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Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

techcrunch.com

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Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#61

Post by anonairwavedev »

abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

It has less to do with the space, and more to do with the odd engineering decisions and multiple pivots.

There wasn't a SDK or platform to build on and we didn't take any actual orders for anything (so we had minimal success stories or $$$). The hardware we showed was built by us, and ran a custom OS (not based on linux) that was nearly impossible to work with. We had a very talented engineer rage-quit after spending a week attempting to figure out how the OS handled the internal message bus system to debug an issue.

The hardware was also crazy expensive. We built literally everything: the vehicles, autopilot, the autopilot OS, the comms board that connected to motors (and enclosures), the sensor boards (GPS, gyro, etc), the radio that talked to the autopilot, the flight planning software, and later an entire enterprise cloud stack written in only the newest of the new JS frameworks and containers. The team often decided to do things such as not use off-the-shelf processors like the Nvidia TK1 or existing embedded software solutions -- nothing was 'good enough' so everything was invented.

Oh, and did I mention we also cycled through recruiters like candy?

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#62

Post by anonairwavedev »

ddtaylor wrote: post #49
anonairwavedev wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, never did. We build 2 OS(s): the first was based on linux with a rtos package (2013-14?). That was scrapped and a new fully custom hardware package was built with a fully custom OS (built by a team that never had done this) and was built for a low power arm processor. We were plagued by huge issues most of the time due to that OS being nearly impossible to debug or work with. Also doing that prevented any third…

How do companies raise $10M+ without having a product ready to use? (Real question I run a startup that needs funding)

We actually did have something at that point -- it was based on existing hardware and it did work. I seem to recall the original CEO taking I think someone from A16Z (?) out to a parking lot and flying an aircraft around as a demo

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#63

Post by bpirruccello »

abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

I'm not sure what conference you were at/what you saw presented, but there is drone software that creates a lot of value for construction, engineering, and mining companies. BVLOS may create a lot of value some day, but there are a lot more technical hurdles that will need to be cleared before it becomes safe and mainstream, just like Level 4/5 self driving cars. (unless you're talking about doing FPV inspections.)

Disclosure, I originally was the product manager for 3DR's flagship software product, Site Scan, which drove our transition from a hardware business to a software business, and I am currently VP of Marketing and Business Development here. Each mine that deploys our software saves, on average, 6 figures per year (after the product cost). This is on man-hour costs alone - the value is greater if you look at the increased safety of taking individuals out of active mines and increasing topography capture that enables analysts to identify issues before they turn into safety hazards on site.

That's just for one industry we serve - cost savings/time savings/improvements in project pursuit are all high for construction and engineering as well.

I think it's likely you saw some presentations from companies that had not done enough customer discovery or they were perhaps just very early in the process of identifying real problems and building the right solutions, but it's not representative of the industry.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#64

Post by romwell »

anonairwavedev wrote: post #61
abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

It has less to do with the space, and more to do with the odd engineering decisions and multiple pivots. There wasn't a SDK or platform to build on and we didn't take any actual orders for anything (so we had minimal success stories or $$$). The hardware we showed was built by us, and ran a custom OS (not based on linux) that was nearly impossible to work with. We had a very talented engineer rage-quit after spending…

So, a death by NIH?

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#65

Post by notJim »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #60
gonational wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please when you find this out let me know as well, as I am also in the market for some free money.

You need to cast the magic spell. The following spells work well: "Drone" "AI" "Blockchain" etc.

Also VR or even better, AR!

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#66

Post by bpirruccello »

hef19898 wrote: post #11
abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

One other usecase with a lot of potential is inventory control and counting in warehouses. Not small articles, but for industrial warehouses and larger products drones combining bar code scanners and visual artical identification can improve things considerably. Fraunhofer ran some first test like two years in Germany. No idea what came out of it.

I always hear people raise this point but there are better solutions than a flying robot inside of a warehouse.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#67

Post by anonairwavedev »

roymurdock wrote: post #3
danso wrote: post #2

I know the article says Airware attempted to go into hardware, but did its operating system (ostensibly its main product) have users?

https://techcrunch.com/2015/04/16/airware/ A few customers listed here: Delta Drone, Drone America. Sounds like the market didn't want or need a $2500/yr/drone software package for automating flights/data retrieval/storage. And there's simply no competing at the hardware level with DJI, even with $118M in funding. "Across all prices in North America, DJI represented 50 percent of the market, Snow says. The price rang…

None of those customers ever got an SDK (because there wasn't one) or any software. They only provided vehicles.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#68

Post by snug »

teraflop wrote: post #33

Maybe this is a dumb question, but why is Techcrunch using a screenshot of Airwave's Slack channel in a news article about Airware ? Is there some connection between the two companies that I'm not aware of? Or did they just not bother to read what their "source" sent them?

It says in the article. It's a slack channel for previous employees, not from the actual company.

Re: Airware is shutting down after raising $118M

#69

Post by justicezyx »

anonairwavedev wrote: post #61
abakker wrote: post #4

I'm not really surprised by this. At a drone conference in 2016, I first saw presentations from them among many other interesting technology vendors. They had a "vision" that they carefully presented on stage of what they would do, but everyone else at the show was either demoing technology or taking orders. Airware had a "call us for pricing" kind of attitude. Meanwhile, its been a year since Verizon acquired Skywar…

It has less to do with the space, and more to do with the odd engineering decisions and multiple pivots. There wasn't a SDK or platform to build on and we didn't take any actual orders for anything (so we had minimal success stories or $$$). The hardware we showed was built by us, and ran a custom OS (not based on linux) that was nearly impossible to work with. We had a very talented engineer rage-quit after spending…

Was the engineering leadership all from academia or something?
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