Flights of fancy: Aerospace startups get real for virtual $$$
PHOTO | New Haven BIZ
The sky’s no limit: Inventor Strauss and his experimental drone, which combines both rotary propulsion with fixed-wing flight performance.
Three Connecticut tech startups offered outside-the-box solutions to real-world business challenges Wednesday evening at District New Haven.
The occasion was a “premiere” by the Stamford firm preRound, which billed it as “gamified startup investing streamed live” on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch.
The session was “gamified” because no actually U.S. dollars were at risk. Instead, audience members were grubstaked $10,000 each in virtual “preMoney” to invest in the most promising startups.
The founders/CEOs of the three startups — Ridgefield-based Target Arm, and Airbornway Corp. and Wave Aerospace, both of Stamford — pitched their concepts to a live and online audience that included a panel of four prospective “angel” investors who offered feedback on both the concepts that their creators’ presentations.
What the three companies have in common is that the sky’s no limit to their commercial potential — and indeed the sky is the arena in which their innovations operate.
Former fighter pilot and aerospace engineer Jeffrey A. McChesney of Ridgefield is the prime mover of Target Arm, which aims to revolutionize package delivery with a new technology that allows delivery drones to be captured and launched from moving vehicles — say, an Amazon Prime truck — at up to 60 mph.
Using Target Arm’s Talon universal launch-and-recovery technology, a consumer could place an online order for, say, an iPhone and have it in his hand in 15 minutes. “With Target Arm, I’m interested in changing the world,” McChesney said — and his firm’s Talon technology would at the very least be a game-changer.
Creating a backyard zipline for his daughters to play with gave Rodger Gibson the idea that would become Airbornway Corp., whose powered cable technology promises to “change the way we move people and things around the world,” Gibson explained, particularly in congested urban areas where a reduction in surface traffic and attendant air pollution would be more than just a convenience.
Airbonway’s Mobile Robotic Carrier (MRC) is an aerial cable transit technology capable of moving people and freight around metropolitan areas using cable cars similar to those seen at major ski resorts. Gibson said 15 U.S cities are already planning or conducting feasibility studies about the cost and practicality of creating cable infrastructure and connecting it with existing mass-transit networks.
On a wing and a prayer
Stamford’s Wave Aerospace eyes a future in aircraft manufacturing — of a new generation of unmanned drone. Company founder Mark Strauss has invented a “new type of aircraft” — a drone that incorporates both rotary propulsion (as in helicopters) and fixed-wing configuration (as in conventional aircraft) to produce a hybrid craft capable of unmatched speed (up to 300 knots) and carrying capacity.
Strauss said his enterprise is mainly self-funded, with some support from both the City of Stamford and State of Connecticut. He said Wave Aerospace also is working to create an FAA-sanctioned “drone corridor” enabling regular drone service across Long Island Sound between Stamford and Huntington, Long Island.
At the conclusion of the presentations the live panel of prospective angel investors offered feedback to the entrepreneurs (heavy on technology, light on marketing and commercial potential, was the consensus). Out in the ether, those following the livestream feed “voted” with their “preMoney” grubstakes. About 50 “pre-investors” favored Target Arm by a 40-percent plurality, followed by Airbornway (33 percent) and Wave Aerospace (29 percent).
Of course, in the next phase of the companies’ evolution, the dollars — and the stakes — will be for real.
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