SaaS Interviews with CEOs, Startups, Founders

676: $30M raised, will DroneDeploy create first Trillionaires w/ Drones + AI and Machine Learning? w/ CEO Mike Winn

31 May 2017

26 min

5025 words

2 speakers

31 May 2017

Audio

Description

Mike Winn. He's the CEO and founder of the company called DroneDeploy, the leading cloud-software platform for commercial drones and he's on the mission to make the sky successful and productive for everybody. The company focuses on the agricultural and construction industries, but its large customers are from almost every industry across 130 countries. He has collected more than 8M acres of aerial imagery. Prior to joining Deploy, Mike worked at Google and was a RC helicopters hobbyist. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – The Effective Executive What CEO do you follow? – Elon Musk Favorite online tool? — Gmail How many hours of sleep do you get?— 7 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – "You can pretty much do whatever you set your mind to" Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:26 – Nathan introduces Mike to the show 02:20 – DroneDeploy has raised $31M from VCs 02:26 – DroneDeploy had 3 rounds and the last one was in July 2016 03:00 – DroneDeploy was launched in 2013 03:05 – It stated in Edinburg, UK and was moved to the USA 03:25 – Mike got married in the middle of the incubator program 04:03 – Mike's wife, Carrie, has always been supportive 04:15 – Mike was an account manager and selling AdWords at Google 04:30 – After 18 months, he moved to another team 04:56 – Mike was 27 when he started DroneDeploy 05:24 – Mike had £100K grant money to back him up 05:39 – Mike was paying himself £1500 05:53 – DroneDeploy's Twitter has unbelievable aerial imagery 06:05 – DroneDeploy make software for drones 06:13 – Primary industries are agriculture and construction, but they also touch other industries that exist 06:43 – DroneDeploy only focuses on software 06:56 – DroneDeploy is a SaaS business 07:08 – Customers can try DroneDeploy for free 07:12 – For commercial use, pay is $100 a month 07:26 – DroneDeploy has 2 channels 07:34 – To get more accurate data and large 3D plans, try the business plan which is $300 a month 07:44 – The other channel is to expand by the number of seats 08:21 – One seat is $100 08:30 – DroneDeploy has over a thousand paying businesses 08:56 – The drone market is still young, but growing really fast 09:52 – Team size is 60 10:15 – Nathan publishes on Youtube—Check it out! 10:36 – Mark Cuban predicted that the first trillionaire will be from the AI space 11:00 – Mike's co-founders have PhDs in machine learning 11:10 – Mike sees the path of DroneDeploy becoming a trillion dollar business 12:03 – In the future, you don't only want drones to collect data but to take action as well 13:07 – DroneDeploy currently works with B2B 13:32 – What is interesting about drones is the technology community 13:50 – Drone provides the bird's eye view for the farmers 14:23 – One of the farmers who used DroneDeploy found a fungus when he saw that a certain part of the land was different in color 15:02 – In construction, it easier to work around with a drone especially when there's a disaster, like an earthquake 15:47 – CAC 15:55 – DroneDeploy has a successful blog 16:17 – DroneDeploy has an NPS of around 40 16:52 – 6 people in the team are on sales and the rest are engineers 17:15 – Churn 17:45 – The use of a drone is seasonal 18:01 – DroneDeploy is looking at what the customers want to do and how they can get consumers to use drones throughout the whole year 18:36 – MRR is around $100K 18:58 – DroneDeploy still burns cash monthly 19:30 – DroneDeploy can still manage until 2018 without additional capital 20:27 – Mike would bet on DJI winning the drone hardware space 21:38 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: The drone market is still very young, but is growing rapidly. The future of the AI industry is promising and it's very likely that the first trillionaire will be from the AI space. You can turn your hobby into a business, just put your mind to it. Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Organifi – The juice was Nathan's life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Freshbooks – Nathan doesn't waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Chapters

1. What is the main topic discussed in this episode? 2. How much funding has DroneDeploy raised and from whom? 3. What industries does DroneDeploy primarily serve? 4. What is the business model of DroneDeploy? 5. What unique challenges does the drone market face? 6. How does DroneDeploy leverage AI and machine learning? 7. What are some real-world applications of DroneDeploy's technology? 8. What strategies does DroneDeploy use for customer acquisition?

Featured

Mike Winn

Nathan Latka

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

0.031 - 15.767 Nathan Latka

This is The Top, where I interview entrepreneurs who are number one or number two in their industry in terms of revenue or customer base. You'll learn how much revenue they're making, what their marketing funnel looks like, and how many customers they have.

Chapter 2: How much funding has DroneDeploy raised and from whom?

16.268 - 24.056 Nathan Latka

I'm now at $20,000 per talk. Five and six million. He is hell-bent on global domination. We just broke our 100,000-unit soul mark.

Chapter 3: What industries does DroneDeploy primarily serve?

24.076 - 27.439 Nathan Latka

And I'm your host, Nathan Latka.

27.419 - 47.112 Nathan Latka

When I do webinar interviews or I give big speeches to thousands of people all over the world, I usually will talk about data and sometimes show my dashboards, like my SaaS dashboard as I'm growing my SaaS company to top inbox, or my website dashboard, which shows how I take impressions to convert them into email leads and convert them into customers for NathanLaka.com.

47.132 - 60.391 Nathan Latka

The funny thing is, guys, I build these dashboards with myself, no developer, and it's basically free, and I use one tool to do it. You can see the tool at nathanlaca.com forward slash analytics. I'll tell you more later in the show. This is episode 676.

Chapter 4: What is the business model of DroneDeploy?

60.871 - 81.253 Nathan Latka

And coming up tomorrow morning, we've got a new episode. Remember, every morning early on Eastern Time, you get a brand new founder or CEO interview. And tomorrow is with Gadi Shamia with TalkDesk, which has passed 50,000 paying seats. And they've raised $25 million to be your more efficient call center.

Chapter 5: What unique challenges does the drone market face?

81.233 - 100.378 Nathan Latka

He reveals his revenue and a lot more data, so tune in tomorrow morning to find out. Good morning, everybody. My guest this morning is Mike Wynn. He's the CEO and founder of a company called Drone Deploy, the leading cloud software platform for commercial drones. And he's on a mission to make the sky accessible and productive for everybody.

100.718 - 109.748 Nathan Latka

The company focuses on the agricultural and construction industries, but has large customers from almost every industry across over 130 countries.

Chapter 6: How does DroneDeploy leverage AI and machine learning?

109.768 - 118.799 Nathan Latka

We've collected more than 8 million acres of aerial imagery. Prior to drone deploy, Mike worked at Google and was an RC Helicopters hobbyist. Mike, are you ready to take us to the top?

119.9 - 120.341 Mike Winn

I'm ready.

121.202 - 123.124 Nathan Latka

You're so cool, man. What a cool space.

124.266 - 126.989 Mike Winn

Yeah, I'm lucky. It's a really interesting space.

Chapter 7: What are some real-world applications of DroneDeploy's technology?

127.43 - 130.994 Mike Winn

We're lucky to be at the right time, the right place, with the right kind of hobbies behind us.

131.315 - 139.104 Nathan Latka

Now, my audience, they're killers. They love numbers, and it's not always about numbers, but just so they stay hooked for this whole thing. Where are you guys at? How much capital have you raised?

140.146 - 149.845 Mike Winn

We've raised $31 million. from VCs of the last three years. We've done three rounds, seed AB, AB in July of last year.

150.226 - 152.67 Nathan Latka

Okay, good. So that was, that's almost a year ago.

Chapter 8: What strategies does DroneDeploy use for customer acquisition?

152.79 - 157.7 Nathan Latka

So you're either raising a mammoth round right now or you're selling to DGI. Which one is it?

159.423 - 175.007 Mike Winn

I know we're actually in between stage right now. We raised 20 in our last round. That was a little bit more than we actually intended. And hey, we want to ride that as far as we can. We want to build a big business. We don't want to be focusing on raising money all the time. We've got to actually get down and sell some product.

175.248 - 176.409 Nathan Latka

What year did you launch the company in?

177.55 - 177.791 Mike Winn

Sorry?

178.011 - 179.213 Nathan Latka

What year did you launch the company in?

179.233 - 180.795 Mike Winn

2013. Okay.

182.236 - 182.437 Nathan Latka

Go ahead.

182.997 - 195.734 Mike Winn

I'll give you some backstory. We actually started the company in Edinburgh in the UK, but came over to the US to see the Bay Area as soon as we could. We got into an incubator named AngelPad.

195.954 - 196.054

Okay.

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