
“From World Record Speed to Next-Gen Drones: The Gritty Journey of Damjan Zabovnik”
What do you get when you cross a speed-obsessed world record cyclist, a love for hands-on engineering, and a bold vision for the future of aviation? Meet Damjan Zabovnik: Slovenian-born inventor, record-setting cyclist, and now the CEO and co-founder of Eivie Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup taking on the vertical takeoff drone challenge with out-of-the-box aerodynamic thinking.
In this episode of Gritty Leadership, Damjan shares how his childhood curiosity evolved into world record-breaking speed bikes—pedaling at 80 miles per hour on pure human power—and how those lessons in grit, failure, and relentless innovation now fuel his quest to build radically new drone technology. We talk hands-on hardware vs software startups, real-life challenges of hardware manufacturing and capital raising, making the leap from Slovenia to Silicon Valley, and the balance of staying human in a tech-dominated world.
Damjan opens up about leadership through setbacks, the engineering breakthroughs driving Eivie's patent-pending drone design, winning a NASA grant, and the grit required to keep going when the odds—and regulations—are against you.
If you care about innovation, resilience, and what it actually takes to pioneer a new category—don’t miss this story.