Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Gritty Leadership, the podcast where we celebrate the leaders who make and move America. We're diving into the untold stories of resilience, innovation, and perseverance of the leaders in the gritty industries that keep America running.
Speaker: I'm Brian Smith, and together with my co-host Angie Jones, we're on a mission to honor the leadership that's often overlooked but makes all the difference. So let's get into it, because real leadership gets its hands dirty.
Speaker: Welcome to the Gritty Leadership Podcast. I'm Brian Smith and I'm here with my co-host Angie Jones. And we are very excited to be joined by Damian Zabovnik, CEO and co-founder of Ivy, ah very exciting startup firm that is creating a new vertical and takeoff drone ah that we're going to learn more about over the next few minutes as we go through this.
Speaker: Damian, welcome to the podcast. And we're excited to have you. So Damian, just let's start out. Tell us a little bit about you. Tell us your story. And how did you come to this place and starting Ivy?
Speaker: Yeah, I was born in Slovenia and always interested in RC models and technical stuff. I used to take things apart and break them more. Or sometimes I repaired them, luckily.
Speaker: And this is how I learned. I went to study physics in Slovenia and my big hobby was cycling and more so speed biking.
Speaker: So I started with Streamliners back in 2002. We had another pilot and then I took over and set the world records later.
Speaker: And ah how this connection with Santa Cruz, California happened. In 2003, we had first race in Nevada. There is the road that enables straight, fast run up and then 200 meters flying start.
Speaker: And I met a friend from another team who is from Santa Cruz area, Gabe, and he introduced me this area. I loved it and kept coming back.
Speaker: I attended more races and so on and so forth. So I decided to move the whole family here in 2015. Long story short, we now are here 10 years as citizens, and this is my first bigger startup, Ivy, since 2022. Awesome. So in case you missed that, Damien is a world record holder in ah speed cycling. Can you explain exactly? that i mean, these are incredible machines. Can you talk about what these machines are and what your record is?
Speaker: Yeah, machines are like a fish and typically on two wheels. They can be also on three wheels. I was always on two wheels because it's faster.
Speaker: And then you pedal, all you use is your own power. And my biggest achievement is one hour world record from 2008, where I had 54 miles from standing start and broke the world record.
Speaker: and ah Later, one other followed. ah low altitude, I went fastest over 200 meters. They measure time, right? You do run up, achieve the speed, and then sprint over 200 meters.
Speaker: So this is pure aerodynamics. We couldn't go that fast without special designs, laminar flow. Aerodynamic... Coefficient of air drag is 20 to 40 times less than drag at conventional road bike when you use no fairings.
Speaker: And this gives you speeds twice as much. So in the 200, how fast were you going? So we went the fastest over meters. i went sixty seven miles But at altitude, went 80 miles in Nevada.
Speaker: 80 miles an hour on a bicycle. That's 4,000 feet high. So the air gets thinner and enables higher speed.
Speaker: Also, the slope helps. It is slight slope, less than 1%. downhill and that gives you like 200 watts extra during the course, during fast speed. 80 miles an hour is, that's no joke.
Speaker: yeah That's amazing. You wear a helmet when you do this or? Yeah, we are obligated to wear a helmet. For that reason, bike gets a little bigger. the then The wish is to have as small bike as possible so it cuts air easier.
Speaker: But helmets need to be approved by international cycling organization. So they need to have special stamp on them and then they're good.
Speaker: They make you wear a helmet, otherwise you are disqualified. Do you wish you didn't have to? um Yeah, and ah kind of, because it's hotter. During one hour, it's really hot and you you are basically almost naked inside and helmet hits the brain, which is very delicate.
Speaker: And it doesn't really help. In one hour record, it's very safe conditions. You can't hit anything. You have helmet around you. That's this shell, right? Streamlined body.
Speaker: And that's way more protection than the helmet itself. But for higher speeds, it can get useful if you crash it. In bad situations, I can say helmet can save your life, of course.
Speaker: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I just, 80 miles an hour is just, that's impressive and incredible. And just to think that your own body can create as much power to be able to do that is remarkable. So I'm deeply impressed. Yeah.
Speaker: same So Ivy, tell me about the, where did the idea come from? Yeah, the Ivy name came from that same sport. All my vehicles were named Ivy and I learned so much about aerodynamics there that I decided to use the same name here.
Speaker: As Ivy drones have very aerodynamic everything, but fuselage especially reminds on those bicycles. I liked the symmetrical shape of logo. I had it before and internet domain was free at that time. So that's why I chose it. And sorry, what was your question?
Speaker: I would say the idea for the product, where where did that come from? Oh, I met many people who are in aviation designing. a professional drone pilot.
Speaker: Gabe, I mentioned before, had a company that inspected windmills by a drone. And so I also worked a little bit for Joby Aviation, here not far away from me.
Speaker: And there I got the idea in 2014 about making the VTOL a little differently. I would say faster. and ah has more maneuverability. It's not classic. I always was thinking out of the box and all my inventions, this is one of them, try to be efficient either in transportation, mostly in transportation or some you know housing that has good thermal isolation, insulation and so on and so forth.
Speaker: So yeah, I got this idea about two big propellers. Let me show you a little bit. Here is a drone and big propellers are here below and opening inside the circular wing.
Speaker: So you can get air from top and push it efficiently downwards because nothing is in the way. So it's efficient way for vertical flight. As well, it's pretty slick and what looks nice and slick usually goes fast.
Speaker: And yeah, that's how I got this and gave it a chance. How many people are are currently working with you? ah Around six people.
Speaker: We had a bigger team, but not always everybody sticks or not everybody you really want. But ah these people I'm really happy with now.
Speaker: It's one guy that is co-founder now, Oleg Kujbeda. He's PhD and he is expert in AI and computer vision.
Speaker: He studied in Israel and moved here 15 years ago, worked for NIH and other defense companies too, thermal cameras and things like that. He worked on that.
Speaker: Then I have engineers. Adam Colazzo is from airspace. He was also at Lockheed Martin. And i have we have a good pilot tester who used to fly for NASA, all branches of military, SpaceX and things like that.
Speaker: His father is good aviation designer. I don't know what I think about aviation. So good, constructive ideas came from him. So patent got influenced by that. We are patent pending this technology now with additional five provisional patents.
Speaker: and To go more into team, we have really... experienced startup advisor. She is in this startup business for decades, connected with plug and play and had her own fund invested.
Speaker: Yeah. oh What else? Innovators. All in all, we are innovators, engineers out of the box thinkers. and experienced businessmen.
Speaker: So when we think about startups, we often, i think, think about software and kind of the traditional idea of Silicon Valley startups. What's it like being a startup when you're making something that has to be manufactured and and something that is going to be tangible?
Speaker: But what are the different things you have to think about as a founder? and Yeah. I can say I have luck because I've been designing, building and racing bikes.
Speaker: So what I designed, I had to prove that it's you can make it, right? Different parameters. and then that it's useful so I paddled it and I wouldn't make something that in my mind wouldn't work. I have that practical experience, hands-on experience and I'm very critical of what I choose. It should not be too complex but how it is ah today when you try to manufacture something I think it's not easy.
Speaker: People are going more and more into virtual world and software is getting a lot of traction recently enhanced by AI.
Speaker: That is good and bad. People also get unhealthy habits in the life. It spoils people's brains and so on.
Speaker: So for that reason, i will always try to do hardware to fight. against too radical transformation of society into something too crazy.
Speaker: If you ask me about the drone, I mean, if we ever make manned aircraft, I would like to have a button that you can always push and fly yourself, not being completely dependent on flight controllers, AI or whatever.
Speaker: There is tendency for aircraft in the future to fly out ah to fly autonomously, so there will be no pilot. It is for some people. I'm not so much for it.
Speaker: I like help to have control and freedom. With that comes freedom. Like when you sit in a car, it's nice to go wherever you want. Taxi is something else, right? It has limits.
Speaker: If you take Uber, again, you wait. There are ups and downs. I think it's harder for a hardware company to get funded today. you need to really...
Speaker: stick out competition in drones is big. We are lucky we have differentiated technology. Nobody has seen something like that. We can prove it with numbers, with test flights. We are flying in real world, which gives me a lot of pleasure too.
Speaker: I'm not the one that would play video games and get excited. It's too boring to me. I want the real acceleration, real speed. I'm a speed geek, as you can see from my past.
Speaker: I love speed, I love flying, and I want other people to enjoy the same. But for drones, I like to improve quality of life. It can be detecting wildfires, preventing bigger damages.
Speaker: In LA recently was wildfire palisades that cost, I think, $300 million, dollars right? Or billion?
Speaker: At least, yeah. was huge amount of damage. It was huge amount of damage. I'm not sure right now, but it was more than 10 years altogether before. Or in spraying, agricultural spraying, we can help to do more precise so the food is not so contaminated.
Speaker: The idea is to support sustainability, not only to survey people. but I'm against constant surveillance of everybody in the future, for example.
Speaker: For that reason, I would not like to make drones. But yeah, what it is, it is. so People demand different things. We are looking also into...
Speaker: military applications, so it's dual use. So your question, i hope I answered it, how it is in this hardware business in California.
Speaker: It's good that we have many startup um environment for a startup is healthy here. So it's supposed to be easy to get money, but it's still not.
Speaker: That's my conclusion. So Angie and so and lives on ah on a dairy farm in Iowa. Are you guys using drones? and in Yeah, we did for the first time this year. oh um And like for exactly that reason, just more precision, more control.
Speaker: um more sustainable. You're not going through the field, so you're not causing soil compaction. like it is It is definitely the way to go. So it's exciting to see that you guys are are serving ag as well as other industries.
Speaker: That's definitely what we will not forget. We were looking into it. It looks, to be honest, today, a first customer might be abroad and not for civilian use, but ah civilian use is also hopefully possible to get us going and get first revenue.
Speaker: I started with aim to improve air mobility. personal commuter could be a VTOL like that. When I see congestion here on roads, it really makes me frustrated. and Many people feel the same.
Speaker: According to the movies when I was a kid, we were supposed to have flying cars by now. Yeah. What's holding us back is regulations, And also if you want to fly electric, it's about technology of batteries.
Speaker: It's improving rapidly, but it's still not quite there. Batteries for longer flight are still too heavy. That's why we are thinking about gasoline engines or using hydrogen on board.
Speaker: Then fuel cell does create electricity on board and you can use it in electric motors. Damian, what's the payload capacity of these drones? How much can they carry?
Speaker: Drones can carry typically the same amount they weigh for quadcopter. It's, of course, the compromise for how long they want to carry this load, for how far.
Speaker: If you want to carry it far, you need wing, so you fly horizontally more efficiently. Some drones can carry and fly horizontally for an hour, and we want to do the same.
Speaker: carry if you are electric only i'm talking about that otherwise if you use gasoline 10 hours of flight at 100 miles per hour gives you a thousand miles range per flight that's also possible but technology then gets a little bit more complicated and more expensive it depends on what you want to do so just to lift something quadcopter multi helicopter actually will be always the best choice things like that we have a hybrid between helicopter and fixed wing vital so we can still carry a lot but what we can do better is really carry longer over longer distance that weight and so i would say 90 kilometers which is
Speaker: 50, 60 miles is possible per flight. For Ivy? For electric propulsion, batteries on board. For your prop, yeah. Ivy, yes. What do you see as kind of the the market challenges of bringing something like that to market? It's chicken and egg problem.
Speaker: If you do something very new, a new shape, ah people are more so more skeptical. I have experience, but I'm not Boeing 20 year engineer, right?
Speaker: So if somebody like that would seek for money, they will go faster with them. So here I am a little stuck. I need to find some money now to make the prototype bigger and really prove what we can do, that we can carry 150 kilograms and we can fly at least 30 kilometers with that.
Speaker: That's the aim. And that load would be outside, by the way. So we have many models, as I said, provisional patents are filed. One of them is that you put load beneath the fuselage on strings, on cables, ropes, whatever works, and carry it there. So you don't need to land to load the aircraft and unload it.
Speaker: It can hover, and during that, like helicopters do many times when they rescue, um You can do that while hovering and then you fly with that load exposed. So air drag is bigger when you have exposed load outside. For that, we would still go 30 kilometers, pretty heavy loaded, 150 kilograms. And the aircraft would have only four meters in wings.
Speaker: And for that to prove we need initial money now, Should we take a loan? Yeah, but we need to have statements, some inflow, some records on the bank. And then we we have different avenues. Right now we gathered angel investment money.
Speaker: It's not such a big amount, but we can operate. We are seeking for for more. We are looking into venture capitalist money and they they will look at our business model, business plan,
Speaker: If we can sell this, we know how potential customers are brought and letters of interest. And yeah, we need to leverage on that and get more money. If that money gets more credibility, we need to prove it.
Speaker: And then really we can grow with even more support. You mentioned a little bit about the challenge around regulations and things like that. How do you look at to those headwinds going forward and you know, aviation is a regulation heavy business. and Yeah. When I was thinking about one person aircraft, I wanted it ultralight.
Speaker: So for that FAA doesn't require pilot license. If you stay below 254 pounds for empty aircraft, you can do that.
Speaker: Also certifications not really need it. It's, you can have it as experimental aircraft for that. You just need to make sure you know what you're doing, correct?
Speaker: But ah speed limit 55 knots, I think. And it's also for multicopters, they had some complicated rules about motor count and so on.
Speaker: Right now, ah things are changing. The recent administration made many changes, not only for air mobility, urban air mobility or things like that, but also for drones, how many drones you can fly per time, how many people per drones needs to be present, observers and so on.
Speaker: If they can fly beyond visual line of sight, that gets looser now. So this industry will see a big expansion, not only because of the need, but also because better regulations.
Speaker: But it's it's not easy yet. You know, with all the challenges, with fundraising, technical challenges, regulation, how how do you stay motivated through all this? Well, what drives me really is memory on my, a couple of vivid dreams in my life when i flew like,
Speaker: birth and or in many dreams I was swimming through air and going really slow, levitating basically. And that was a big joy and a feeling of freedom.
Speaker: And I hope one day I will fly like that in some vital designs that we do. So um also whenever I test fly and see successful flight, it gives me joy.
Speaker: Even though we have bad moments, it's always four steps back and then five steps forward and so on and so forth. But when you are at the lowest, you just keep dreaming and hoping that we'll get better.
Speaker: The future is down there at the end of the tunnel. There is light, right? So yeah, I have a lot of optimism. I'm motivated to success and I work hard for that, I can say.
Speaker: Has there been a moment where you thought, I'm done, I'm gonna quit, I can't do it anymore? It was moment when I crashed so hard and it was like, oh, not again, right?
Speaker: I thought I had it, but now this. So you need to redo, to rebuild, improve software, avoid any mistakes again, which always are.
Speaker: When you are up to crash, right, you can't hit the pause button. Okay, I'm going to tweak this and continue. You just crash hard or less hard. It depends how lucky you are.
Speaker: And ah those moments, yeah, can also almost bring your tears into eyes, but then it gets fine. You forget. Life is such that always you remember the best moments long term.
Speaker: That's the beauty. I'm curious if you're your background in racing too, I feel like there's a ah mental toughness that comes with that. And there's probably a really strong parallel to that. and entrepreneurship.
Speaker: Absolutely. and Sports builds you up. It's hard to train really hard like a professional athlete. least And I've been there. I did it half professional. It's, you know, when you are at the limit of your performance is the limit between death and life.
Speaker: If you are not at the limit, you are not trying hard enough. So it's suffering and it hardens you to be able to work hard. But I wanted to say too that that sport was a lot of chances that things go wrong, like weather can go wrong when you are scheduled to do the world record.
Speaker: Then observers, will they be available and come? Will your all helpers, your assistants be ready and also available to go with you? I went from Slovenia to Germany like 10 times to try to test and attempt records.
Speaker: And then the bike needs to be sound and you need to be at the top performance. So it's not hard, and not easy to get to the top performance in the year time, right? It's building from winter up to you're much better in the spring and probably almost the best in in summer. And if you keep going,
Speaker: In the beginning of fall, probably you're the best, ah but conditions are best in summer and the hotter air, sooner. Anyhow, I'm going too far. um Yeah, athlete athlete needs to work hard and I'm hard worker since born and helps me in business. Well, I'm considering all the variables too. I think that's such a good.
Speaker: Yeah, and when you fly, you can have also unpleasant wind, or interference in radio frequencies or I don't And then battery can also give up.
Speaker: It just struck me that, you know, the Wright brothers started as bicycle manufacturers and moved into aircraft. Has that ever struck you that you're on a similar path? and Yeah, I heard about that and um was interesting to me.
Speaker: And then I thought to myself, I will make a joke too. why Why our aircraft has a circular wing, right? Because I used to ride bikes.
Speaker: I wonder if there's something about that though, of something that- Maybe subconsciously I was thinking like this, but yeah, I got this idea. yeah ah You know, circles and spheres in life are everywhere. It's pretty much- natural shape. This circle protects propellers in the middle. It's stronger than having two wings, cantilever not supporting each other.
Speaker: So it gives rigidity. You can load this aircraft more with lighter structure because it's stiffer structure.
Speaker: And I think there is something about Being on a bicycle, moving quickly, that does feel like flying sometimes. There is, ah I think, a connection. Yeah, I also skied a lot and went really fast downhill as much as I could.
Speaker: It's in the nature. Some people are born to be challenged all the time and go for challenges. and see where are limits.
Speaker: And also, really want to you know prove myself and be the best version of myself, help humanity if I can. If you were to talk to someone who's thinking about starting a hard product startup, what advice would you give them?
Speaker: I would say start building as soon as you can. Don't theoreticize for too long because real world really gives you the right feedback.
Speaker: I mean, today we play with computational fluid dynamics, which is simulations around aerodynamics. You can predict, mean, test by computation.
Speaker: what shape is better than other and how good it is. You can get pretty good numbers that relate to real world tests, but it's more than error dynamics.
Speaker: It's how many things can go wrong when it operates. Did you overcomplicate? Can you make some lines differently to improve a structural rigidity?
Speaker: When you play with things, you're taught a lot. i'm a kid As a kid, I was always very playful, and especially by Legos. I did almost anything you can imagine that you can touch out of Legos.
Speaker: And that was big school to me. And then, you know, how to choose parts to create what you want. ah In hardware, it's also about which materials you choose.
Speaker: Materials can be very smart, forgiving, you know, somewhat tougher, some will shatter into pieces. The more you play as a kid, definitely, I recommend all the parents, if you want to have kid in hardware, don't let them be too much by computers and video games and laptops and iPhones and so on.
Speaker: That really ah changes brands significantly, especially today. I was exposed to ah Spectrum, and basic was the language, I believe.
Speaker: ZX Stactrom was the first computer we bought. And I played video games and I could see how addictive it is. But those video games were like 100th of addiction of today's video games probably.
Speaker: This seems to be so real. but It gives you so much. Telling me that stepping on LEGOs Yeah, let's stick to Legos, stick to cut carving out of wood, ah playing with el elbow, right?
Speaker: All these things I've done. And then many, many sports. I tested so many sports. My mother is inspired us to play sports from skating, skiing, tennis, whatever you imagine, swimming.
Speaker: My Legos were the one of the only toys I kept from when I was a kid, and I'm so glad I did. And ye my son has a ridiculous amount of Legos now because he got a lot of new ones too, but but we still have all the ones I had from when I was a kid too.
Speaker: Yeah, you won't believe, but many times when I invented something, I made it out of Legos to make it faster and test something. That's cool. As you're on the hunt for fundraising, is there something you wish that funders would understand that you keep running into that they just don't seem to get?
Speaker: I was working on prototype and flying a lot. And I thought as soon as we are really successful in this, we will just get to the market, right? And sell and make profit.
Speaker: But then I started to attend some workshops for startups and met peers and get some advisors who told me, go out and find the customer as soon as possible, ask what they need.
Speaker: And I would say, yeah, don't hide your product too much, expose it. Of course, protect it by patents if it's patentable and gives you benefit.
Speaker: But then go out and figure out what people would buy. and then reshape design based on that. So you don't waste too much engineering on stuff that nobody would buy and are more like your hobby, not business.
Speaker: You can get into that this trap. Many inventors played the whole life and really never figured out what is worth to invent to sell. Yeah, I have two patents that I really couldn't sell and I'm not brave enough to Go and do startup right now on that invention.
Speaker: Angie, anything else you've got? um No, unless, I mean, I'd be curious, is there anything else that you would like to share or that you think we should highlight? Yeah, we got NASA grant recently for efficient electrical vertical takeoff and landing aircraft.
Speaker: And in six months, hopefully we perform and deliver what we promised. get to phase two, which will be bigger money. This gives us credibility and will help us to raise valuation, not to sacrifice so much equity of the company when we approach the venture capitalists and ask for money.
Speaker: And they will see value in us that way too when we are proven somehow already. So that's one good achievement we did. And also on the DARPA marketplace,
Speaker: We created a seven minute video and they looked at it and we got it awardable. So we are there. That's good for military use cases.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll see where future brings us. But so far we have many possibilities in front of us and we will choose the one that gives us the most benefit.
Speaker: Well, Damien, this has been an absolute pleasure and an honor to be with a world record holder. I am so excited for to hear what happens with Ivy and and how this technology evolves over the coming years and has an impact on the world as it comes to the market and becomes a real thing in the world. I think it's ah super exciting and I'm just ah deeply impressed with the grit that you're showing in making this happen and bringing it bringing it to the world. ah
Speaker: Thank you so much, Buran. Thank you so much.
