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Transcript of our conversation with Rahul Sidhu:
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:13:17
If you're a first time founder and you don't come from a tremendous amount of money, like I definitely did not, a like a smaller first exit is like a great outcome, especially if it's enough money for you to take a big swing on the next one.
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like, no one's ever going to think that you failed. Everyone's going to like, great job. You you like learned a lot. You built a great foundation and like, you're really well funded the next time,
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Hi everyone. Welcome to the Founders and Arms podcast with me Immad Akhund Today we do not have Raj here to go to China, but we have a guest, Rahul Sidhu. He's the co-founder and CEO of Aerodome, which was recently acquired for a reported 300 million by Flock Safety, in October 2024. Welcome to the show, Rahul.
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Thanks for having me, man.
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you have a crazy story, right? Like, this is a two year old startup that was acquired. Like, when did you start the company?
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I was about 17 months old. You know, my first company, the last one that I, built that was acquired, took about seven years to get to that outcome. This is 17 months, and we certainly weren't expecting or aiming for it. It was just a right timing. Right, partner. You know, type situation.
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So this is a cool story, I guess. Like, tell me, you know, how you got to kind of the era dumb idea and building this and why you thought it was important?
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Yeah. Look, my background's in public safety. I've worked as a police officer. Paramedic, a manned aircraft pilot. I'm still a reserve police officer in Southern California. And, I was, you know, the CEO of my last company, Spider Tech, before Air Dome, when, as a reserve officer, I was acting as, like, an air support commander for my agency.
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In March of 2020, when, Covid happened.
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friend of mine, you know, hit me up was the captain of Chula Vista PD's name's Fritz Reber. And he invented this concept. He's like, look, I'm just going to start flying drones directly to police or any NY1 call. From the rooftop of our police department. See if I can, like, act like a mini helicopter.
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You know,
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Oh, cool.
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responders, the police and firefighters. Typically before they even get on scene. And he was the only one doing it. He calls me. He's like, you should try this. And so I, you know, because of Covid, we had
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maybe 40% of a reduction in officers that could respond to calls and firefighters could respond to calls, because if you had the sniffles, like you couldn't come to work.
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had to find a way to do more with less. So I just was like, hey, I'm gonna stand up on the roof and do exactly this. And, you know, I had somebody set up on the roof and I was flying the drone, and I would start going to calls. The idea is originally to triage that we had so many calls for service.
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I did decide what the officer would go to and not go to based on what I saw on scene. So, for example, the classic Covid call, hey, there's a kid skateboarding in a park. He's done a lot of be there. I'm going to look at it like this. Kids are hurting anybody. Like we're not going to send an officer to I call because if I send off to I call.
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I can't send them to the next call. The next call might be like a theft in progress or
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originally using it for. But by day two, there was an attempted murder in the city. And the the murder suspect was driving away, and I sent a drone and caught him before he got on the freeway with the drone and then was able to, like, direct units to safely apprehend the suspect.
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And immediately I was like, oh, this is the future. Being able to use drones to be able to respond to calls for service like this is the future of all public safety air support. And I mean, over the next couple weeks, I had, you know, drone go to a fire call and help with evacuation, drone, go to a traffic collision and determine like, hey, these people are, you know, safely exchanging information.
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We don't need to send lights and sirens, officers and firefighters who might get into another collision on the way, like little things like that, that I'm like, oh, there's our way there. There's our way there. That I was immediately decided, this has to become a business.
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I guess one thing cool about you and I was a, small investor in the company is, you know, you have this, like, police background and, you know, you really deeply understand and empathize with, with people kind of doing this duty, you know, how did you even get into it? Like, I feel like that's a pretty unusual background, especially for our founder.
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Yeah. Look, I, I'm a big fan generally of, like, or market fit as I. As I write checks, I like, try to write in for founders who, like, have that market fit already. So, you know, for, for the same reason, I think that for my, my background was really built. I've always had like two paths in my life as, even as a kid, I was always into tech like and building little businesses.
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And at the same time, I was always like somebody who wanted to be what we call downrange, which is like, I wanted to be in the mix. I wanted to be a firefighter, a paramedic, a police officer, or I want to join the military. I wanted to have like, life experience where I could actually go out there, make life and death decisions, make an impact, you know, like deal with that level of stress,
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Like. Because you watched, like superhero movies. Like what gave you that mindset?
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you're like, man, I want to be that guy, you know? And, I didn't want to, like, go straight to a desk job and not have those life experiences.
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I, when I became 18, I, you know, became an EMT, and then I became a paramedic.
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And then I studied emergency medicine in college, and I learned how to be, you know, like a flight medic at the night. You know, I got my pilot's license, and then I became a police officer, which is a whole different story. Back in 2013, in Los Angeles and, you know, I spent some time doing that before I'm like, oh, okay, there's problems here I can solve with tech.
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And then I left, being a full time police officer to go start my first public safety tech company, which was then later acquired. But I came back as a reserve officer because I wanted to, like, still keep my boots on the ground and, like, still respond now on calls and keep that fresh. And that's still what I do today as a reserve officer.
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Now, on the tech side, you know, I had my first little startup in high school that I paid or that that I sold for a very small amount of money to pay my way through college. So like I always was somewhat oriented in that direction. It so it was inevitable that the marriage of public safety and tech, the two things are important to me.
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You know, that was like an inevitable outcome for me.
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I guess one thing that's interesting is, you know, there hasn't been that much innovation in public safety, right? If the, you know, if this was like B2B, SAS or something, that would be like, maybe someone else would have done, done this idea before you got to it. Do you think there is a lot more opportunity?
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Do you feel like, hey, you know, flock safety has done a bunch and there isn't that many? Or you're like, oh my God. I see like hundreds of ideas in public safety and tech.
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I think first of all, you're 100% right that there's, like, public safety generally has been neglected for much longer than, like the classic B2B SAS market has been, largely because like I remember when I was raising for my first public safety company ten years ago, every VC like, I don't like GovTech,
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I don't like that sales cycle. They're just like B2B, SAS. Like, these are the metrics I'm used
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But, the right like the sales cycle is annoying.
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these are the metrics that you see, this is what I'm seeing in success out there. And there'll be very few VCs that would break the mold and be like, no, no, let's like cool. I get it.
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Like these are the metrics that most VCs are top, and I'm looking for what the next big thing is. And I'd have VCs that I would go invest in and, you know, GovTech and play around with it. So I was able to get a little bit of money back then, a few million bucks through a series of a couple rounds to prove that spider tech.
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By the time I started in 2023, there is so much momentum for American dynamism, you know, through, like the folks in Andreessen shout to the do you and Katherine and like Michelle, you know, and the folks there and there's so much momentum on like govtech working flock safety actually the company acquired us being one of the indicators of like, no, you can sell the government and have a very fast venture based, you know, venture growing growth company.
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With a large outcome at the end. I did that for police departments in a way that nobody else had. And there are other companies like Mark 43, etc., that showed some success for for like venture outcomes in public safety that now it became something that was hot and now all of a sudden the same VCs that like ten years ago when it was too early for them were like, I just want to find a public safety company and they're throwing money into it.
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So there's a lot of like capital now being infused. And I've written three checks, you know, as a scout for CRV in the last 30 days on like meaningful public safety
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Oh, really?
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checks for a while, then all of a sudden it's just I've seen so many interesting companies like the last, you know, couple months that that I was able to to get in on it.
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So I think like now is a great time where people are seeing the public safety industry. There's a lot of, capital involved, and there are a lot of founders that are trying to make it work. And now the the industry itself, the customers are constantly trying to try new things, like it is not an environment where someone without a public safety background can come in and make a difference.
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It felt like that ten years ago where like people were just like, you know, chief of risk averse. They didn't understand the power of their data that, you know, they weren't on the cloud yet. It just wasn't as easy to do something that.
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Oh. That's interesting.
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When you advise these founders and, you know, they're trying to make their first sale, like what's, what's the advice as like go to smaller police department and it's like how do you what I like the 2 or 3 things you tell them.
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it's it's I feel like a lot of that Venn diagram of, like, public safety and the rest of the industry is the same in the sense that you're going to, you know, you're going to try and understand a problem, you're going to you're going to throw a couple things to the wall to see what sticks.
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Early product market fit with a handful of customers. I'm like, is this driving the ROI you were expecting? Like, that's that's all the same. In the public safety world, yeah. You want to find X amount of police chiefs that are willing to like give you a shot and you're probably not going to make much money off them.
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In spider tech, like there's a Chief John Peters, who was a chief of police at Grover Beach Police Department is like an 18 officer police department, central California,
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us at a conference and was like, I'm willing to try anything, like, really open minded chief, great guy. And was like, come by the police department.
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And we drove up three hours and went to this police department and, and we're like, hey, this is what we got. This is like cool. And we deployed it a couple weeks later
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Oh! No way.
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never charged him for
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all the years that I was at Spider Tech because I'm like, no, they give us a shot.
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They get it for free forever, as far as I'm concerned. And then we had you know, other agencies after that started paying for it.
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How many? Like sub 50. Officer. Police departments are there in the US?
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Most of them.
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Most of them really?
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over 10,000 or
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Oh, wow.
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Okay. So that's
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where you start. And you, like, prove it out. And then you work your way kind of
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upwards.
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like, you know, like the first two agencies we deployed at Spider tech, one was 18 cops, Grover Beach, and the other one was Tucson police in Arizona, which is like 800 police officers. And they were both willing to work with us. The
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was going to prove ROI on a different scale, right?
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Like,
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Yep.
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still have the same outcome, because you might have technology that could work for like a 20 cop department, but doesn't work for 200 or 2000 cop department. And now you're market's like really tough, you
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And public safety is not like a one size fits all operation, not just based on sizes but based on like types of agencies like the county sheriff and the municipal police department have a different mission.
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Often, you know, obviously fire and police have different mission. So you have to, like, get an understanding of what that's going to look like for everybody.
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You want to know
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what your market size is until
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Yeah. What
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are trends that are playing out here. Obviously you will building in the drone space which you know actually there hasn't been that many things that have actually worked in the drone space. You might be one of the few few exits. And that builds like a startup in the drone space. There's obviously I that's a big trend that presumably has lots of applications in public safety.
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Like, what are you seeing in terms of like, here's the future. This is like what's playing out on the field.
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So one thing that I don't, I don't think is unique to public safety is is like every single industry is what is a combination of both AI and then robotics going to do for my industry.
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like robotics side, I should start with drones. Like that's the first piece that,
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Yeah.
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like, widely
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adopt.
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And I think that'll be the main focus of, like, robotics in policing for the next five years will be mostly aerial, for large outcomes. And then AI is just a, like, chip away at workflows, right? Like, you know, I've got a friend, Daniel, who you might know who started a company called Able Police. You know, shout out to them where, he's growing Daniel on Twitter, in case you're you're probably
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Oh, is that the Daniel?
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But he's he's built some great tech
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That's funny that he has a serious company because he's not serious at all on Twitter.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, he's really funny.
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like a very serious, very thoughtful, very smart guy with a very good company, called Able Police where they, their focus is like, hey, look, let's just automate that police report writing workflow to start.
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But there are plenty of opportunities in policing, just like there are with every other aspect of every other industry where it's like, pick a workflow and automate it and, and or do it better than a human being can or do. It's safer than a human being can.
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expect, in the next several years in, policing, unlike, you know, just like everything else, we're going to see workflows get automated.
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We're going to see smaller companies get in and like pick a couple they get really good at. We're going to see larger companies, automating like a series of workflows at once by creating new operating systems and things like that that are going to be either AI enabled or even AI native in the way that they're built, we're going to see like a lot of technical infrastructure getting rebuilt.
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So that's I think, you know, going to be something similar to everybody. But in policing one problem that has existed is because of how little capital went into policing to constantly try to innovate. Over a period of several decades, most of the tech was built by like legacy companies that didn't have a lot of it, didn't compete with each other at a very high speed, didn't have like an agile framework, how they were thinking about product development.
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So over like a series of decades, records management, like databases, these types of things are really outdated
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They're still going to filing cabinets.
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Wow.
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aren't are using like basically a records management system, which is a glorified database, decades ago that was invented agencies have just been trying to add workflows to this thing that was not built for that purpose for 30 years.
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And so it's just like a monstrosity in most of these agencies where they have like a silo databases that don't talk to each other, that like they put workflows on top of that, weren't designed for it. So I think there's going to be a huge change in how agencies do what they're supposed to do by just taking all of the data and putting it in one place and then creating workflows from there.
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And I think that's, that's going to be something we're gonna see as a fundamental shift. Now, FLoC obviously is very, very good at, you know, a handful of these things, but really good at, sensors, which is another piece is like, what data do not have access to that you need to access to and flock, you know, it's an automated license plate reading company.
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That's how it started. So we started with putting thousands and thousands of these like, like speed reading cameras in intersections in America. So that like, if an Amber alert drives to an intersection or a stolen car drive certain intersection, the police is immediately notified. Well, then flock built, you know, pan tilt zoom cameras and gunshot detection sensors and now flies, drones.
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These are all effectively
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Yeah.
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know, creating like real time outcomes. And I think that's going to be another big piece of what we can do, is going to see more and more of that to.
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Is it easy to go international with these things, or is the US like such a weird and specific ecosystem that it's hard to go sell somewhere else?
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I mean, the concept of policing is generally the same everywhere you go with differences on how the laws, you know, applied, how aggressive the policing is. You know, like what, laws they enforce and you know, how crime is handled, etc.. The criminal justice system might be a little bit different. Here we go. But the concepts are same.
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So the idea of like, I need to go respond to an emergency and or solve a crime is going to be consistent internationally.
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bit different where you go if you go to Dubai, how that police department is going to, you know, going to want to buy things. It's a little bit more focus on like I want the news thing all the time.
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And if I just collect dust, you know, or if you go to, you know, Japan where they're very efficient and they're always innovating, it's going to be a little different. And you go to some countries where it's like they don't even have the technical infrastructure. Not every police station, even has internet. They're still using radios, in a way that like we stopped using in the 80s.
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So you can't really go there with like, like I and expect to have a huge difference when the infrastructure doesn't exist. And from a sales process, you generally need to trust local people at each country to like, walk you through that relationship and that sales process and how things get done in that country, because it might culturally be different.
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It might legally be different. You might you know, most of these countries need to have a local presence for for every to all the tech they buy. So like it's a process for sure.
00:16:44:08 - 00:17:02:11
Yeah. Walk me through your founder journey a little bit. Especially around acquisitions, I guess you've, you've done two of them. You know, any advice that you give founders on like, hey, they, they receive an acquisition offer, how should they think about it? How, you know, what should they do in that situation?
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I would start even like one step before that and say, like, I would never encourage founders to build a company with the idea that, you know, like an exit and X amount of time is success. Because actually, more often than not, like it's rare to have an outcome like ours. It's like more likely that like you exited because of, you know, circumstances like didn't work the way you wanted to and like, you know, you you're either running out of money or any of those things, like, I wouldn't aim for that outcome.
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But that said, it's like when you decide like an X, it's the right thing to do for the
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did it, we proactively looked for it. The second time we did it, it just happened proactively looking for it was a function of like, making sure we had more than one offer, like going out there running a process, kind of like you would fundraising to find out, like where the perfect home is.
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More that like in two offers is one. One is done
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I mean, let me push back on one thing I feel like I think once you've had your exit and you have some success, it's easy to say like hey, you know, don't try to chase an exit or whatever. But you know, I remember as yeah, as a first time entrepreneur like it. And I didn't come from like a wealthy background or anything like that was kind of the aim, right?
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Like, I mean, they were like, hey, I want to sell this thing, and that's going to make me rich. I mean, like, obviously you want to solve some problem as well, but but that was like the end result that you expected. Like, you know, I didn't initially think I was going to go IPO or something. So like I was chasing the exits.
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You know, when you say, hey, don't chase the eggs at like, is that realistic? Like, that's. Well, I feel like a lot of people who are first time founders especially are going to be thinking like, what is Rajjo talking about?
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That's that's totally fair. And I should clarify, when I say exit, I specifically mean acquisition. And
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Yeah.
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actually not saying don't get an acquisition. And be happy like that could be the perfect outcome for the business.
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like, don't focus on that as like the, the the end goal. Because what the to create that outcome where you are rich and you're rich in the shortest period of time.
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Often if all you do is focus on adding value, like creating value with your business, like you'll probably have that outcome. But if you focus on like trying to navigate the waters of like, how do I perfectly position is to have this company buy it, you end up having like not enough eggs in the basket with maybe not enough focus on adding value.
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And now you might not be able to get that done. So it's like I completely agree with you. Like especially in the first time, you just want the best financial outcome, the shortest period of time. So like that's fine. But if you add value, I think you're more likely to have that
00:19:25:06 - 00:19:33:23
Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. It's like happiness. Like you don't want to chase happiness. You want to chase meaning and other things. And happiness comes as a consequence.
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00:19:35:18 - 00:19:50:04
So in your first company, did you. I know you said you were, like, trying to, like, kind of make an exit happen. Did you have an initial offer first that made you think, hey, like, I should go collect enough interest, or did you literally have nothing? And you were like, okay, let me go try to solve this.
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I got was at the time called inbound, from like, people who are like, oh, this company might be interested in buying. You know, it's just bullshit that, like, as a first time founder,
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Yeah. You get excited about it.
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know, you're like, oh, someone wants to buy the company and take it really seriously. But it was enough that I was like, all right, it's time to pull some threads.
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Like, we actually had an acquisition fall through in
00:20:11:11 - 00:20:12:16
because of Covid.
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And then I had to, like, read some emergency funding, like it was a rocky road at the time. And then I actually was able to focus purely on adding value for the business, which put me in a leveraged position where I could raise the next round where I had offers to be able to do that, or I could sell the business and the decision to sell the business was mostly focus on, like, I actually have less faith that the venture outcome is, is like reasonable in a period of time that I think is like going to be reasonable.
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We are 5 or 6 years in the business at the time, so that was number one. And then number two is it's like, look, I actually think that the market dynamics right now with a Covid kind of on the upswing might be a great time to get a price that otherwise we might not get. If these market dynamics are hold for a while.
00:20:51:20 - 00:20:53:16
And how much are you raised at that point.
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we reached $4.5 million, so not very much
00:20:56:04 - 00:21:10:21
I often think like that's a really good point to consider. And again I think enough founders don't do it especially actually you know when you can raise the series like it was you know you had some offers. It was Covid like it was hard time, but like a small exit, like a sub $100 million exit.
00:21:10:21 - 00:21:25:12
There's so many more companies that can do that. And often it is like very life changing for the founder in a way that like a much lower probability, bigger exit, like probably doesn't make that much more money for the founder and that much more of a life kind of change.
00:21:25:12 - 00:21:44:04
I think it's totally true. And like, I like to kind of kind of what you're what you're getting on here is like, if you're a first time founder and you don't come from a tremendous amount of money, like I definitely did not, a like a smaller first exit is like a great outcome, especially if it's enough money for you to take a big swing on the next one.
00:21:44:08 - 00:21:45:16
Yeah.
00:21:45:16 - 00:21:56:04
you're never going to like, no one's ever going to think that you failed. Everyone's going to like, great job. You you like learned a lot. You built a great foundation and like, you're really well funded the next time, like VCs, it's why
00:21:56:04 - 00:21:57:17
should I buy you investors?
00:21:57:17 - 00:22:00:16
It is confusing though, because investors don't really want you to take that
00:22:00:16 - 00:22:02:04
exit. Right. Like as an. Yeah,
00:22:02:04 - 00:22:11:23
I had this is a while ago and I won't name the company, but they called me up and they were so excited. They were like, hey, man, like, we just got this great exit. Like, it's going to be like, you know, five x your money.
00:22:12:01 - 00:22:32:16
And, you know, I was thinking to myself, like, I invested in like 30 companies that. Yeah, right. Five x in my money. Yeah. Does it like do anything for me but I you. Yeah. Obviously I have to go like found issues. I'm like hey you know congrats. Like I'm so happy for you guys etc.. But like as an investor it's just like you really need 100 X when you're like doing seed investments, like, that's how you make up for the fact that, yeah,
00:22:32:16 - 00:22:34:04
you're doing so many
00:22:34:04 - 00:22:35:03
but but yeah.
00:22:35:05 - 00:22:37:16
So you don't get great advice from investors. And that situation
00:22:37:16 - 00:22:38:16
in my opinion, because the
00:22:38:16 - 00:22:40:04
incentives are not aligned.
00:22:40:04 - 00:22:41:04
Well, I think I think, yeah. You don't.
00:22:41:04 - 00:22:42:16
You're not going to get great advice from
00:22:42:16 - 00:22:49:16
investors in the middle of it. Like in the middle of the duration, if they're invest in you. But after you've done it and you go out to raise the next company
00:22:49:21 - 00:22:51:04
Oh yeah. They'll back the rocket.
00:22:51:04 - 00:22:57:04
yeah, they'll they'll back it. But it's specifically based on the context of your acquisition.
00:22:57:06 - 00:23:14:20
I like I really went out of my way to like, make sure that I took care of all my investors in the last one, and it wasn't like I looked for the exits, when everybody felt like you should have swung for the fences, because that's potentially a red, red flag to new investors. Like, are you just going to sell it quick again because you like being, you know, you're trying to like hit these get rich quick schemes.
00:23:14:22 - 00:23:39:03
They as long as they're like, no, you took a good swing. You landed it responsibly. And now you're taking a big swing. You're going to be in a really good position to start the next one, which is why Adam was such a big swing for us and like why I felt, you know, I had a good financial outcome where I'm like, look, I'm just going for the fences and funny enough, it ended like, exactly like you're saying about like a 17 month acquisition, which is like what I'm telling everybody, don't try to have that
00:23:39:18 - 00:23:41:04
Yeah.
00:23:41:04 - 00:23:50:16
big. I'm gonna take a big swing, create as much value as I can, you know, as fast as I can. And it ended up being that, like, the best thing for the business was to do this. And
00:23:50:19 - 00:23:52:04
Yeah.
00:23:52:04 - 00:24:03:15
outcome for everybody. So generally, investors were happy for what, like was such an early stage exit, because of, how good of exit was, but also because I think, everything was very lined with this company culturally.
00:24:03:15 - 00:24:10:04
It lined up like that's the other part of doing an acquisition, like the you really have to be careful about, like being acquired by a company that's going to fit for you.
00:24:10:14 - 00:24:32:10
In my last company I spent I think around three years trying to get acquired, you know this is the funny thing with like if you go to like Google or Apple's corp dev department, right. They have literally people there who are paid to talk to you. And if you're doing like something even vaguely interested in related to them, they will like, talk to you and then, you know, they'll have you come in and talk to the PMS because they're like, yeah, like that.
00:24:32:12 - 00:24:46:23
They feel like they're doing their job. And like, you know, the PMS will like, take notes and all this stuff, right? So it's fun, full of fun for them. Right. Did it like sees the startup as a but do you think as a founder wow I'm like making progress. Like I'm in acquisition talks with Google and Apple. And you know we had we had all of these.
00:24:47:04 - 00:25:16:08
But it was a complete waste of time. And like three years trying to get solved. Nothing happened. And then, you know, basically we gave up on it and we were like, hey, let's just like, stop trying to sell and make some progress. On this kind of final pivot we were working on, and then as soon as we, like, stopped trying to make it happen, and we, we actually had, like, product market fit for this new thing we did, suddenly we had, like, like two acquisition offers, and, you know, we, we basically like, signed with one.
00:25:16:08 - 00:25:34:17
And we went home and we had like five others while we went home. So like when it works, it really works. And it's like quite easy to get acquisition offers. But when you're trying to make it happen, it's super hard. And, you know, I started Mercari with this mindset that I'm never going to sell. And I think we've had like acquisition, like serious acquisition interest like every year.
00:25:34:19 - 00:25:47:18
And I think actually, if you're doing something with that mindset, where you're like trying to swing for the fences and do something big and like, you're just like, I, you know, I'm not interested in the selling side of it. You're much more likely to actually get acquisition offers, which is
00:25:47:18 - 00:25:52:06
like kind of ironic.
00:25:52:06 - 00:25:53:18
Yeah.
00:25:53:18 - 00:26:03:10
And acquisition offers should just be considered as optionality for you. Like it just leverage optionality. You can decide to do it when you want. You want to have optionality. But it's it's like it. You're right.
00:26:03:10 - 00:26:16:09
It's hard when you're a first time founder and you don't come for money and someone shows up and goes, I'll buy your business for 25 million, which will make you $1 million, a million millionaire, you know, like in the grand scheme of things like, that's not a lot of money. If you're like, you know, a late stage founder, you're trying to swing for the fences.
00:26:16:09 - 00:26:26:17
But like when you're feeling that, like, that's how I felt the first time, I'm like, oh God, that's I'll never have to worry about money again. Theoretically, like, I could I could make that work. Yeah. It's that's how you feel.
00:26:26:17 - 00:26:41:07
Do you think the first, founder could have done something like paradigm, like is it, is it, is it that like these big ideas you just have to have like some experience and some like ability to raise capital and all that before you swing for the fences or do you think any, you know, anyone could do them.
00:26:41:07 - 00:27:05:14
know, I think anyone can do them. I think, like, of course, like your likelihood of being able to do a maybe a better job of that is higher the more experience you have. Like, that's just like any human thing. But I, you know, a Zuckerberg built Facebook, right? Like there plenty of first time founders that are still running huge companies, because they just stuck it out, knew what to do.
00:27:05:14 - 00:27:21:22
They know, like there's a little luck along the way. A lot of, like, you know, intelligent decision making, a lot of hard work is done. You know, you like, learn from mistakes. The second time around, you learn little tricks. You learn ways to make your process more efficient, and you probably have access to more capital. But you're not like a god.
00:27:21:22 - 00:27:37:13
Sure. I think it would have been hard to do mercari as a first time founder just because I mean I think if you were like you know an exact or something way or you came from some background where you could raise money maybe, but you just needed to raise at least 5 million to, to do this idea.
00:27:37:13 - 00:27:45:22
And at least in 2017, like raising 5 million without being a second time founder was, was almost impossible. Maybe it's easier now, though.
00:27:46:02 - 00:27:47:10
Yeah, yeah. Fair enough.
00:27:47:10 - 00:27:49:18
especially pre-launch.
00:27:50:01 - 00:28:03:04
I guess what's what's in the future for you? Obviously you're, you know, you're working at FLoC. Like, do you imagine you're going to do another startup and, like, what would it take to to get you kind of back back in the field?
00:28:03:04 - 00:28:22:17
Yeah. Look, I mean, I'm actually, like, very all in on flock. One of the main reasons I did this acquisition is because I knew I'd like to. I'd like, work with the people here. Like, I like Jared a lot. Is to see how flock can I get along really well? And, like, 100% his credit, he's very much like a I'm going to keep you in founder mode, keep me up.
00:28:22:19 - 00:28:54:01
I want you to feel like a founder while you're here, even though it's not, this flock wasn't the company I started, and I totally feel that way. So, like, I that's scratching my edge. I get to go do the things that I would previously do with more support and more resources. And it's very exciting. And I'll say that flock is just like in the perfect place in like history for something like this, where this industry is about to move towards more AI, more data usage, you know, more an increase in data used, you know, a combination of robotics like these are all things flock is very good at.
00:28:54:03 - 00:29:08:10
So I if I just had to tie my value to a stock price going up like it's going to be here. So I feel very good about that. Now, you know, what am I going to be 50 years like? I can't take that. I have no idea. But what I do know is
00:29:08:10 - 00:29:09:07
I'm probably
00:29:09:07 - 00:29:14:16
always going to want to start something eventually, you know, that's just like how founders are.
00:29:14:16 - 00:29:22:19
And I think there's no shame in that. And I think every founder that acquires under a founder feels the same way. There's zero shame in it. I just have no plans to do it anytime soon.
00:29:22:19 - 00:29:43:14
Yeah. That's cool that you found a home you're happy with. Let's talk about drones a little bit. I feel like, you know, people often, say, like, FAA made it, like, really hard for, drone innovation in the US. I don't know if they allow, like, out of sight licenses. Still, maybe they still don't allow that.
00:29:43:16 - 00:29:50:19
Yeah. What do you think is the future of drones and drone innovation in the U.S? Do you think it's it's held back? It's
00:29:50:19 - 00:29:51:19
easier than people
00:29:51:19 - 00:29:53:07
think.
00:29:53:07 - 00:30:08:13
where we were a few years ago versus where we are today is like they're different planets when it comes to regulations on this stuff. I do firmly believe that we overregulated to a point where we put our own drone tech back quite some time.
00:30:10:07 - 00:30:21:11
like if the FAA is saying, like, you can't fly drones for any of these useful purposes, because we just don't feel like it's safe, but like and definitely not incentivized to change that, which is how it has been historically.
00:30:21:13 - 00:30:35:11
Then, of course, like you're going to get less companies that are going to take big swings, which means less money in the space, which means less like fuel for innovation while other countries are going, yeah, you can fly beyond visualized. Say that seems, safe enough. Let's try this. And those, you know, there are companies in that space they're going to build.
00:30:35:17 - 00:30:59:10
In fact, when I started with Adam, the original plan was to spin up this company and go to countries like Singapore and UAE and, you know, build the tech there and make them customers so that I could build a positive PNL and prove out the safety case and build the technology over a few years with the idea that we'll eventually bring it back into the United States when the U.S is ready.
00:30:59:12 - 00:31:08:19
And then the FAA released a waiver, like basically change the regulation. At the last minute, when I was thinking by building a company that then made it feasible to do it in the United States,
00:31:09:00 - 00:31:13:19
Oh, really? What is, the waivers specifically for police use? So it's a broader.
00:31:13:19 - 00:31:26:07
the way. They gave a police department in Texas, Pearland, Texas, a small agency out there, a waiver to fly their drones beyond visual line of sight. Without needing a visual observer.
00:31:27:19 - 00:31:32:13
that's ever happened for this use case. So I was like, oh, wow. I thought this would take years to get.
00:31:32:15 - 00:31:54:17
And the first thing, like, they just it was a it was like a crack in the case where, the FAA showed willingness to do something and that the plan to how we were going to get our version of that was and we eventually did and like about 18 months or so, but our plan was like, oh, we can do that, but far more scalable for far cheaper from a technology standpoint where we can do it for every agency in America.
00:31:54:17 - 00:32:00:18
We did end up doing it. But if that agent, if the FAA didn't crack that open, I wouldn't have even done this in U.S.
00:32:02:19 - 00:32:08:17
of companies got started with the idea that I'm not going to do it in America because America is gonna let me do it. But now that's not the case.
00:32:08:17 - 00:32:17:14
Now the FAA is opening up, there's plenty of waivers. We've gotten dozens and dozens of these waivers. Now we're like, you know, moving towards being able to fly more than one drone at a time, or we're going to move towards autonomy
00:32:18:03 - 00:32:21:19
But just for public safety usage. Or can you do deliveries like is
00:32:21:19 - 00:32:22:22
it beyond.
00:32:22:22 - 00:32:27:00
deliveries in the last couple years, we've seen a lot of, momentum there with waivers.
00:32:27:00 - 00:32:33:07
We've seen, waivers for like, security and infrastructure inspections, like across the board. We're seeing a public
00:32:33:12 - 00:32:38:06
Oh that's exciting. I didn't realize that this had like changed that significantly.
00:32:38:06 - 00:33:03:14
is definitely changed considerably in the last 18 months specifically. So we're seeing a lot of use cases. We're also seeing, like the technology a better there's a whole different argument we had here where, the American drone industry where like specifically where drones are built with either American America or American made parts, our allied parts is like way behind China, like way behind billions and billions of dollars behind, like seven plus years behind.
00:33:03:16 - 00:33:10:07
And, you know, we're actively like flock. You know, what we're trying to do is we're building American drones. So like, we're very
00:33:10:12 - 00:33:11:19
Are you actually building them
00:33:11:19 - 00:33:13:07
locally?
00:33:13:07 - 00:33:14:07
Where.
00:33:15:07 - 00:33:16:07
Really.
00:33:16:07 - 00:33:17:19
Wow. They're presumably
00:33:17:19 - 00:33:19:19
only now. Or have you always built them
00:33:19:19 - 00:33:20:07
locally.
00:33:20:07 - 00:33:31:07
no, it was, it's an initiative post-acquisition. We were already, like, working on doing something post-acquisition with American Drone partners and then, our of pre acquisition and then post acquisition, we decided we're going to build some stuff ourselves.
00:33:31:07 - 00:33:32:12
So,
00:33:32:14 - 00:33:34:07
That's a cool.
00:33:34:07 - 00:33:45:07
million and, and have been chugging away at doing some of these things. But we're the one difference is like, you know, as American drone provider, we believe in building, but we don't believe in banning,
00:33:46:19 - 00:33:55:03
we recognize that our public safety agencies are using like 90% of them are using foreign made drones because they've way better right now and have had a head start.
00:33:55:05 - 00:34:07:07
So we're we're not trying to ban to prevent our customers from, you know, force our customers to buy our thing. Right now, we're just focus on building, and, you know, we're not supportive of of anything outside.
00:34:07:07 - 00:34:21:07
Yeah. I feel like, you know, for us to build drones in America, we just need a ton of these industries to buy the drones. Right. Like we need consumer drones. We need, yeah. Safety drones. We need all of these things that there's like enough of a demand for it. And
00:34:21:07 - 00:34:23:07
then. Yeah. Yeah,
00:34:23:07 - 00:34:25:17
yeah. So that's cool, I guess.
00:34:25:20 - 00:34:30:07
Are you learning about manufacturing processes now? Like, are you are you deep in this?
00:34:30:07 - 00:34:38:07
Yeah. I'm pretty deep in it. I mean, it's it's all run under my org. And I will say, like, I've, I've generally been a software CEO my
00:34:38:07 - 00:34:39:19
Yeah.
00:34:39:19 - 00:34:45:13
into hardware was a bit of a learning curve. I've got a great team here that knows it way better than I probably ever will.
00:34:45:19 - 00:35:00:07
Do you think, on a per unit cost basis, let's just say like a comparable drone, like, is it just always going to be cheaper from China, or do you think, America, like, there's there's no reason American factories can't build, like, similarly priced ones?
00:35:00:11 - 00:35:03:12
No, I mean, I think it's it's a deep uphill battle to
00:35:05:07 - 00:35:07:19
companies are trying to reach parity on features and quality,
00:35:09:07 - 00:35:20:02
pricing is a problem that we haven't even started with. Really? Pricing is a, you know, a function of like sourcing the components. The rare earth materials themselves have the labor to put them all together.
00:35:20:04 - 00:35:40:19
And like, let's say theoretically, I could, you know, snap my fingers and say, hey, we can just have automated factories to save so much money on labor. We still have to deal with like component pricing, rare earth pricing, where a lot of these were so, like built in either in, like Chinese controlled environments. And, you know, it's just going to be a different pricing problem.
00:35:48:21 - 00:35:49:21
Yeah.
00:35:53:00 - 00:35:53:07
So I
00:35:53:07 - 00:36:01:19
guess like why even do it as a company. Like if you, if you're saying like hey it's such an uphill battle. I mean you've got these drones, you can use them like why invest in this.
00:36:01:19 - 00:36:09:21
number one you get to like when you when you actually control the hardware itself, you can make it do things that like, you know, have to be reliant on foreign adversaries to like, choose to do.
00:36:11:09 - 00:36:22:10
building a drone, for example, that is more of like an airship replacement in its own way, like it's designed to stay up in the air for three hours and fly 100mph and you know, DJI, which is the largest company in the world for drones.
00:36:22:10 - 00:36:27:22
It's Chinese. They don't have anything like that. And they probably won't build something like that, at least not for a long
00:36:28:04 - 00:36:30:09
No. For external people.
00:36:30:09 - 00:36:42:09
business. Yeah. So that's like number one. Number two, it's just there there's a there's a national security interest. There's certain things that we should just build, you know, in the, in the United States.
00:36:42:11 - 00:37:02:18
That's one of them, I would say, because, like, you don't want to be reliant on foreign adversaries for things that are part of critical infrastructure, generally part of your public safety apparatus, your military apparatus, if you can avoid it. So, like, even if it's going to be expensive, it's something the U.S. government is likely to like, want to support financially to ensure that we have the actual security interest taking care of.
00:37:02:18 - 00:37:13:21
Yeah. And I guess for flock, there's maybe some applications where you can actually sell to the D.O.D.. And, that might be hard if it's like a foreign drone.
00:37:14:10 - 00:37:20:12
The the important I mean, the duty won't be foreign, especially for foreign adversaries like this will do it. It's federally, like, illegal for them to do.
00:37:20:12 - 00:37:32:19
Nice. Cool. Rahul, this is a really fun, podcast. I appreciate you kind of walking us through your journey and talking about, all of these things. Thanks for joining us.
00:37:32:19 - 00:37:38:08
Thanks, everyone for listening. Please leave us a review on whatever channel you're listening on, makes a
00:37:38:08 - 00:37:43:03
big difference to the algorithm and to the success of the show. And see you all next week.
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