like,
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: I want to look at this thing here. I want
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: to inspect this thing at this time of day. And
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: the drones just, they just figure out how to do it.
• 53:41
  Speaker 2: So you can kind of, the humans can operate at
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: a higher level of abstraction, at a higher level of judgment.
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what we see happening now. So this
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: whole concept is called drone as first responder, using drones
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: to respond to emergencies. Um, DFR is what people call
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: it kind of in the law enforcement world. Um, and
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: DFR is at the leading edge of all of these
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: themes of like using AI and, and more automation. Um,
• 54:07
  Speaker 2: and it's, it's, it's honestly, it's, uh, it's kind of
• 54:10
  Speaker 2: surreal to see it. I mean, it's something that we've
• 54:13
  Speaker 2: held as kind of the focal point of our product
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: vision for like the last six or seven years. And
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: it's really only in the last 18 months or so
• 54:20
  Speaker 2: that we've really seen it take off.
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: Man, I mean, so are these just responding to calls
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: or is there a presence.
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: In some of these cities? It's 99% just responding to calls.
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: It's ultimately up to the discretion of the agency and
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: different agencies have different policies, different states have different rules
• 54:44
  Speaker 2: on this. You will see sometimes where if there's going
• 54:47
  Speaker 2: to be a parade or a demonstration or something, they
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: will do some proactive work around that. One of the
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: things that I think is fundamental here is transparency around operations,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: because the idea of having AI-powered drones flying all over
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: US cities is kind of crazy, right? And honestly, like six,
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: seven years ago, I thought that public acceptance of this
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: stuff was going to take a very long time. And
• 55:13
  Speaker 2: I actually thought this was going to be one of
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: the last markets to develop. This is one of the
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: big things that I was wrong about. I thought all
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: the other infrastructure inspection stuff would happen at much larger
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: scale before we had drones responding to 911 calls, because
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: it does sound kind of nuts that we're going to
• 55:28
  Speaker 2: have AI-powered flying robots with cameras flying over cities. I
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: think the thing that has really made it work, and
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: the credit goes to our customers, is just the investment
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: in transparency and community communication around, like, what they're doing
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: and why they're doing it. And it's one of those
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: things where, you know, when you see these examples of
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: what the drone can do, it's very difficult to argue
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: with it. You know, it's very difficult for somebody to say, like, no,
• 55:53
  Speaker 2: I wish they didn't have a drone in that situation,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: and I wish that guy got away. Or, you know,
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: I wish that they couldn't tell that those were nine-year-olds
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: rather than adults and de-escalated. I mean, when you see
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: these specific examples, it's, I feel like it's basically just
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: irrefutable that it's providing incredible positive impact.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: Well, I mean, we're all under surveillance pretty much 24
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: hours a day anyways, right? So what's the difference whether
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: they're just static cameras or roving cameras?
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: This is something that I think a lot about. I
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: really view this as my life's work. I've been working
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: on this stuff since I was a little kid, and
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: I want to be working on it for the rest
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: of my life. And I don't want to be a
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: part of building this kind of dystopian future where we've
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: got drones following us around all the time. Um, and
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: so I, I think there is a balance to be
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: struck and I think the best way to do it is,
• 56:43
  Speaker 2: is through very aggressive transparency of, you know, like here's
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: when we're flying, here's why we're flying. And drones, I
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: think are actually, they're, they're visible and they get people's
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: attention because, you know, everybody's like, oh man, there's like
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: a drone.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: What's it doing?
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Um, but I actually think they're, they're one of the
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: least invasive forms of surveillance because it's very reactive to emergencies.
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: Like rather than just blanketing a city in cameras, that
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: are going to capture everything, you're just putting the camera
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: exactly when and where you need it at like the
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: most important moment in time in a very targeted, precise way.
• 57:16
  Speaker 2: And I actually, I think that this is sort of
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: a general theme, but I, you know, there's always this
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: tension between like public safety and privacy and civil liberties.
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: And technology, I think, is the thing that enables us
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: to make better and better trade-offs of like protect privacy
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: and civil liberties while also improving public safety. Like if you,
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: this is one of the thought experiments I do. If like,
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: if you imagine a world with, with extremely primitive technology.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: Like you could achieve a high degrees of public safety
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: by basically just locking everybody in their house all the time, right?
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: With no technology and inventing better stuff like autonomous drones
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: enables you to, I think actually have like extremely high
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: levels of public safety while also protecting extremely high levels
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: of civil liberties and privacy.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, with the rise of crime in some of
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: these cities, I think people would be, I would think some,
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: Some of these cities will be begging for you guys
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: to show up.
• 58:09
  Speaker 2: This has been probably the most positive surprise that I've
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: had in building the company is the generally extremely positive
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: public reception. And we see this all over the place
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: where it's not to say there aren't some folks with concerns.
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: And I think in general, there are reasonable concerns to
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: be had. But there's a huge amount of enthusiasm typically
• 58:29
  Speaker 2: for bringing this kind of technology to a city or
• 58:32
  Speaker 2: a community because of the impact that can happen, especially
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: when people see the Examples, you can kind of be
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: concerned about it in the abstract. But once you see
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: the specifics, it's almost hard It's almost impossible to argue
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: with mm-hmm are.
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: Any cities Using these is is like a roving presence
• 58:49
  Speaker 1: patrol To my knowledge like more of more of like
• 58:52
  Speaker 1: a deterrent like hey, we're we see you I I
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: haven't seen that it could be happening in in some
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: places And and I think there there could be positive
• 59:02
  Speaker 1: impact to be how there I just think you want
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: to be careful with it Um, and you know, whatever
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: you're doing, I think you want to like, you want
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: to be transparent with the community about like what you're
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: doing and why you're doing it. One of the things that, that, so,
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: you know, the, the highest, highest impact stuff are the
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: examples that we looked at where it's like a life
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: or death situation.
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: The drone gets there, it changes an outcome. They're, The
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: reality of policing is that it's like most of the
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: time it's pretty fucking mundane, right? It's like somebody called,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: you get there, there's nothing really happening. It's kind of
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: a waste of time. And one of the real beauties
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: of this is that it also enables you to take
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: care of all that stuff. So, you know, we've had
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: situations where there were like, you know, there were a
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: couple of youth like hanging out at a car dealership
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: and loitering and annoying them. and they shouldn't be there.
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: And rather than having to send an officer and taking
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: like an hour of an officer's time, they send a drone,
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: it's got a speaker on it. You can talk to
• 59:55
  Speaker 2: them through the drone, tell the kids to like go
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: do something else. And the whole thing is taken care
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: of in five minutes. And so it saves the officer's
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: time to actually be doing something that's like, that's really
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: high impact. And so there's a huge efficiency piece to
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: it as well on just sort of like the more
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: mundane calls of like somebody's parked in the wrong spot
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: or there's like a noise complaint from a neighbor or something.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: You can clear a lot of that stuff from the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: air without.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: Needing to set something on the ground. Yes, I get
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: the privacy concern, and I don't want to pretend like
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: it's not there. I mean, look, if there was a
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: drone flying around my house every day, I'd be like,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: I would shoot it down, too.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: You'd put another bullet hole in it.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: I would. Put a couple of them in there. But,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, when you think about... Everything, I mean, there's
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: ring cameras on probably at least 50% of the homes
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: in America at this point.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: You know, but I mean, when we're talking about, you know,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: car dealerships, like you were just, car dealerships, stadiums, shopping malls,
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: just all, you know, gas stations, anywhere where there's, you know,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: where you see theft, crime, all these things. I mean,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: it seems like, I don't know what these things cost,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: but if these are landing in a, And some type
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: of base station, recharge, weatherproofing, all that kind of stuff
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: can come back out and rove around. I mean, it
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: seems like every car dealership, every stadium, every shopping mall,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: every Walmart, Target, grocery store, I mean, you name it,
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: should have these just 24 hours a day, seven days
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: a week, 365 days a year roving their properties. Yeah.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: You know, not only as a, you know, we got you,
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: but as a deterrent. Because they'll chase, they will chase
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: a criminal.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I, I agree with you. I think that the.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Is anybody doing that?
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: It's, you know, the future's here. It's just not even distributed.
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 2: So we have customers that are like everything you just
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: described is happening. It's just not happening everywhere all the
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: time yet. But we have retailers that are installing these
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: things for security and patrol. You know, we have like
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: military bases are using them for. security patrol. So data
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 2: centers are using them, these massive facilities with really high
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: security stakes. So yeah, I mean, I think we're headed
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: for a world where these things... So one of the
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: ways that I think about this stuff is.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: I would think high net worth individuals with properties as
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: well would be using this stuff.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I've got one of my own.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: Who is your biggest customer?
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 2: Our single biggest customer, that's actually pretty close. Historically, it's
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 2: been the U.S. Army. Um, and, and just using the,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 2: the kind of ISR intelligence surveillance reconnaissance drones on the battlefield,
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 2: although they are starting to do more doc stuff now,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: although the big cities are getting close now to the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: U S U S army in terms of like, uh,
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: you know, the scale that they're deploying drones.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: Man. I mean, so why, why do you, it sounds
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: like that you are not, um, you're wanting more people to, to.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: Express interest. What do you think is in the way
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: of that? Is it marketing, advertising? I mean, the bottleneck
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: right now is how quickly we can install them.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: Really?
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the demand is very, very high.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: Very, very high.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: And it's basically how quickly can we build and install
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: these things.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: And I think it's pretty.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: It's a good problem to have. Yeah. How quickly can
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: you build and install?
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: We're ramping up. I mean, we have the We have
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: what I think is the largest drone factory in the US,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: certainly for this class of drone. We've always built our
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: stuff in the US, which is a whole other. I mean,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: I'm very proud that we're doing this. A lot of
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: people thought it was impossible 10 years ago. So we're cranking.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: That's awesome, man. I love hearing that too. So these
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: are 100% manufactured in the US?
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: Well, we have global supply chains. We're getting parts and
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: components from all over the world with a couple notable exceptions,
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: like China. Uh, but, um, you know, we, we work
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: with companies in Taiwan and Japan, uh, for, for different, uh,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: parts and components, but all the, the manufacturing assembly testing is,
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: is done in the U S in our facility. It
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: really is awesome. It's like, uh, when we started in 2014,
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: the conventional wisdom at the time, especially in Silicon Valley
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: was like, one, you probably shouldn't do hardware to begin with.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: Cause like hardware is hard and it's, you know, it's
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: dirty and expensive and all this stuff. And then two,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: if you are going to do it, you should just
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: outsource it to a contract manufacturer in Asia. And we
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 2: actually honestly started down that path. We started down the
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: path of working with a contract manufacturer. It was a
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: great company based in Taiwan. But basically what became clear
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: was that we didn't know how to build a drone yet.
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: They didn't know how to build a drone. It was
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: fundamentally new technology and it just wasn't working. We didn't
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: know what to do. We didn't know how to tell
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: them what to do. Um, and the only way to,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: to do it was to pull it in house and
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: just figure it out ourselves and just get like the
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: really fast iteration cycles of having engineering and manufacturing basically
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: right next to each other. And so at the beginning,
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 2: it was really just a practical thing of like, this
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: is the way that we're going to get the best product,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: the fastest. Um, and you know, in the back of
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: our minds, we probably thought at some point, at some
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: level of scale, we're probably going to have to, to, uh,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 2: to outsource this, but a couple of things happened. One,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: like we got better and better at it. And then two,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: it's really become clear that these things are critical infrastructure.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 2: I mean, when you're installing these things in docks and
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: they're talking to the network and they can fly themselves
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: anytime that they need to and they're taking instructions from
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 2: the cloud, I mean, these are incredibly powerful robotic devices.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: And even when we're selling to civilian customers, I think
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: the national security stakes are extremely high. And I think
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: there's increasingly broad recognition of that, that this is among
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: the most critical technology in the world. And so being
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: able to manufacture it in the U S has become
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: a massive strategic imperative. And, and at this point, I mean,
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: we're all in, like, we just keep investing in our
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: factory and making it bigger and better and more automation. Um, and, uh,
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: it's a, it's an awesome thing to get to be
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: part of. I mean, it is, it's really, I kind
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: of think of Skydio as like a, you know, we have,
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: we kind of have like components and raw material come
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: comes in one end and autonomous drones come out the
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: other end and we do all the design and manufacturing
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: and write all the software. and sell them ourselves and
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: support them ourselves. And it's very cool to have all
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: those things under one roof, because it basically means you
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: can do anything. Any crazy product concept that we come
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: up with, there's nobody to tell us no. We can
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: do all the engineering across all the different disciplines, build
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: it ourselves, and get it out there in customers' hands.
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: That is awesome. So how does the system know how
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: to respond to different scenarios?
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: I'm a big believer in AI and autonomy. I think
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: this is the most exciting moment in human history. I
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: think the technology that we're building and where it's going,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: as much as I believe in AI, I also believe
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: that there's really no substitute for human judgment. We're not
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: trying to take the human completely out of the loop.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: We're basically just trying to give them the tools to
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: really efficiently exercise their judgment. There's still a human in
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: the loop today. of deciding to send a drone. They
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: have all the context in our software. So we integrate
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: with what's called a CAD system, computer-aided dispatch. So all
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: the calls show up in our software on a map.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: So you can see location, priority, description. And we're actually
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: integrating now. There's some really interesting companies doing 9-1-1 innovation
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: to make that even faster and have AI insights from
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: the call. So all that stuff comes into our software.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: It's still a human judgment that says, I want to
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: send a drone to this. For this kind of call,
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: this kind of of incident, I think it's worth getting
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 2: real-time situational awareness, but all they have to do is
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: click one button and away it goes. I think at
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: some stage we might get to the point where we
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 2: would provide customers the option to automatically launch. If you
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: hear certain keywords like shots fired or fleeing suspect or
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: something on the 911 call itself, you could automatically dispatch
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: a drone and then and then still have the people
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: kind of like consume the video stream and make decisions
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 2: on it.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: I mean, why not? It wouldn't hurt anything, right? No.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just an extra asset involved in an
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: unfortunate situation.
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. And I think part of the beauty
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: of these things is that the marginal cost per use
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: is basically zero. Like it costs nothing. And if the
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: worst case scenario, it's like a false positive or something,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: you just send the drone back. And so I think
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: that There's also an adoption thing, right? Like law enforcement's
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: been doing things one way for 40 years. It takes
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 2: some time to adapt the way that you do it.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: But I think we're headed towards a place where there's
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: kind of a default expectation that any call of any
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: kind of significance, you're going to send a drone just
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 2: in case. And one of the things that we hear
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: all the time from our customers actually all over the
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: country is once they've been doing this for a little while,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: the officers hate responding on the ground without a drone
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: because they feel like they're just going in blind. They
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: have no idea what they're headed into. They don't feel
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: as safe. They're not as confident. And so I think
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: we will get towards a place where it just becomes
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: kind of a default expectation.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: I have just random questions that don't really fit in anywhere.
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: This indoor drone.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, let's say I'm like, hey, I want to
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: buy this for my personal residence or right here in
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 1: my studio. I buy this drone. How much setup is
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: there involved? How much do I need to learn? Or
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: is it just, here's the base station, set it over
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 1: on the counter, put the drone on it, and it
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 1: just figures it out?
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: So you'll get the chance to fly these here. Our
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: goal is to make it so that anybody who can
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 2: use an app on a phone should be able to
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: like very quickly feel comfortable flying one of these systems. Um,
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: and the, the autonomy system is a huge part of that.
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: Like they see everything in every direction, they avoid obstacles. Um,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 2: so it's, it's, it's pretty darn safe and easy to
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: get up and running, but like anything, there are, you know,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: there are different depths of skills that, that can unlock
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: different things. And, you know, like for example, our, our
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: The San Francisco PD drone pilots are, no offense to
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 2: any of our customers, the SFPD ones are the best
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: that I've seen. And they have some guys that are
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 2: just wizards flying these things. I mean, they're like, they're
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: video gamers and the things that they can do and
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: the speed with which they do it is incredible. So
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: like anything, like it's, the barrier to entry is extremely low,
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: but the people who are great at it can unlock
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: some special things.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: Gotcha, gotcha. You want to take a break and go...
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: Look at some of these things.
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  Speaker 2: Let's do it.
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  Speaker 1: going on in the world right now, and it's to
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: the point where I don't even believe my own eyes
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: anymore because I cannot verify what people are saying about
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: all the political violence, the division. I partnered with this
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: production company called ironclad and we're doing an eight part
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: audio series on psyops on why foreign countries governments maybe
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: even our own government would conduct a psyop on its
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: own people and i just think that that this series
• 1:13:16
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• 1:13:19
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• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: you can head over to psyopshow.com Order it today. I
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: think you're gonna get a lot out of this. Who's
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: pulling the strings? Who's pulling.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: Them?
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: All right, we're out here. This is the X10.
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: Yep, so this is the flagship drone. This one doesn't
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: have a bullet hole in it. So it's good to
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: fly and we'll get to show you what it can do.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: So I just put it down on the ground here
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: and then I'm holding the controller So this is how
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 2: we fly it. So I'm just going to swipe up
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: to take off. So this is kind of like the
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: typical manual flight experience. So I've got joysticks. I can
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: move the joysticks around and it'll just respond to my commands. Now,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: the fun part here is with the autonomy system. So
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: I've got it lined up at a tree there, and
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: I'm just gonna jam the joystick forward. So I'm gonna
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: go full forward, and it's just gonna weave its way
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: through the trees. So this is basically autonomous flight. All
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: I'm telling it to do is go forward.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: Holy shit, it's just doing all that on its own?
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 2: It's doing all that on its own. So now I'm
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: gonna go backwards. I can't even look where I'm going, right?
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: And it's just gonna weave its way through, keep itself safe.
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: So it comes up to the tree wall here. It'll
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 2: find its way through that gap. Uh, and this is
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: just a huge difference of what it's like to fly
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: a drone, right? Like normally the normal experience of flying
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 2: a drone is like, I'm looking at that thing. I'm
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out where it is in relation to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: the tree. I'm worried about crashing it and here. Don't
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: give a fuck. Just full stick forward.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 1: Uh, holy shit, dude.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: We can turn around here. So this will give you
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 2: a sense of what the cameras can do. So here
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: we are looking at ourselves. So right now I'm on
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: kind of the wider field of view camera. If I
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: punch in, so you'll see a transition here to the
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 2: zoom camera. So I can like.
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: Wow. And it shows the thermal right next to it.
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: So there's my Skydio logo. I can punch back out.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 2: We've got the thermal feed. So we're obviously going to
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: pop on thermal.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: I gotta be honest, I don't like seeing myself.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: It's not your best angle?
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: Looks like an AC-130 Spectre gunship is targeting us right now.
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: What's the thing sticking out of the side?
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the thing on the side is an attachment
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: that's a speaker. So we've got four attachment ports. You
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: can put anything you want on there. So we've got
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: a spotlight. We've got Night Sense, which gives it the
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: ability to basically have night vision. And the speaker enables
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: you to talk to people on the ground. So, for example...
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: If you want to, like, you know, get somebody's attention.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: Attention. Attention.
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Please exit the area immediately. I repeat, please exit the
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: area immediately. I think we've got... Oh, nice. Nice. Always
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: a fan favorite. We actually, so Miami Beach Police Department.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: They requested that?
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: They're one of our great drone and surf responder customers.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: They deal with like huge drunk crowds around spring break.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 2: And this has become a very useful tool for them
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: to communicate with the spring break folks. So if you want,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: you can fly it here. It's a little bit like
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 2: playing a video game. So you were asking about how
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: hard are these things to fly? So the right stick
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: is going to move you around. So the first thing
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 2: to get familiar with, if you push that right stick forward,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 2: that'll push you forward. And then back will go back.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: And then you can go side to side. And I
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 2: always recommend to get comfortable with the autonomy system, just
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: you know, jam the stick forward into some trees and
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: see what happens. Yeah, so that's how you turn left stick.
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 1: Do that comfortable. Just do it. Here we go. Yeah.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Get the fuck out of here. It's going to go
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: through all that shit?
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 2: I mean, it has a tolerance for how close it'll
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: let you get. But yeah, I mean, so you're like,
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 2: you're how far into flying it? Like one minute into
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: flying it? This is like world-class drone pilot stuff, like
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: flying at high speed through obstacles. And with the autonomy system,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: it's just.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: Look at that shit.
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 2: It's a piece of cake. And the, you know, the
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 2: real point of it, it's like, it's fun to watch
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 2: it weave through obstacles. But the point of it is
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: that you can focus on the mission. So like, if,
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 2: you know, if you were a cop or an energy
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: utility worker, like you'd be looking down at the screen, right?
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: Because you'd be wanting to do an inspection on something.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 2: And you can totally comfortably fly just looking down at
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 2: the screen without worrying about like where the drone is
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: or crashing into anything. So it's actually so like if
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: you if you look down so you can like you
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: can see what it sees. You've got the left wheel
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: here will control the gimbal. So if you you can
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: look you don't have to look at the drone because
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 2: it's not going to crash. So you can push the
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: wheel down below. See this thing?
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah.
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 2: So if you so that controls gimbal pitch, and then
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 2: on the right one, it controls zoom. So the right
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 2: wheel will zoom you in and out. And this is
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 2: the point is you just focus on the mission, like
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: I want to inspect a damaged conductor, you can just
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 2: perch yourself next to it and zoom in and and
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 2: see whatever you need to see. And then when you're done,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: do you want to land it? Or you want to
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: keep flying it?
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 2: You can test the obstacle avoidance on yourself.
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: That's wild, man.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: All right, here we go. Let's play some chicken.
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 2: Make sure you get it properly lined up in the
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: crosshairs there. So you've got a bunch of telemetry here
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: telling you what's going on. Like you've got your altitude,
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 2: your heading, it's estimating the wind speed. It's flying over
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: what we call connect fusion. So right now, It's got
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: a point-to-point radio, so there's antennas here that are talking
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 2: to the drone, but it's also got cellular built in.
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 2: This has a cellular modem in it, the drone has
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 2: a cellular modem in it, and it's using Connect Fusion
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: to fuse both those two things together. The quality of
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: the video link is basically the sum of the point-to-point
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: radio plus the cellular, and it can fly on either.
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: So you could fly this thing out 10 miles, the
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 2: point-to-point radio connection would go away, but it would just
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: keep going based on cellular. I'm sure with your background,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: you can imagine this being a useful capability on the battlefield.
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: Like from a soldier's perspective, it basically just removes the
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: mystery of what's happening around you. You know, you can
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: go out a couple miles, get real time awareness, know
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: exactly who's coming, what they've got, where they're moving. And this,
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: so this is actually a good example. You see these
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: power lines, like this is the kind of work that
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: our energy utility customers would do. Like they would inspect
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: those things. They would stop at every tower and zoom
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: in or out. and look for damage or if there
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: was an outage or something, they could find what the
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 2: issue was and direct the responding folks on the ground.
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 2: So when you want, so typically what I would do
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: here is you can just, when you want it to
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 2: come home, if you tap that button there.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: So you just tap, I can do it, you tap
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: that and say return to launch. So if you tap launch,
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 2: so it'll now, autonomously come back home. It uses a
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: thing we call Pathfinder. So basically it has its own
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 2: local map that it's building, but it also has access
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 2: to global data about where the buildings are, where the
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: terrain is. And it uses all of that to plan
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 2: like the safest autonomous path, autonomous path to come home.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: No way.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: It's actually, it'll show up here in a second.
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: Where is it?
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: Probably coming back. There it is.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Oh, shit, it's way up there.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: Dude, how fucking sick is that shit?
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: So the other thing we can do, can I go
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: back here for a second? So it will recognize people.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: So if I turn and face it here, I can
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: go into the skills mode here. Activate subject tracking.
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: So....
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: It's now showing me on screen all the people that
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: it sees.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 2: So if I... I'll zoom in a little bit. So
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: if I tap on you... So it's now following you.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: So if you run out that way.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: Is it following me?
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: So it's basically just going to stay in place and
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 2: look at you. It is?
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: So I don't have it. I could set it to move,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: but right now... What does it do if I go inside?
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: It'll basically just like sit there and look at you.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 2: And then when you come back out, it'll re-identify you
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: and keep tracking. So you can see on this screen here.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 2: So it's locked onto you. And, you know, like if
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 2: you move over there, like it'll just keep staring. We're
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 2: about to ship a feature where it'll actually like move itself.
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 3: Oh, really?
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: So then when we're done... I can just hold down
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: on that button. It'll find itself a safe landing place.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 2: It's using computer vision to find a good safe place
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: to land and it just sets itself down and that's it.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Dude, that's awesome.
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: That is awesome.
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 2: It's an amazing set of technologies that come together to
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: make all that possible.
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 1: What's this thing? What's this robot thing over here?
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So everything that we just did, I kind of
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: think of as like the classic experience of flying a drone.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: Like you've got the controller, you're on the ground. You
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 2: can do some incredible stuff. And the autonomy system makes
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 2: it much easier. You know, like you'd never flown a
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 2: drone in this class before. Literally a few seconds, you
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 2: were comfortable flying at high speed through the obstacles. So
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 2: it's great. But the next chapter is dock and remote operations.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: And that's what we've got here. So this is really
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 2: the future. This is where the industry is going. So
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: this is the Skydio dock. This is basically like the
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 2: network connected charging base station for the X10. So it's
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: got a wind sensor, rain sensor on top. It's got
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: everything it needs to keep the drone ready to fly
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 2: 24 seven. So it's got a heating system, a cooling system.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: It can melt snow and ice off of it. And
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: it's basically designed to operate in as extreme weather conditions
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: as possible. So it opens up here. It's got the X10. inside.
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 2: So this is what turns the drone into a fully
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: autonomous device.
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 1: This is what staged all over all these cities.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah, installs are these installed like infrastructure. And, you know,
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 2: it kind of turns the drone into like a cloud
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: server or something where the people that use it never
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 2: have to touch it, right? It's just out there, ready
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: to do useful work. You guys can kick off the
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 2: mission whenever you're good to go. So We've programmed an
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: autonomous mission here, so this could just be running on
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: a schedule. Like, if you had a security patrol that
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: you wanted to fly, you just say, these times of day,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: I want it to take off and do its thing,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 2: and then the drone will just, in the background, fully
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: autonomously run this mission. So, you know, it's up there now,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: and the person who's controlling it can be 100 miles away, 1,000
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: miles away. Anybody with an internet connection can access it
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: and fly it.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 2: If we come over here. This is what the drone
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 2: is seeing. You had the controller experience. This is basically
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 2: the web flight experience. This is just a standard normal
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: web browser. Anybody with an internet connection and of course
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 2: the security credentials to access it can fly the drone.
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 2: It's flying this mission where we've given it a set
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: stuff to go and look at. We've got a good
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: shot of the American flag there. For example, Our utility
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: customers are using this to inspect all of their infrastructure continuously.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: So they'll say like, you know, these transmission lines, these
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 2: distribution poles, I want to go and see from these
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: angles on this schedule. And the drone will just go
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 2: off and capture the data. And then, you know, you
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: were mentioning all the kind of security patrol use cases
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 2: at corporate campuses and so on. Same deal. Like you
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: can say, these are the locations that I care about.
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 2: The drone will go, you know, take the same shot
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: from the same location. And one of the ways that
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: I think about the drones is it basically enables you
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 2: to simulate having as many cameras as you want in
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: as many different locations because it's fully software defined. So
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 2: you just tell it what views you care about and
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 2: it'll go off and get them.
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: So let's say, let's say I have one of these
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: for this property here and goes out middle of the night,
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 1: it's using thermals and it sees, I don't know, a
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: couple of people hiding in the bushes.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: Then what happens?
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 2: So- this is still stuff that we're working on, but
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 2: basically it has the ability to detect people. You saw
• 1:27:55
  Speaker 2: the tracking technology. Any person or vehicle that it sees,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: it'll detect. Then our software has APIs. Now it's finished
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 2: its mission, it's going to come back and do a
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 2: landing sequence. We should go and check out the land.
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 2: But basically, it'll just send a push notification out to
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 2: any system that you want to send an alert of like,
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: here's what's happening and here's what you've got. Now the
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 2: dock has opened itself up, the alignment, slides. And so
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: the drone is using computer vision to detect the dock,
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: the yellow and blue QR codes there. So it'll come down.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: It does a precision landing. You can see the slides
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 2: come in to align it. And then right at the
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 2: back there there's a charging pin that'll insert as the
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: roof is closing over the top.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 1: And that's it dude that is awesome it's pretty.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 2: Wild yeah yeah and it's a I mean, to me,
• 1:28:57
  Speaker 2: it's amazing technology. I mean, it's incredible stuff to get
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: to work on and build, but the point of it
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 2: is the work that it can do for our customers
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: and the capability for them to be able to deploy
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 2: these things anywhere that they need sensing and then to
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 2: be able to run it remotely and autonomously. I mean,
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: it's just a paradigm shift in the way all these
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 2: physical industries operate. Wow. I sort of think about it,
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 2: you know, our identity as a company is building flying
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 2: robots that give people superpowers, and this is a superpower.
• 1:29:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've done it.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 2: So everything you just saw, like these are products that
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 2: are currently at scale in the wild. What we're going
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 2: to show you here is still a prototype. But, you know,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 2: we were talking earlier about high speed chases and long
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: range response. We see this really intense need from our
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 2: customers to have something that can cover much longer distances
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 2: at much higher speed, which is the motivation for building
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: this thing. And we figured the best way to sort
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 2: of show it in prototype form was to integrate it
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 2: into a Cybertruck. So this is the Skydio Cybertruck. And
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 2: in the back of the truck, we've got a robotic
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 2: arm that can pick up a fixed-wing vehicle.
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: Dude, what?
• 1:30:12
  Speaker 2: So it's all the same core technology that goes into X10,
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 2: but now we've got it in a fixed-wing drone that's
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 2: launched by a robotic arm. So that thing's got a
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 2: gripper on it. and it can pick it up out
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 2: of the truck.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: Holy shit.
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: Look at that thing. So the beauty of the robotic
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 2: arm is that you take all of the complexity of
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 2: launch and land and you put it on the ground.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: So the vehicle itself can be as sleek and light
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 2: and aerodynamic as possible. So the vehicle itself is literally
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: just a flying wing. like the most efficient shape you
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: can possibly get. And it's just got a fin sticking
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: off the bottom of it. So it's using the same
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 2: computer vision technology to detect the Cybertruck here. So it's
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: got those same yellow and blue QR code looking things.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: What?
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the future is sick. So historically, people talk about
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 2: vertical takeoff and landing. And we think of this as
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 2: kind of a whole new category of robotic takeoff and landing,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 2: where the launch and the land is robotically assisted. And eventually,
• 1:31:34
  Speaker 2: our goal is to be able to do this at speed.
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 2: So have the drone or the arm be able to
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 2: throw it, just like you throw a paper airplane or something,
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: and then catch it in an autonomous way. And when
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 2: it's done, it stows it back in there.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: And that's it.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: So right now we've got this integrated into a Cybertruck,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 2: but we're building a dock for it. So just like
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 2: we've got a dock for X10, there will be a
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: dock for F10, which is the fixed wing drone that'll
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: probably hold three of them. So you've got three of
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 2: them in there and then one robotic arm to launch
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 2: and catch them. And it's going to be an incredibly
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: powerful capability because this thing will have 100 mile an
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 2: hour top speed over an hour of endurance. So with
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 2: one dock and three wings in there, You will be
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: able to have two drones in the air continuously 24-7,
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 2: two flying, one charging with, you know, 40, 50 mile
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 2: an hour or 40, 50 mile coverage radius from that,
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: which we're super, super excited about.
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: So would these be in the back of patrol cars
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 1: all over the city?
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: So these we anticipate, you actually don't need that many
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 2: of them because they have such long coverage range. So
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: I think most of our cities would probably have, you know,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 2: like dozens of the X10 docks across the cities and
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 2: maybe just like one of these in one location for
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 2: high-speed chases. But the other thing that this does is
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 2: it opens up the possibility of drone as first responder
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: to much sparser population areas. So, you know, like rural
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 2: counties where you couldn't afford to have docks everywhere, but
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: because this can cover so much more land area, you
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: can have a few of these things. And then same
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 2: thing for our infrastructure customers, like being able to inspect
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: long power lines. These folks have thousands, sometimes tens of
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: thousands of miles of transmission line, and it's not feasible
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: to put docks everywhere along that with the X10, with
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 2: the quadcopters, but with the fixed wing, it is. So
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 2: you can have like one of these things that covers
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: a shit ton of infrastructure. So we got the full
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 2: family of robots. We got the R10, the X10, and
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: then the F10, which is coming next year to cover
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: Long range, high speed, fully robotic launch land system.
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 1: Dude, awesome, awesome innovations. Thank you.
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: Congratulations.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: Super cool.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: It's a huge team effort. Hundreds of people at Skydio
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 2: working to make this stuff come to life.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 1: Very cool. Thank you. Thank you. Time doesn't slow down,
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  Speaker 1: for everyone on your list. All right, Adam, we're back
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  Speaker 1: from the break. And that was an awesome break, by
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: the way. But so we flew the X-10, the F-10.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 1: And so when you say F-10's a prototype. Yeah. How
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 1: long do you expect for that to take before it's mainstream?
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: So we have made super fast progress on it to
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 2: get to where we are now. So everything that we
• 1:36:56
  Speaker 2: just flew was about six months of work. The team
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 2: is incredible, and they've just been absolutely blitzing in it.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: My goal is end of next year to have that
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 2: thing starting to scale up in customer hands. I think
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: we're going to be pretty close to that. We'll see.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 2: The most important thing really is getting the product right.
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 2: And so we move as quickly as we can. But
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: these things need to be reliable. They need to have
• 1:37:18
  Speaker 2: all the right capability. And you can't rush that. But
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 2: it's moving pretty quickly. And one of the great things
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 2: about the position we're in now is we can do
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: collaborative development alongside of our customers. I mean, we're already
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 2: showing our customers these prototypes, getting their feedback on what
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 2: they want to do with it. And it oftentimes really
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: feels like we're just on the same team with them
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 2: trying to solve these these problem, which is super fun
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 2: So will.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: That I know we talked about it out there a
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: little bit I can't remember if it was on camera
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: off camera, but will the f10 replace the x10?
• 1:37:48
  Speaker 2: No, definitely not I think that the quadcopters are are
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: just beasts in terms of their versatility and capability and
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: you know with our public safety agencies They'll fly X10s
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: out at 200 feet to respond to a call. But
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: then if need be, like we had one in San
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 2: Francisco the other week where the guy went down to
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 2: the pier, jumped into the water and was hiding under
• 1:38:09
  Speaker 2: the pier. And they got that X10 down to literally
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: like five feet off the water, staring under the pier
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: to figure out where he was and guide in the
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 2: responding officers. And so the versatility to do that is
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 2: just incredible. You know, you can go all the way
• 1:38:22
  Speaker 2: from 400 feet down to like negative two feet if needed.
• 1:38:25
  Speaker 2: And and that's the kind of thing you can only
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: really do with a quadcopter. Um, so I expect that
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: the X10 will remain kind of like the workhorse platform. Um,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 2: but it's, we think of them as really complimentary systems.
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 2: You know, if you have something that's like gonna become
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: a high-speed chase or you need to cover a really
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: large area, that's a job for, for the F10.
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: How fast did you say the F-10 will move?
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: 100 miles an hour.
• 1:38:47
  Speaker 1: 100 miles an hour.
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: That's an FAA limit. There's a, you know, for this
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: class of drone, there's a regulatory limit at 100 miles
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 2: an hour. So that's what we'll develop towards.
• 1:38:55
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. And the other, the X-10 is 45 miles an hour.
• 1:38:58
  Speaker 2: Up to 45 miles an hour. Yeah. Man.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: So where do you see, where do you see the
• 1:39:04
  Speaker 1: F-10 being deployed?
• 1:39:07
  Speaker 2: Initially, we're gearing very heavily towards public safety because we
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: just see a really acute need there for these high-speed chases,
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: which are super dangerous. You know, agencies, they call them
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 2: pursuit policies, and every agency is a little bit different,
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: but they have rules about when they're allowed to follow
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: a suspect and when they're not. And it's a terrible
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 2: set of trade-offs because oftentimes you've got somebody who could
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 2: be a violent criminal who's getting away from the cops,
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 2: but because high-speed chases are so dangerous, oftentimes the policies
• 1:39:33
  Speaker 2: will say they're not allowed to pursue under X, Y,
• 1:39:35
  Speaker 2: Z conditions. And when they do pursue, they're taking a
• 1:39:39
  Speaker 2: ton of risk. And so it's one of these situations
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: where it's a terrible set of trade-offs. And if you
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 2: can just send a drone, I think you can basically
• 1:39:45
  Speaker 2: eliminate the need for high-speed ground pursuits. Because if the
• 1:39:49
  Speaker 2: drone's in the air, in most situations, the person won't
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 2: even know that it's there following them. And you can
• 1:39:57
  Speaker 2: follow them for as long as you need to to
• 1:39:59
  Speaker 2: end the thing. So that's a major motivation. And then
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: large area coverage. Like in urban and suburban areas, the
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 2: X-10 is unbeatable. for coverage because you have enough incident
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 2: density that you can justify having multiple docks in different locations.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 2: But if you need to cover like a 2,000 square
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 2: mile county, as many of our customers have, you're not
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: going to be able to put docks over that whole thing.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 2: And so you need something that's got longer range. So
• 1:40:23
  Speaker 2: those are the two initial areas that we're quite focused on.
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: But then the long linear inspection stuff, we're also very
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 2: excited about. So rail lines, roads, power lines, You know,
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 2: the areas where oftentimes now people are flying helicopters, which
• 1:40:38
  Speaker 2: costs a couple thousand bucks an hour and are also
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: quite dangerous. You should be able to do all of
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: that with F-10s.
• 1:40:46
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: You know, when we're talking about, you may have answered
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 1: this already, but when we're talking about, you know, when
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: it does a roving patrol and you'd had the X-10,
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: you had had me targeted out there, that little green.
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't say targeted. I would say, you know, followed.
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 3: Followed, followed.
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 1: So I think I'm fairly certain that you are the
• 1:41:12
  Speaker 1: ones that made me the target or the follow on
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: the thing. And so kind of what I'm asking is,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: let's say I bought one of these for this property.
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: Somebody came on the property, left. Would it follow them?
• 1:41:30
  Speaker 1: Would that be a human decision for them to follow them?
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: Or does the brain tell it to do?
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's basically all defined through software. And you
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: can kind of do whatever you want. I think a
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 2: typical workflow for the kind of security patrols is going
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 2: to be you basically give the set, you give the
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 2: drone like rules of engagement kind of. It's like, I
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: want you to follow this area. And if you see
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: anything that matches this description, which could be as simple
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: as like any person or vehicle, I want you to
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 2: look at them ID them, follow them around, and send
• 1:42:07
  Speaker 2: me a notification so that I can decide if I
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: want to do anything else based on that. I think
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 2: that's going to be like a very typical kind of
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 2: workflow for the security patrol kind of stuff. And all
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 2: of that is very easy to build on software. And
• 1:42:19
  Speaker 2: we've got all the sort of building blocks there. And
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 2: we can do it. We also have third-party developers that
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: are building on top of the platform and enabling capabilities
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 2: like this. And that stuff, frankly, is relatively easy to do.
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 2: The hard part is making the drone reliable and autonomous
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 2: and having the AI to detect the stuff. It's relatively
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: easy once you have that to compose it into different
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 2: kinds of capabilities for different mission sets.
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: Man, I just... I just can't think of anybody that
• 1:42:54
  Speaker 1: wouldn't want this. I mean, there's so many businesses, venues, events, stores, parks, neighborhoods.
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, and I know that there is a,
• 1:43:12
  Speaker 1: you know, I know, I know there's like a, there's
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: a concern that there's a privacy concern, but I mean,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: and I can, I could just think of a lot
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: of places where there isn't a privacy concern. I mean, every,
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 1: every grocery store and department store parking lot. I mean, yeah.
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: And how is that a privacy concern? A stadium, how
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: is that a privacy concern? A mall, a park?
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: The privacy stuff can also be managed, I think, in
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 2: really sophisticated ways with the technology. I mean, you can
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 2: do things, like this stuff already exists. You can blur out,
• 1:43:43
  Speaker 2: in recorded data, you can blur out faces and license
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 2: plates and any kind of identifiable information. So there's all
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 2: kinds of controls that you can put in place to
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 2: make it such that it's really just targeted towards whatever
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 2: the particular security objective is. And I agree with you.
• 1:43:58
  Speaker 2: I think that we're uh, everything you just described is
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 2: happening today in some form with, you know, one or
• 1:44:04
  Speaker 2: two customers in some cases, like, you know, we have
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 2: a customer that, that is using these for, uh, major
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 2: events and, and venue overwatch and security, and they're having
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 2: incredible success. I mean, they have, when you get these
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 2: big events where you.
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: Have to fucking schools.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, school school active shooter every, every other week
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 1: in this country.
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, the school could just deployed one or two
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: of these things to rove the campus.
• 1:44:28
  Speaker 2: We have a number of college campuses and some high
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 2: schools that are customers today. I think that it's, again,
• 1:44:35
  Speaker 2: it's all there. Some of this stuff is getting to
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 2: larger scale. Law enforcement is getting up to larger scale.
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 2: I think a lot of the other applications are still
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 2: relatively nascent, but the value is just so obvious and
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 2: so strong. I mean, one of the things that we
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 2: see over and over again is that oftentimes the drone
• 1:44:49
  Speaker 2: pays for itself on like the first mission. You know,
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 2: there's like one incident where somebody stole something worth $ 50, 000
• 1:44:55
  Speaker 2: and the drone is there and interdicts or Caltrans, California's
• 1:45:02
  Speaker 2: Department of Transportation, they had a great one where they
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 2: installed it at a bridge. And literally the first inspection
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 2: that they did from that drone would have cost them
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 2: probably like 50,000 bucks of scaffolding and manual time to
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 2: go and inspect that bridge. And so I think it's,
• 1:45:16
  Speaker 2: there's an inevitability to it. It's just kind of a,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 2: A speed of adoption kind of thing of like how
• 1:45:20
  Speaker 2: quickly can organizations figure out how to adapt themselves to
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 2: the tech and how quickly can we– I feel.
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: Like even farmers could use this. I mean, I'm being serious. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:32
  Speaker 2: We have some investors that own a lot of property
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 2: and have ranches and whatnot, and they're on the leading
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: edge of using these to like count cattle and things
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 2: like that. But yeah anywhere, you know the fundamental thing
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 2: is like anywhere anything anything where you care about what's
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 2: happening in the physical world? And you just want to
• 1:45:46
  Speaker 2: be able to with very low friction deploy sensors to
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 2: figure it out The autonomous drone is just an unbeatable
• 1:45:51
  Speaker 2: platform for that because it can be anywhere. It's network
• 1:45:54
  Speaker 2: connected And it's all automated. So it's all software defined man.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: Can I what is the cost of these things if
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 1: you don't mind me asking?
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: So there's we have a few different packages. Mm-hmm the
• 1:46:06
  Speaker 2: the doc really depends on like what you're doing with
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: it and like what the hardware and software configuration we're
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: doing it's on the order of like tens of thousands
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: of dollars per year for everything for like the dock
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: the drone the software um installation maintenance support like everything
• 1:46:25
  Speaker 2: it takes to just give you sort of a complete
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: solution that that's up and running um the this drone
• 1:46:31
  Speaker 2: by itself without the dock is is more affordable uh
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: but the Because the dock is a more expensive thing
• 1:46:38
  Speaker 2: for us to build, and also it delivers quite a
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: bit more value. The R10 is our least expensive product
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 2: right now, and for the hardware it starts at $ 6, 000.
• 1:46:47
  Speaker 2: So it's $ 6, 000 for the drone and the controller to
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 2: fly it.
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: And that will autonomously go inside of whatever structure you
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 1: put it in?
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you can fly it around in any indoor environment,
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: and we'll keep adding more software capability on top. So it's,
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 2: you know, these things are not yet, I mean, there's
• 1:47:08
  Speaker 2: a whole other category of consumer drones, which we used
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 2: to be in, which are, are consumers understandably are very
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 2: price sensitive. You know, they're looking for things that cost
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 2: like 500 bucks or a thousand bucks. We don't have
• 1:47:17
  Speaker 2: anything today in that price range, but the more scale
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: we get up to the lower our costs are, um,
• 1:47:22
  Speaker 2: and the, the more market we can reach. And I'm
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 2: very interested, uh, in, you know, for example, making a
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 2: dock for this thing. Um, and to have something that
• 1:47:32
  Speaker 2: rather than tens of thousands of dollars a year for
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 2: doc solution is thousands of dollars a year. And I
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 2: think that's when you can start to get into like,
• 1:47:38
  Speaker 2: you know, more of the like private security and every
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: store everywhere where one of these things could be useful.
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 2: And eventually I think it will come down to like
• 1:47:46
  Speaker 2: residential security. We just need to keep, you know, making
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 2: the tech better and better and making it more and
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 2: more affordable. Um, so it's, it's more accessible to more people.
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS A YEAR DOESN'T SOUND TERRIBLE
• 1:48:01
  Speaker 1: TO ME WHEN YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT SCHOOLS, BUSINESSES.
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 2: IT'S NOT.
• 1:48:07
  Speaker 1: A LOT OF PEOPLE SPEND THAT ON HOME SECURITY SYSTEMS.
• 1:48:11
  Speaker 2: THE DEMAND IS FASTER THAN WE CAN KEEP UP WITH
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: RIGHT NOW. THE BOTTLENECK IS HOW QUICKLY CAN WE BUILD
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: AND DEPLOY THEM, ESPECIALLY WITH THE DOCS BECAUSE THE VALUE
• 1:48:19
  Speaker 2: IS JUST SO HIGH. there. And, you know, as I said,
• 1:48:22
  Speaker 2: there's many instances where it pays for itself on literally
• 1:48:24
  Speaker 2: the first mission because it can do things you couldn't
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 2: do any other way.
• 1:48:33
  Speaker 1: When you guys are making recommendations for customers with the
• 1:48:38
  Speaker 1: X10 in the dock. How many, I mean, so what
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 1: are your suggestions? Are your suggestions that there's a drone
• 1:48:46
  Speaker 1: in the air 24 hours a day? Or is your suggestion,
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, how fast does it recharge when it comes?
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 2: It's got a 40 minute runtime? Up to 40 minute
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 2: flight time. Typical flight time is more like half an hour.
• 1:48:59
  Speaker 1: And then it.
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 2: Right now charges in about 20% longer than flight time.
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 2: So if you fly for 30 minutes, it'll charge for
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: like 35 to 40 minutes. We have a hardware update,
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 2: which will retrofit into all of our existing docks and
• 1:49:12
  Speaker 2: all the new ones will ship with it. That'll take
• 1:49:13
  Speaker 2: it down to 20% less than flight time. So you
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 2: fly for 30 minutes, you charge for like 20, 25 minutes,
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 2: which is a really big deal because that means the
• 1:49:21
  Speaker 2: percentage of time you can spend in the air is
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: that much higher. So it depends on the industry. And
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: one of the things that I actually really enjoy about
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 2: what I get to do, what we get to do now,
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: is really getting into the details of like, you know,
• 1:49:34
  Speaker 2: how does the Department of Transportation work and what are
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 2: their mission sets and what are the key cost drivers
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 2: to them and what matters to them from an efficiency standpoint.
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 2: And then how can we best tailor our products and
• 1:49:45
  Speaker 2: then also how we deploy our products to meet those missions.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: So in law enforcement, for example, one docked drone can
• 1:49:53
  Speaker 2: respond to roughly 2,000 to 3,000 calls per year as,
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: you know, rough rule of thumb. And so you can
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: use that as a guidepost and On average, there's roughly
• 1:50:03
  Speaker 2: one call per citizen per year. So the US population, whatever,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 2: 330 million, there's roughly 300 million 911 calls in the
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: US per year. And so you can basically, for any city,
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 2: do quick back of the envelope math of like, all right,
• 1:50:20
  Speaker 2: it's a 100,000 person town. They're going to get about 100,000
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 2: calls for service per year.
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: If we want to.
• 1:50:25
  Speaker 2: Respond to the most important, say, 20% of those 20,000
• 1:50:31
  Speaker 2: calls for service per year, you're talking roughly 10 docs.
• 1:50:34
  Speaker 2: For a big city like New York, you're talking hundreds
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 2: of docs. It scales like that. There's rules of thumbs
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 2: like this, but every customer and every city and everything's
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 2: always a little bit different. One of the things I've
• 1:50:49
  Speaker 2: learned is you never want to be too rigid on
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 2: these things. You want to be very adaptable to the
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 2: particulars of a location, a geography, and the needs there.
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 1: How long do they last?
• 1:50:59
  Speaker 2: The docks are designed for a heavy, heavy life, five-year lifespan, heavy,
• 1:51:04
  Speaker 2: heavy use five-year lifespan.
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: So typically when we're deploying these there, we're doing five-year contracts.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: We're flexible on this. We can do different things, but
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 2: typically it's a five-year contract. And then we'll replace the
• 1:51:17
  Speaker 2: drone actually halfway through. The drone at heavy use has
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 2: a two to three-year lifespan. So you get a new
• 1:51:22
  Speaker 2: drone halfway through, but the dock should last five years.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: Right on. So, okay. Wow. That's pretty fucking good. Yeah. Nice, nice. Well, let's,
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 1: I know you, so let's move on just drones in general.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: I mean, you are the drone guy. So, you know,
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 1: I know you guys went over to Ukraine. Yeah. What
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: does drone warfare look like today? Where's it going? Yeah.
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: What did you guys learn over there?
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot in there.
• 1:51:53
  Speaker 1: I think the.
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: So even before Ukraine, like the US Army I mentioned
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: is our biggest customer and was actually our first kind
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 2: of non-consumer big customer. So we kind of went from
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 2: being a pure consumer company to like consumer plus the
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 2: US military as the rest of the enterprise stuff filled out.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, the first thing I would say is that
• 1:52:14
  Speaker 2: what the Ukrainians are doing just in general is incredibly impressive.
• 1:52:20
  Speaker 2: And there's a sense of, which makes sense, but there's
• 1:52:24
  Speaker 2: a sense of kind of national unity and purpose there.
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 2: that is really awe-inspiring to see, especially coming from the
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 2: US and the West, where I think we're lacking that
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 2: in many ways. Now, it's a tragic set of conditions
• 1:52:37
  Speaker 2: that's created it for them, but it's still incredibly impressive
• 1:52:40
  Speaker 2: to see. And look, the macro headlines are all true.
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, drones are everything there. Like, at this point,
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 2: the majority of the strikes are carried out by drones.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 2: All the reconnaissance and surveillance is done by drones. And
• 1:52:58
  Speaker 2: the pace of innovation is just wild on both the
• 1:53:02
  Speaker 2: Russian and the Ukrainian side. I mean, it's just a
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 2: continual back and forth hardware and software. And I think
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 2: the Ukrainians have done just an incredibly impressive job in
• 1:53:14
  Speaker 2: an incredibly scrappy way of building some incredibly impressive systems
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 2: that do all different kinds of things. One of the
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 2: One of the really obvious and I think really important
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 2: things that you can see there is just the inherent
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 2: dual-use nature of the technology. Especially for reconnaissance drones, the
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 2: vast majority of what they're using at the small scale
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 2: is basically consumer quadcopters. And unfortunately, most of them are
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 2: still coming from China, but it's an incredibly dangerous dependency
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 2: for them because they're essentially at the whim of these
• 1:53:52
  Speaker 2: Chinese companies And there's a back and forth there where
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 2: the Chinese companies keep locking them down in ways to
• 1:53:57
  Speaker 2: try to make them not useful for the Ukrainians. The
• 1:53:59
  Speaker 2: Ukrainians have to keep like cracking them. And there's a
• 1:54:01
  Speaker 2: constant fear that, you know, flying a Chinese drone is
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 2: going to give away your location and the Russians are
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 2: going to use that for targeting. So I think there's
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 2: a bunch of different lessons to be learned there. And
• 1:54:12
  Speaker 2: we've had a journey ourselves. So we, you know, we
• 1:54:16
  Speaker 2: want a program in 2021 to be the Army short-range
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 2: reconnaissance drone. It's a program of record. It was a
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 2: big competition. We basically went all out to try to
• 1:54:27
  Speaker 2: win this thing. We were a consumer company at the time.
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 2: It seemed like a great opportunity, both from a business
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 2: perspective and from an impact perspective. And we were very naive.
• 1:54:36
  Speaker 2: I mean, we didn't know anything about working with the military.
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: We didn't really understand kind of the different user needs
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: landscape at the time. And so we basically built our
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: first enterprise drone X2 largely informed by the requirements of
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: this program, the Army Short Range Reconnaissance Program. And we
• 1:54:55
  Speaker 2: did a bunch of customization to the hardware and the
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 2: software to meet the requirements. When the conflict in Ukraine started,
• 1:55:03
  Speaker 2: everybody needed drones and we sent a bunch of X2s
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: and they basically didn't work on the front lines. And
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 2: the painful thing was not only were the things that
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 2: we did to meet the US Army spec not helpful,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 2: in many cases, they were like, unhelpful, it like actively
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: made the system worse. Like we integrated a radio that, that, uh,
• 1:55:25
  Speaker 2: operated basically on one very narrow set of frequencies. It's
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: turned out to be extremely easy to jam. Uh, there
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 2: was nothing in the requirements about being able to navigate
• 1:55:33
  Speaker 2: without GPS, even though that turned out to be critically important. Uh,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 2: and it was, it was a super painful, I mean, one,
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 2: it sucked that the drones didn't work and it was
• 1:55:41
  Speaker 2: a painful moment for us as a company to just
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 2: be facing this situation. where, you know, we were selling
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 2: drones to the military, the US military, which is great.
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 2: But when it turned out they, you know, the situation
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: where they actually needed to be used, they weren't meeting
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 2: the need. And ultimately, that's what led me to visit
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: myself a couple of times to just kind of see firsthand,
• 1:56:01
  Speaker 2: like what's going on here, what technology needs to exist.
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 2: And we built all of that into X10, which is
• 1:56:08
  Speaker 2: the successor to X2, and got to a place where
• 1:56:13
  Speaker 2: the systems perform extremely well in the harshest conditions. And
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: electronic warfare, GPS jamming, all the different things that matter.
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 2: And now through mainly European partners, we've deployed thousands of
• 1:56:27
  Speaker 2: these systems into Ukraine, which is still relatively small scale
• 1:56:32
  Speaker 2: compared to the scale of drone use that they're going after,
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: but I think is pretty unique among western companies in
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: our class to have systems that are actually like meeting
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 2: the need on the battlefield and and surviving electronic warfare.
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah i mean so you are all of your drones
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: surviving electronic warfare are these the ones that you're sending
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: over there so they all have this capability.
• 1:56:57
  Speaker 2: It's um there's some variation there's some differences between the
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 2: x10 and the x10d In general, a lot of this stuff,
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 2: you'll hear this term like dual use, which I don't
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 2: know if you're familiar with, but basically it means that
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 2: something that can be used for civilian purposes or for
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 2: military purposes. In this class of drone, a lot of
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 2: the stuff turns out to be strikingly dual use in nature.
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 2: So one of the things that we've really focused on
• 1:57:19
  Speaker 2: is GPS denied navigation, being able to use computer vision
• 1:57:22
  Speaker 2: to fly the drone autonomously such that if GPS is jammed,
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 2: it can still be stable, it can still return on
• 1:57:27
  Speaker 2: and so on. So that really matters on the battlefield.
• 1:57:30
  Speaker 2: It also matters flying through the urban canyon in New
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 2: York City because GPS is oftentimes completely unreliable when you're
• 1:57:37
  Speaker 2: flying in urban settings. And so there's a lot of
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 2: things like that. I would say the biggest difference is
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 2: the radio. So we integrate a different radio for X10D,
• 1:57:45
  Speaker 2: which is the defense variant, which operates on a wider
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 2: set of frequencies now and can do frequency hopping. And
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 2: we've done a bunch of innovation there. And then we've
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 2: also done a bunch of software work on top to
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 2: be able to do automated missions and intelligent missions in
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 2: the face of like jammed or partially jammed communications and
• 1:58:01
  Speaker 2: jammed or partially jammed GPS. So we went through kind
• 1:58:07
  Speaker 2: of a philosophical shift as a company where we went
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 2: for our defense business from being oriented towards the Army's
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 2: requirements to frankly kind of putting less weight on that
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 2: and putting a lot more weight on like, what's the
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 2: reality on the ground in Ukraine? Let's make it awesome
• 1:58:23
  Speaker 2: for that. with the bet that one, the mission there matters.
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 2: And then two, whether they realize it or not, that's
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 2: what all of our defense customers are eventually gonna need.
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 2: And that's been a journey. We have lost some major
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 2: programs in the US because we weren't sort of going
• 1:58:39
  Speaker 2: after the specs that they were putting out there, but
• 1:58:42
  Speaker 2: we've actually then come back and over time been pulled
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 2: back in because our drones were the ones that like
• 1:58:47
  Speaker 2: actually work and meet the need and deliver the capability
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: in the situations that they care about. And at this point,
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 2: a very deep commitment to that. Like I, you know,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 2: philosophically for us as a company, we want to make
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: systems that really work and really meet the need of
• 1:59:01
  Speaker 2: the end user. And we're willing to like take business
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: risk on particular military programs to, you know, to potentially
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: risk losing them in favor of just building the thing
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: that we think is actually going to work and, and
• 1:59:15
  Speaker 2: meet the need. And it's frustrating to have to make
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 2: those choices, but, uh, I think for our identity as
• 1:59:19
  Speaker 2: a company and ultimately, I think it's the right thing
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: to do. That's the way that we approach it now.
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: I mean, what capabilities are the U.S. Army interested in?
• 1:59:29
  Speaker 2: So, you mean that it might be divergent from... So,
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 2: one of the things... I mean, a lot has been
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 2: said and written about military acquisitions and what works and
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: what doesn't. The thing that I find is that it's... Fortunately,
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: we are not in a large-scale active conflict today, which
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: is great. But it also means that all this stuff
• 1:59:55
  Speaker 2: is a little bit theoretical and it's very easy to
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: get wrapped around the axle on things that don't actually
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 2: matter that much. I mean, one of the things that
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 2: I like about selling to our civilian customers like law
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 2: enforcement and others is that it's very real. You know,
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 2: you sell a drone to a cop, they're going to
• 2:00:07
  Speaker 2: fly it later that day on a real mission. And
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 2: if it doesn't work, they're going to call you and
• 2:00:11
  Speaker 2: be pissed. And like, you know, you better fucking fix
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 2: it or you're out. And that kind of immediacy doesn't
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 2: really exist or it's not the default state in the
• 2:00:19
  Speaker 2: military because fortunately we're not at war. So, you know,
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 2: one example of this, is they're very interested in having
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 2: kind of like common hardware and software to control any drone,
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 2: which in theory I get. You know, it's like, it'd
• 2:00:32
  Speaker 2: be great to have like one remote that can talk
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 2: to any drone and stand interface to the whole thing.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 2: But if you imagine kind of like a, imagine if
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 2: like every TV had to work with like a government
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 2: designed universal remote control, like the chances that that would
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 2: be like a good reliable experience is pretty low. You know,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 2: even under the best of circumstances, universal remote controls are
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 2: not very good Um, and when they're dictated by government requirements,
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 2: the chances of it being good is even lower. Um,
• 2:00:59
  Speaker 2: and so this is, it seems like a small thing,
• 2:01:01
  Speaker 2: but it's a real thing. It's like, that's how you
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 2: interface with the drone. Um, and if you have to
• 2:01:05
  Speaker 2: work through third party hardware and software, it's just harder to,
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 2: to make a really awesome, reliable experience. Um, and so,
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 2: you know, that's one of the things where, and I
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 2: understand where it comes from, like in theory, it kind
• 2:01:15
  Speaker 2: of makes sense. I think in practice for the way
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 2: technology works and what it takes to build good, reliable systems.
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 2: it's not the best way to get there. So we
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 2: do a bunch of work to make it so that
• 2:01:22
  Speaker 2: our system can play nicely with third-party stuff and you
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 2: can get all the data you need out and you
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 2: can fly it from a third-party controller, which sometimes some
• 2:01:29
  Speaker 2: people are going to need to do. It's just, you know,
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 2: it's not the default way to get the best experience.
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 2: So there's a lot of stuff like that that I
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 2: think kind of looks good on paper, seems like it
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 2: makes sense in theory, but in practice is not the
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 2: way that you're going to get the best capability to
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 2: the end user. And at this point, we're really just
• 2:01:44
  Speaker 2: focused on that.
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: And we will, you know, we'll.
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 2: Try to, work with anybody to steer things in a
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 2: direction that's going to result in great capability, but we're
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 2: also less afraid to sometimes just say like, sorry, we
• 2:01:58
  Speaker 2: don't think that's really going to work and we don't
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 2: want to put a system in somebody's hand that's not
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 2: going to do what they need.
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 3: It to do.
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: The holidays are great, but let's be honest, they're exhausting.
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• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: they know we sent you. That's helixsleep.com. Let's move into
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 1: the competition with China, drone warfare. Who's ahead right now?
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 2: Well, look, I think historically China, especially at the lower
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 2: end of the market in consumer drones is dominant. And
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 2: when we started in 2014, a lot of people thought
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: the prospect of trying to build a US company at
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 2: all to compete with Chinese companies was insane. Um, I
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 2: think the, if you think about what goes into a
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 2: drone from a hardware standpoint, it, you can sort of
• 2:04:51
  Speaker 2: think of it as like a mobile phone, like processors, cameras,
• 2:04:54
  Speaker 2: radios combined with a radio control helicopter, you know, at
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 2: the most basic level from a hardware standpoint, that's what
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: you're talking about. And both of those devices, radio control
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: helicopters and, uh, phones, consumer electronics have been built in China. Um,
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: and it's not an accident that that has happened. I mean,
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 2: it's the result of, of, uh, very intentional policy actions
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 2: on the part of the Chinese government to favor local
• 2:05:19
  Speaker 2: manufacturing and build up their industrial base, uh, and, you know,
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 2: do things that make it very difficult for other countries,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 2: not just the U S but other countries to, to
• 2:05:28
  Speaker 2: compete based on, on, on some of the things that
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: they do to kind of like favor their own companies
• 2:05:32
  Speaker 2: and subsidize manufacturing and so on. Um, which, you know,
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 2: you can't necessarily fault them for they've got their strategy
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 2: and they're, they're going to, They're going to do it.
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: I just think everybody in the West has to be
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 2: aware that this is what's really going on. So from
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 2: a hardware standpoint, they had the right ingredients. And DJI,
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 2: which is the leading Chinese company that we compete with
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 2: in civilian markets, has done a phenomenal job from an
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 2: engineering standpoint of capitalizing on that and building incredible hardware
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: systems at extremely low cost. Now, they're doing so with
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 2: quite a bit of government support, both explicitly and implicitly.
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 2: from a technical standpoint, they are, especially on the hardware,
• 2:06:12
  Speaker 2: they are formidable. And the vast majority of US drone
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 2: companies over the last 12 years have just not been
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: able to survive in the market. The reason why I
• 2:06:23
  Speaker 2: think we have been able to get to where we
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 2: are is because we weren't, our strategy was not to
• 2:06:27
  Speaker 2: try to kind of like copy what they were doing
• 2:06:29
  Speaker 2: or just compete head to head with like the same thing.
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 2: We really focused, like we think of the drone as
• 2:06:34
  Speaker 2: more of a flying robot. It's got a bunch of sensors,
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: it's got AI, it's got autonomy, it's going to smarter,
• 2:06:38
  Speaker 2: it's going to be able to do more stuff. We
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 2: really focused on that as a core differentiating technology and
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 2: really the direction the market was going. I think that's
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 2: how we've been able to survive and now thrive by
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 2: building products that are differentiated. It's where the puck is going,
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 2: it's not where it's been. Then we are also the beneficiary,
• 2:07:02
  Speaker 2: I think, of just a ton of momentum in this
• 2:07:05
  Speaker 2: country towards realizing this is a critical industry. A lot
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 2: of our customers, they like buying from a US company
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 2: and they're willing to pay more for a US product,
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 2: which we deeply, deeply appreciate and benefit from. Increasingly now
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 2: at the federal government level, there's a recognition that this
• 2:07:24
  Speaker 2: is critical technology depending on China is untenable. We're beneficiaries
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 2: as well of the political will to push back against China.
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 2: There's increasing series of restrictions on Chinese drones. It started
• 2:07:41
  Speaker 2: with federal government, some of that has trickled down to
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 2: state and local government. There's a potential ban now on
• 2:07:46
  Speaker 2: the whole consumer market as well.
• 2:07:48
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:07:50
  Speaker 1: DGI.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: They're going to ban DGI drones.
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 2: It's a possibility.
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: This is obviously a a big deal in the drone world.
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 2: And it's become very polarizing for us. And actually a
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 2: lot of people, especially like kind of in the drone
• 2:08:09
  Speaker 2: enthusiast community, now see us as like the enemy because we're,
• 2:08:12
  Speaker 2: you know, they like blame the DJI ban on us,
• 2:08:15
  Speaker 2: even though we really did have nothing to do with it.
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, we are, Everything that I'm saying now, I
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 2: would say in any forum. And I think the Chinese
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 2: drones pose a real risk. We've advocated for policies to
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 2: restrict them, especially in critical markets. But DJI has kind
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 2: of successfully turned us into like the boogeyman in many circles,
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 2: at least from a PR standpoint. So nobody knows exactly
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 2: how this is going to play out. And honestly, I
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: don't know exactly what the right answer is, but I
• 2:08:38
  Speaker 2: think it's the national security stakes, I do think are
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 2: pretty objectively clear. Like if you think about, I think
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 2: it was, operation spider web, the, like the Ukrainian operation
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 2: where they snuck a bunch of drones into Russia and
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: then use them to like, to launch an attack. I mean,
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 2: like without sounding too kind of.
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 1: Destroyed billions of dollars.
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's like, I mean, we are willingly importing Chinese
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: drones right now that like are internet connected and take
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: instructions from the cloud. Like the, the threat surface area
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: is in the worst case scenario is, is really, really bad.
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: I mean, can you elaborate on that a little bit?
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, that are connected to the network taking direction
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: from the cloud. I mean, what could that look like?
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 2: Look, I don't, you know, I would kind of put like,
• 2:09:28
  Speaker 2: so you saw the dock, right? The dock drone. So
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 2: that thing can be flown remotely and autonomously. And it's
• 2:09:38
  Speaker 2: a network connected device. So ultimately- the, you know, we,
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 2: we do a bunch of things to make that link
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: as secure as it possibly can. So you can't hack
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 2: into it, but ultimately you have to trust the person
• 2:09:48
  Speaker 2: that's making it. DJI has a doc. Um, and you know,
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 2: I would sort of pose the question of like, does
• 2:09:53
  Speaker 2: it seem like a good idea to install doc drones
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: all over our cities, all over our critical infrastructure that
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: ultimately are running software on the drone that is controlled
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 2: by an adversary. You know the Chinese government at the
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 2: end of the day has control over their companies and
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: whatever they tell them to do They will do whatever
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: the management the company thinks at the end of day
• 2:10:14
  Speaker 2: doesn't really matter And so I think the you know,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 2: the that's like kind of the worst case scenario, but
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 2: even aside from that I mean one of the things
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: that I think about like historically and This is much
• 2:10:27
  Speaker 2: bigger than just drones historically like in the peak of
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 2: the Cold War in the 60s the federal government kind
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 2: of had a monopoly on cutting-edge technology. Like, 70% of
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 2: the R & D spending in the US was directly
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 2: funded by the federal government in the 60s. And, you know,
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 2: all the cutting-edge stuff of, like, nuclear missiles and submarines
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 2: and fighter jets. I mean, that was the cutting-edge technology
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: of the day, and most of it was funded by
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 2: government research. And today it's completely flipped. Now it's like
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: 80% R & D spend is funded in the private sector,
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 2: And generally, I think that's great because we all benefit
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 2: from it. We're surrounded by technology companies that are spending tens,
• 2:11:09
  Speaker 2: hundreds of billions of dollars a year to build products
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: that are basically just awesome for us and make our
• 2:11:13
  Speaker 2: lives better. But it also means that the government has
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 2: kind of lost its grip on cutting edge tech. And
• 2:11:21
  Speaker 2: all the cutting edge stuff now tends to be kind
• 2:11:23
  Speaker 2: of civilian or consumer first and we need a strategy
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 2: for that because it still matters from a military perspective.
• 2:11:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, something outside of drones, like AI technology, large
• 2:11:34
  Speaker 2: language models. I mean, these things are incredibly powerful from
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 2: a defense standpoint, from a war standpoint, national security, but
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 2: they're not originating in like a government controlled company or
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: a defense contractor. And so there's different approaches that you
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: can have there. Like, you know, what Andrel is doing,
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: what Shield is doing, which I think is phenomenal. Like
• 2:11:52
  Speaker 2: these companies I sort of think of, and I think
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 2: they would probably say the same thing. Like, They're standing
• 2:11:56
  Speaker 2: up defense-focused companies that are trying to harvest and integrate
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: the best of the cutting-edge civilian technology. We're a little
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 2: bit different in that we are dual-use ourselves. The same
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: core drone that we sell to a energy utility is very,
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 2: very similar to what a soldier needs on the battlefield.
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 2: As a country, I think it's really important that we
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 2: have a strategy to harness the best of the civilian
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: tech for defense purposes. And then the other thing is
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: that if all this stuff is going to be developed
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 2: in the private sector outside of the government's direct grip,
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 2: where it's developed and the supply chains that lead into
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 2: it are also incredibly important. And it really is a technology.
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think that the technology battle with China,
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 2: I think, is the number one battleground. Like, who's going
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 2: to control the chips? Who's going to control AI? Where
• 2:12:48
  Speaker 2: are the drones going to be made? What servers are
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: they going to call home to? And even all the
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: tech that's developed and sold into civilian markets has enormous
• 2:12:57
  Speaker 2: national security implications. Because if you, like, you know, if
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 2: you buy a Chinese drone, and I don't mean this in,
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like there's nothing wrong with somebody going
• 2:13:08
  Speaker 2: to Best Buy and buying a Chinese drone or, you know,
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 2: a police agency buying a Chinese drone, but you are
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: basically funding, you know, military technology of an adversary. I mean,
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 2: that money is going to China to help them build
• 2:13:20
  Speaker 2: better drones. So that's one risk. And then the other is,
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 2: They can cut it off anytime that they want, you know,
• 2:13:27
  Speaker 2: so you can, there's just being able to maintain supply
• 2:13:30
  Speaker 2: is not guaranteed. And probably when you need it most
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 2: is the time when they're going to like pull the rug.
• 2:13:38
  Speaker 1: They tried to pull the rug on you, didn't they?
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 2: They did. Yeah.
• 2:13:40
  Speaker 1: So I have. EGI specifically.
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 2: Well, the Chinese government.
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: The Chinese government.
• 2:13:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So we, um, last year we had the great
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 2: honor of, uh, I think, and I think we were
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 2: really like the first us drone company to be sanctioned
• 2:13:54
  Speaker 2: by the Chinese government.
• 2:13:55
  Speaker 1: Congratulations.
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I was named personally. So now I've been
• 2:13:58
  Speaker 2: personally sanctioned by, uh, Iran and the Chinese government.
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: Nice.
• 2:14:03
  Speaker 2: Um, so I, I haven't gotten Russia yet.
• 2:14:05
  Speaker 1: But, um, yeah.
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 2: And they, so their stated reason for, for sanctioning Skydio was, uh,
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 2: that we had sold drones to Taiwan. The only drones
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 2: that we sold to Taiwan at the time went to
• 2:14:17
  Speaker 2: the fire department. I think the stated reason is likely
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 2: not the real reason. I think the real reason is
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 2: that we are now quite successfully competing against DJI, their
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 2: leading company in the market, and we're taking market share
• 2:14:34
  Speaker 2: away from them. Then two, the US government is starting
• 2:14:36
  Speaker 2: to restrict DJI. I think it was a retaliatory move
• 2:14:40
  Speaker 2: against that. It's been extremely aggressive. So we knew that
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 2: we had risk, right? And we didn't start life as
• 2:14:47
  Speaker 2: a military company. So we didn't start life saying like,
• 2:14:49
  Speaker 2: all right, we can't get any components from China. We
• 2:14:51
  Speaker 2: started life saying, we want to build like a really
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 2: great drone. We're going to build it in the US.
• 2:14:55
  Speaker 2: You know, we had a preference away from using Chinese components,
• 2:14:59
  Speaker 2: but we still had a few of them in the drone,
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 2: the biggest of which was the battery. So on the
• 2:15:04
  Speaker 2: day that they announced the sanctions, they showed up at
• 2:15:09
  Speaker 2: any component vendor we had in China, literally government officials
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 2: showed up. and shut them down, took the tools and
• 2:15:15
  Speaker 2: equipment that they were using to build Skydio stuff. In
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 2: some cases, they actually took people into custody.
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: No kidding.
• 2:15:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And over the last year, they've basically been doing
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 2: everything they can to put us out of business in
• 2:15:26
  Speaker 2: second and third level dependencies in our supply chain. So
• 2:15:29
  Speaker 2: if we work as a supplier, even if that supplier
• 2:15:32
  Speaker 2: isn't directly using any Chinese material in our component, the
• 2:15:38
  Speaker 2: Chinese government will try to use it as leverage against
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 2: them if that supplier has any other dependence on China,
• 2:15:44
  Speaker 2: to get them to stop doing business with us. And
• 2:15:46
  Speaker 2: we're fortunate to have a bunch of awesome suppliers that
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 2: want to do the right thing and are still working
• 2:15:57
  Speaker 2: with us outside of China, obviously.
• 2:16:00
  Speaker 1: So China is very concerned with you.
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 2:16:04
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's a global, it's a battlefield for technology, right?
• 2:16:08
  Speaker 2: And they... DJI is a formidable company, like from a
• 2:16:13
  Speaker 2: technical standpoint, they're incredibly impressive. Um, and you know, the
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 2: Chinese government, you can tell they want to maintain that
• 2:16:20
  Speaker 2: kind of stranglehold on the market. And the more it
• 2:16:22
  Speaker 2: gets challenged, uh, the more that they try to, to
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 2: fight back. We actually, so I haven't, I haven't, uh,
• 2:16:28
  Speaker 2: told this story broadly, but we have some interesting history here.
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 2: So when we, we started the company in 2014 and, uh,
• 2:16:36
  Speaker 2: Shortly after we started, we were approached by DJI about
• 2:16:39
  Speaker 2: wanting to license our technology to go into their drones.
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 2: And this was a different world back then. I mean,
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 2: this was really before the geopolitical tension had exploded. And
• 2:16:50
  Speaker 2: we were like three people in a basement. They weren't
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 2: as big of a company as they are now, but
• 2:16:53
  Speaker 2: they were still a very big kind of behemoth organization,
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 2: certainly from our standpoint, like being three people in a basement.
• 2:17:00
  Speaker 2: So we, you know, we went and visited them and
• 2:17:05
  Speaker 2: We basically felt like there was just kind of a
• 2:17:10
  Speaker 2: different vision of the future from what they had. They
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 2: were very focused on building these manually flown drones, and
• 2:17:15
  Speaker 2: we felt like this autonomy presented a fundamentally new opportunity.
• 2:17:18
  Speaker 2: It wasn't just sort of like a checkbox feature. It
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 2: was like a different paradigm. It's kind of the shift
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 2: from a flip phone to a smartphone or something. It's
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 2: just sort of a different way of operating. And we
• 2:17:28
  Speaker 2: ultimately just felt like that wasn't the direction they were going,
• 2:17:31
  Speaker 2: and that's really what we wanted to do. Um, so
• 2:17:34
  Speaker 2: we decided not to do it. And when we decided
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 2: not to do it, they made it very clear that
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 2: they were going to try to crush us. You know, they,
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 2: they basically said like, if you don't do this, like we're,
• 2:17:41
  Speaker 2: you know, we're going to come after you with everything
• 2:17:43
  Speaker 2: that we've got as a company. And they implied, you know,
• 2:17:45
  Speaker 2: with the support of our government, we're going to try
• 2:17:47
  Speaker 2: to kill you. And they basically happened. since we started,
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 2: you know, since 2014.
• 2:17:52
  Speaker 1: Um, how does that feel?
• 2:17:55
  Speaker 2: Uh, well, it feels out of that, you know, it
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 2: feels awesome to be where we are. I think, um,
• 2:18:04
  Speaker 2: one of the things, look, I'm, I'm super proud. to
• 2:18:08
  Speaker 2: be doing what we're doing in the U S I
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 2: think the national mission is incredibly important. I'm also a
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 2: very competitive person. Uh, and so I'm, you know, there's
• 2:18:19
  Speaker 2: lots of motivators for me. I love the impact that
• 2:18:20
  Speaker 2: we have with our customers. I love working with our team.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 2: I love building the product. I also love competing. Um,
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 2: and so I love the feeling that, you know, we've got,
• 2:18:29
  Speaker 2: we've got competitors, we've got adversaries out there. Um, and
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 2: you know, they're going to try to beat us and
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 2: we're going to try to beat them. And we're, you know,
• 2:18:36
  Speaker 2: we're going to, For me personally, I'm gonna do everything
• 2:18:38
  Speaker 2: I can to make this stuff as awesome as it
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 2: can be and have it be the best in the world.
• 2:18:45
  Speaker 1: I'm just curious, do you see yourself going back to
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: a consumer product?
• 2:18:51
  Speaker 2: We get asked this question a lot now. I think
• 2:18:57
  Speaker 2: that the impact and the opportunity for the kinds of
• 2:19:01
  Speaker 2: customers that we serve in critical industries is just so
• 2:19:04
  Speaker 2: big and so important that it really demands our full attention.
• 2:19:08
  Speaker 2: And I think consumer drones, it's painful for me. We
• 2:19:11
  Speaker 2: had a consumer product. I used it myself.
• 2:19:14
  Speaker 1: I loved it.
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 2: Consumers did all kinds of amazing things with it. But
• 2:19:18
  Speaker 2: I just think that the work that we do and
• 2:19:21
  Speaker 2: the mission that we have with our enterprise and government
• 2:19:24
  Speaker 2: customers is just so important. I mean, it's really lifesaving
• 2:19:28
  Speaker 2: stuff now on a daily basis that people are doing
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 2: with our drones. that for the stage that we're at
• 2:19:32
  Speaker 2: as a company, I still think that deserves our full
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 2: focus and attention. Because I think it's still so early.
• 2:19:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, all the things, like you get it. You're
• 2:19:40
  Speaker 2: talking about like these, you should have Doctrones at every
• 2:19:43
  Speaker 2: shopping mall and every school and people can be using
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 2: them for personal security. Like I agree with all that
• 2:19:48
  Speaker 2: stuff and we're like 1% of the way there today.
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's, for where we are right now,
• 2:19:56
  Speaker 2: I think that's really where we need to be focused.
• 2:19:58
  Speaker 2: I would love to find some kind of way where,
• 2:20:02
  Speaker 2: you know, if DJI really does get banned, we can
• 2:20:05
  Speaker 2: enable somebody to build a great consumer drone, maybe with
• 2:20:08
  Speaker 2: some of our technology or something. Because I do think
• 2:20:11
  Speaker 2: there's a need there.
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: How fast can you make these things? I mean, I
• 2:20:17
  Speaker 1: want one. I'm not fucking around. I'm being serious. Take
• 2:20:22
  Speaker 1: security seriously.
• 2:20:25
  Speaker 2: Like, how fast can we develop a new drone?
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, how fast can you pump out these X10s?
• 2:20:30
  Speaker 1: Because when I was asking, I think I had asked
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 1: what's the biggest hurdle, and I believe you said manufacturing.
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 2: So we're at about 1,000 drones a month coming out
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 2: of our factory today. The dock is like a more
• 2:20:43
  Speaker 2: complex thing, and we're earlier in the ramp cycle there.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 2: So the dock is like hundreds a month, but we're
• 2:20:50
  Speaker 2: ramping up there. And we're getting better and better at it.
• 2:20:53
  Speaker 2: So this product, the R10, this whole thing from concept
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 2: to what you see here, like functioning, awesome drone was
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 2: like six or seven months. It'll probably take us another
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 2: three or four months to get to the point where
• 2:21:08
  Speaker 2: we're really ready to scale it from a manufacturing standpoint.
• 2:21:10
  Speaker 2: But as a company, we've really got the flywheel spinning now.
• 2:21:15
  Speaker 2: For any sort of flavor of quadcopter, we can do
• 2:21:19
  Speaker 2: really awesome stuff really quickly. And with this thing, the
• 2:21:23
  Speaker 2: demand for this has been through the roof since we
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 2: announced it. Luckily, we decided to kind of over-invest in
• 2:21:30
  Speaker 2: automation for the factory line, mainly just because we knew
• 2:21:33
  Speaker 2: we needed to get better at it. And we wanted
• 2:21:34
  Speaker 2: to use this as kind of like a trial balloon
• 2:21:37
  Speaker 2: to deploy a lot more automation. So the assembly of
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 2: this thing will be by far the most efficient we've
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 2: ever had. My goal, which I'm pushing the team towards,
• 2:21:46
  Speaker 2: I think we'll get there, is less than an hour
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 2: total of human operator time to build one of these
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 2: from raw parts. to all the way through, which if
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 2: you get into like the details here, it's pretty remarkable.
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you were to do all this stuff manually,
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 2: you'd be talking about like five or six hours of
• 2:22:00
  Speaker 2: like gluing and screwing stuff together. So the assembly of
• 2:22:03
  Speaker 2: this is going to be very, very automated for the
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 2: level of complexity. And we're going to, you know, every
• 2:22:07
  Speaker 2: time we do a new product, we, we take step
• 2:22:09
  Speaker 2: forwards on stuff like that to be able to build
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 2: more of them and have them be more affordable.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 1: And who, who are the main, who are the, who
• 2:22:14
  Speaker 1: is the main customer for the indoor drum?
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 2: Initially it'll be law enforcement, law enforcement, and then indoor
• 2:22:19
  Speaker 2: infrastructure inspection. So like uh, anywhere where you have to
• 2:22:23
  Speaker 2: put a person into a confined space to like see
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 2: if there's a crack or see if something's healthy. A
• 2:22:26
  Speaker 2: lot of, a lot of energy generation stuff, like a
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 2: lot of power plant kind of, kind of inspections.
• 2:22:31
  Speaker 1: Gotcha. So, and what would law enforcement use these for?
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 3: Uh.
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: Would they use these for hostage situation, active shooter, or
• 2:22:40
  Speaker 1: will this be, I guess it wouldn't be law enforcement,
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: but I mean, it's, I mean, why aren't these gonna
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: be roving around in malls? Yeah. So I'm being serious.
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: It's just a, it's a moving active deterrent. Yeah. Everybody
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: knows you're on camera and malls and casinos and stadiums
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: and all this shit all the time. But that, I
• 2:23:02
  Speaker 1: think that is an active, like, yeah, we're fucking following you.
• 2:23:08
  Speaker 2: I think eventually we'll get there. One of the things
• 2:23:10
  Speaker 2: with this, which is a very practical consideration, it's, it's
• 2:23:13
  Speaker 2: pretty noisy because there's one of the key, sort of
• 2:23:17
  Speaker 2: considerations in designing a drone is what's called the disk loading,
• 2:23:20
  Speaker 2: which is basically if you, you know, so this thing's
• 2:23:22
  Speaker 2: got four rotors. And if you look at the area
• 2:23:25
  Speaker 2: swept out by all of these rotors, that's the disk area.
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 2: And then if you divide that by the weight of
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 2: the drone, that's called the disk loading. And so the
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 2: higher the disk loading, that basically means you've got a
• 2:23:34
  Speaker 2: very low rotor area that's supporting a lot of mass,
• 2:23:36
  Speaker 2: which means that the rotors are going to have to
• 2:23:38
  Speaker 2: spin really fast and they're probably going to be pretty loud.
• 2:23:40
  Speaker 2: So in order to make this thing small, we've got
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 2: a pretty high disk loading. Over time, we'll, we'll, we'll
• 2:23:46
  Speaker 2: figure out ways to make it lighter and lower the
• 2:23:49
  Speaker 2: disc loading, which will make it quieter. And I think that's,
• 2:23:51
  Speaker 2: for some of these applications, like if you want the
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 2: thing really operating around people, it needs to be a
• 2:23:56
  Speaker 2: quieter system. Like another one, there's a bunch of, in retail,
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 2: there's a bunch of work you can do just counting
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 2: inventory in a store. I mean, stores, they call it shrinkage,
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 2: but they lose like five or 10% of their stuff
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 2: to like theft or being misplaced. And having one of
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 2: these every like day, just fly around all the aisles
• 2:24:13
  Speaker 2: of the store and just count what's there. I mean,
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 2: it sounds kind of mundane.
• 2:24:16
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 2:24:17
  Speaker 2: Uh, but that's like that. That's good.
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 1: We do an inventory too now.
• 2:24:20
  Speaker 2: Well, we're, we've, we've, I'd say we've, we've dabbled in it. Um, I,
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 2: I think with our 10, we've, we've got a product
• 2:24:28
  Speaker 2: that's decent, decently well suited to it. I think at,
• 2:24:31
  Speaker 2: at really large scale, you need something that would be
• 2:24:32
  Speaker 2: super quiet so it could operate around people. Um, but
• 2:24:35
  Speaker 2: this is what I say. I mean, I think this
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 2: is why we're focused. You know, I think we're still
• 2:24:38
  Speaker 2: 1% of the way there in terms of all the
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 2: things that these can be used for in an industrial
• 2:24:42
  Speaker 2: enterprise government setting. And yeah, we've got a lot of
• 2:24:47
  Speaker 2: work left to do to realize the full opportunity.
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 1: Man, how big is your team?
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 2: The company now is getting close to a thousand people, including,
• 2:24:57
  Speaker 2: you know, that's everybody. That's people that build them, design them,
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 2: sell them, support them, which is, people hear that and
• 2:25:04
  Speaker 2: they think it's either big or small. For the complexity
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 2: of what we do, it's an incredibly small team. And
• 2:25:10
  Speaker 2: I have a very, I have a very talent-centric view
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 2: of business. I think that if you have the right people,
• 2:25:16
  Speaker 2: you can do almost anything. And if you don't have
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 2: the right people, you can do almost nothing. You know,
• 2:25:20
  Speaker 2: it's like you could have the grandest strategy in the world,
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 2: but if you don't have amazing people, you're not going
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 2: to make it work. And you can have a shit
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 2: strategy and have amazing people, and they'll, like, figure out
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 2: that the strategy is shit, they'll fix it, and then
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 2: they'll make it work. And so... From the beginning, we've
• 2:25:36
  Speaker 2: invested a huge amount of time and energy into trying
• 2:25:38
  Speaker 2: to really get the best people in the world for
• 2:25:40
  Speaker 2: all the different disciplines we cover under one roof. And
• 2:25:43
  Speaker 2: that's really the magical piece of it. And for where
• 2:25:45
  Speaker 2: we are right now, that's one of the most fun pieces.
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 2: We've just got an incredible team. We've got engineers and
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 2: engineering leaders that have been with us since almost the beginning.
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 2: So folks that have spent the last 10 years at
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 2: Skydio that have been through all the product cycles together. And,
• 2:26:01
  Speaker 2: you know, it's like any team, like you spend enough
• 2:26:02
  Speaker 2: time together, you can, you know, everybody's strengths and weaknesses,
• 2:26:05
  Speaker 2: and we know what we're good at, and we've got
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 2: a bunch of shared learning and shared history together. Uh,
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 2: and so because of that, we're able to just move
• 2:26:12
  Speaker 2: faster and, uh, and faster on everything that we're doing.
• 2:26:16
  Speaker 1: Man, you have put something really special together. I appreciate that.
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: It's impressive.
• 2:26:22
  Speaker 2: It's a, it's a big team effort.
• 2:26:24
  Speaker 1: I can see your team too out there. Everybody's stoked
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: to be here. Excited.
• 2:26:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, it's look, I'm not neutral on this, but
• 2:26:34
  Speaker 2: it's hard for me to imagine anything. It'd be more
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 2: fun in the world to work on. I think the
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 2: combination of the technology and the customers that we serve and,
• 2:26:42
  Speaker 2: you know, getting to the feedback cycles of like getting
• 2:26:44
  Speaker 2: to build this thing and, and then put it out
• 2:26:46
  Speaker 2: into the world and see what people do with it
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 2: and see the impact that it has. Like we've already
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 2: had these deployed on some, some like actual indoor operational
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 2: scenarios just a month after we announced the thing. I
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 2: think that is a, it's a unique set of circumstances.
• 2:26:59
  Speaker 2: that we're in where we can move incredibly quickly on
• 2:27:02
  Speaker 2: cutting edge technology that's having incredible real world impact.
• 2:27:06
  Speaker 1: How are people finding you? How are law enforcement agencies?
• 2:27:09
  Speaker 1: Is this word of mouth?
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 2: It's heavily word of mouth. I mean, especially in the
• 2:27:13
  Speaker 2: law enforcement community, they all know each other. They all talk.
• 2:27:17
  Speaker 2: We do the standard stuff. I mean, we go to events.
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 2: We have a big annual event that we host ourselves.
• 2:27:21
  Speaker 2: We love having our customers out. And that's where we
• 2:27:24
  Speaker 2: unveiled all the new products a few months ago. So
• 2:27:27
  Speaker 2: we do all all that kind of stuff. And then
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 2: in the new industries, it'll oftentimes start with a real
• 2:27:34
  Speaker 2: innovator at the customer. You know, there'll be somebody at
• 2:27:38
  Speaker 2: a concert events venue, for example, that recognizes like, hey,
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 2: I bet we could use, just like you had the insight, like,
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 2: I bet we could use drones for this. And, you know,
• 2:27:47
  Speaker 2: it oftentimes starts with somebody who's really innovative and forward
• 2:27:50
  Speaker 2: thinking at a customer in an industry we're not even
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 2: in reaching out to us and Then that just starts
• 2:27:58
  Speaker 2: the cycle where we'll learn what we can about what
• 2:28:02
  Speaker 2: they're doing. If we think our existing products meet the need,
• 2:28:05
  Speaker 2: we'll typically sell them or demo a couple. Then we'll
• 2:28:09
  Speaker 2: just get in there and start learning and working with
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 2: them to figure out what do we need to do
• 2:28:12
  Speaker 2: to make this thing really scale and work for your application.
• 2:28:17
  Speaker 2: We've got core industries that we've hired deep industry experts
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 2: into like law enforcement, military. We've got a bunch of
• 2:28:23
  Speaker 2: former operators. on our team, energy utilities. We've got a
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 2: bunch of folks that have worked in the energy industry
• 2:28:27
  Speaker 2: in our company. And so we have a deep level
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 2: of expertise and focus, but then we also have kind
• 2:28:31
  Speaker 2: of these frontiers where, which are the new applications where we're,
• 2:28:36
  Speaker 2: we're working alongside innovators in those industries to figure out
• 2:28:39
  Speaker 2: exactly the right recipe. And then as we find it,
• 2:28:41
  Speaker 2: it really starts to scale and we'll, you know, we'll
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 2: lean in behind it and we'll do the sales and
• 2:28:44
  Speaker 2: marketing activities to go and get to, you know, every
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 2: oil and gas company or, or every college campus and
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 2: so on.
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 1: Man. You've got a lot of work to do. I agree.
• 2:28:55
  Speaker 2: You've got a lot of work to do. It's all-consuming,
• 2:29:00
  Speaker 2: but it's a fun set of stuff to work on.
• 2:29:03
  Speaker 1: How do you lead your team?
• 2:29:06
  Speaker 2: Well, there's different dimensions to it. I think one of
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 2: the traps that I fell into early on, so when
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 2: we started the company, I was 27 years old, and
• 2:29:17
  Speaker 2: I actually came to realize we hired our first 10 employees,
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 2: and we were all at lunch one day, and I
• 2:29:20
  Speaker 2: realized I was the youngest person at the company. Um,
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 2: and I think I fell into the trap early on of,
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 2: you know, my job as the leader is I need
• 2:29:29
  Speaker 2: to have all the answers, you know, everybody's looking to me,
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 2: they're betting their careers on this place. And I, I
• 2:29:33
  Speaker 2: better know the answer for everything we're doing in every situation. Um,
• 2:29:38
  Speaker 2: and one of the, the ways that I feel like
• 2:29:41
  Speaker 2: I developed as a leader is, is just the, the
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 2: more I do it, honestly, the more I feel like
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 2: I get humbled by, by all the people around me
• 2:29:48
  Speaker 2: and the speed with which we're learning. Uh, and so.
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 2: I try to approach everything that we're doing with a
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 2: great deal of humility. And I'm just constantly learning. I'm
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 2: learning from all the people that we've hired. I'm learning
• 2:29:58
  Speaker 2: from our customers. And I kind of see myself as
• 2:30:03
  Speaker 2: just trying to be a conduit for the best information.
• 2:30:06
  Speaker 2: You know, there's always, at the high level, you think like, oh,
• 2:30:08
  Speaker 2: the founder builds the company. One of the things that
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 2: I've come to believe is that the company also kind
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 2: of shapes the founder. And, you know, when I'm here
• 2:30:14
  Speaker 2: showing you this stuff, like I'm representing the work of
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 2: a thousand people. Yeah, you know, the best ideas that
• 2:30:19
  Speaker 2: I have are oftentimes coming from other people on our team. Um,
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 2: and so I really try to be like a conduit
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 2: and an amplifier for the best ideas anywhere that they
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 2: can come from, from a customer, from internally. Um, and then,
• 2:30:32
  Speaker 2: as I said, I have a very talent centric view
• 2:30:33
  Speaker 2: of this stuff. So I place enormous focus on trying
• 2:30:35
  Speaker 2: to get like literally the best people in the world
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 2: for every function that we're going after. Um, and I'm,
• 2:30:42
  Speaker 2: I'm fortunate enough. And I think we're fortunate enough as
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 2: a company now to have an incredibly strong leadership team.
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 2: And I've actually become more technical over the last couple
• 2:30:50
  Speaker 2: of years. When we were in the basement together at
• 2:30:52
  Speaker 2: the start, I was writing code and I'm an engineer
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 2: at heart. As the company has gotten bigger and we've
• 2:30:59
  Speaker 2: gotten more operationally sound, I actually can spend more time
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 2: on the technology. The two things that I really love
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 2: doing where I feel like I can add the most
• 2:31:07
  Speaker 2: value is being in the field with customers, seeing what's working,
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 2: seeing what's not, making sure if something's not working, we're
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 2: on track to fix it, but then also seeing what's
• 2:31:13
  Speaker 2: possible and feeding that back into our product development machine
• 2:31:17
  Speaker 2: and working with our engineering teams to make it come
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 2: to life. And so it's really a incredible thing to
• 2:31:26
  Speaker 2: get to be a part of, to have this great
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 2: organization that builds these things with the expertise that we have.
• 2:31:31
  Speaker 2: And I get to kind of float around, spot opportunities,
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 2: spot problems, and then dive in very deep to either
• 2:31:37
  Speaker 2: try to fix them or realize a new opportunity.
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 1: Man, I am like blown, I'm blown. I am blown
• 2:31:48
  Speaker 1: away at like what you guys are doing. And, um, and, uh,
• 2:31:52
  Speaker 1: I mean, it's just very cool. Very, very cool. I
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 1: appreciate that.
• 2:31:57
  Speaker 2: And it's, it is a huge team effort. And I
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 2: think that that's, it's, it's true of every company. And
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 2: I think oftentimes too much gets ascribed to like the
• 2:32:06
  Speaker 2: founder or the CEO. Um, but it's, you know, all
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 2: this stuff is possible because we just have an amazing
• 2:32:12
  Speaker 2: group of folks.
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: You can go anywhere you want. I mean, there's so
• 2:32:18
  Speaker 1: many people that are interested in this. I mean, just
• 2:32:21
  Speaker 1: in the couple hours that we've spent together here, I mean,
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I was thinking police, defense, you know, that
• 2:32:28
  Speaker 1: kind of stuff. But I mean, the possibilities are legitimately endless.
• 2:32:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think you could scale this company
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 1: fast enough to cover all this stuff. I don't even
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 1: know how you're picking which direction to go in.
• 2:32:42
  Speaker 2: It's a hard problem.
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: You're talking oil and gas, defense tech, Law enforcement, I mean,
• 2:32:48
  Speaker 1: these are big, big, big, big... Yeah, they're all problems.
• 2:32:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're big problems, they're big industries, and I think
• 2:32:58
  Speaker 2: we are at kind of a transition moment in civilization. Like,
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 2: I think robotics is going to be really the most
• 2:33:07
  Speaker 2: important industry ever. You know, having robots that can do
• 2:33:12
  Speaker 2: useful work in the physical world I think is going
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 2: to be the biggest industry ever. And flying robots are,
• 2:33:18
  Speaker 2: in many ways, the first instantiation of that. They're the
• 2:33:21
  Speaker 2: first robotics category to reach substantial scale and real-world impact.
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 2: And it's very real today, but it's still very small
• 2:33:29
  Speaker 2: compared to what it eventually will be.
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 1: And you're at the cutting edge on it.
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:33:35
  Speaker 1: Fucking awesome, man. Yeah. Congratulations.
• 2:33:38
  Speaker 2: It's sweet.
• 2:33:40
  Speaker 1: Well, Adam... I wish you the best of luck. I
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 1: hope to see you again. And seriously, man, congratulations. I
• 2:33:46
  Speaker 1: love what you do.
• 2:33:47
  Speaker 2: All right. Thank you, Sean.
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: This is great. No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan
• 2:34:03
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• 2:34:05
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• 2:34:11
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