GoFly, Author at GoFly Prize - Page 10 of 10 GoFly Prize

Editor’s Note: Over the next two years, we’ll be hosting a series of GoFly Master Lectures where industry experts share advice, insights, and answer questions from anyone interested in participating in the GoFly Prize.

For the fifth in our series of “Master Lectures,” veteran venture capitalist Will Porteous shares insights into the aerospace funding landscape, outlining areas of opportunity and the challenges successful companies must overcome to win over investors. Throughout his two-decade career as an investor, he has served on the boards of over 20 companies, including aerospace and satellite companies such as Spaceflight.

Watch the full lecture above, and keep reading for an extended conversation with Will. If you have follow-up questions, check out current discussions about design on the GoFly forum or start your own thread!

GoFly: What was your first thought when you heard about the GoFly competition, and why do you think it’s important?

Will Porteous: GoFly is a remarkable reflection of where we are in the innovation cycle of aerospace. A major company like Boeing is looking to the entrepreneurial community and saying, “The next great wave of innovation in aerospace could come from here. And we want to help stimulate it. We want to use the market forces to drive innovation forward.” It’s a very enlightened perspective that’s indicative of where a lot of large companies are in their thought process about innovation. There’s recognition across a broad range of industries — automotive, financial services, healthcare — that innovation is going to happen outside of their R&D environments. GoFly is one of the most notable, large-scale, visible efforts of this kind, certainly in aerospace.

There’s recognition across a broad range of industries — automotive, financial services, healthcare — that innovation is going to happen outside of their R&D environments. GoFly is one of the most notable, large-scale, visible efforts of this kind, certainly in aerospace.

GF: As an investor, what excites you most about the future of the aerospace landscape?

WP: For me, it’s the convergence of trends that we’ve seen in other parts of the hardware and systems world arriving in aerospace. A lot of our investing activity within aerospace has been focused on the satellite industry, which is also part of the computing industry. And when you look at the satellite industry through the lens of the computing industry, it’s sort of shocking the way people build systems, how much they spend, and that it’s evolved at such a slow rate. Our interest as investors is predicated on the fact that radically new, cheaper innovation models — which we’ve seen in the computing industry for a long time — are now shaping the way we build satellites and aircraft.

GF: Tell us more about these new innovation models.

WP: One crucial innovation in aerospace is the adoption of rapid iterative development cycles that we often see in the software and hardware and systems worlds. You launch ten satellites, get them operational, generate some revenue, learn a lot from that phase of the constellation, and that informs your design for generation two of your spacecraft, which you then build and deploy. All of that happens in three- to six-month cycles. This rapid build-test-deploy-gather feedback-rebuild-repeat approach is becoming the new convention. Companies that started building their satellite constellations two and a half years ago are now on the fourth or fifth of their crafts. They’ve come a long way in a short amount of time, and it’s a crucial factor in creating successful companies. We like to fund people who have a very concrete business plan that they’re executing upon. That’s a lot more interesting to us than a pure long development effort.

GF: As a VC with 20+ years of experience, you’ve had the chance to interact with a lot of entrepreneurs. What skills will successful teams need to have in order to make their audacious goal a reality?

WP: There’s a set of qualities that are essential, but often undervalued. Everyone’s pursuing something breakthrough with an innovative design, and almost all of them are technically viable. The elusive skill is really commercialization. Raising capital has to be a fundamental core competence for any entrepreneur in the aerospace sector. By and large, our view is that most of these companies will be successful — if they can raise the money. It’s an unusual thing to say, but the biggest risk of failure is not getting the money. We focus an awful lot on teams’ access to capital, on the strength of the syndicates as the crucial differentiator. It’s that evidence of strong commercial demand and the ability to point to customers in the near term. We don’t like to fund ventures that we’re not going to see turn into a business for two or three years.

Everyone’s pursuing something breakthrough with an innovative design, and almost all of them are technically viable. The elusive skill is really commercialization.

GF: Does commercial demand exist already? Or is it still on the horizon?

WP: There’s no question that the demand is there — just look at the growth in commercial air traffic. I think it’s a matter of safety. The greatest value in this sector will be created not by the development of individual flight vehicles, but by the creation of the safe framework to support them and to make the use of those vehicles convenient and reliable.

GF: What was the best piece of advice you received in your career that might be particularly helpful to GoFly participants?

WP: Have a deep, detailed understanding of how you’re going to make money and constantly revisit that. Make that your guiding star, if you will. It’s important in this sector because it’s very easy to get lost in the innovation and the technology. You need to be really focused in how you target investors. You need to understand, down to an individual partner level, who’s really active in aerospace and approach them with development models that are capital efficient.

Will is a General Partner of RRE Ventures. During his 17-year career as an investor, he has served on the boards of more than 20 companies, including Breather, BuzzFeed, Paperless Post, Pilot Fiber, Spaceflight and Spire. Will is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia Business School and the Chairman of the Dockery Farms Foundation, which he founded. Before entering the venture capital industry, Will held senior management positions with SupplyWorks and NetMarket, the e-commerce pioneer now owned by Cendant Corp.

For the fourth in our series of “Master Lectures,” Dr. James Wang, Senior Vice President of Leonardo Helicopters, explains the physics of helicopter flight and operation. He examines why a helicopter is so difficult to fly, and breaks down the components of its unique rotor system.

With more than 30 years of experience in the aerospace and defense industry, Dr. James Wang was named the “Steve Jobs of Rotorcraft” in 2013 by WIRED Magazine for his ability to think “out of the box” and push the boundaries of transportation technology. He started his career at Sikorsky Aircraft, where he was known as one of the most energetic and prolific engineers; he contributed greatly to the Comanche, Black Hawk, S-92 and the Variable Diameter Tiltrotor programs.

Dr. Wang later served as Vice President of Research & Development at AugustaWestland, where he created a comprehensive technology roadmap and led design and creation of the AgustaWestland Project Zero, the world’s first all-electric VTOL technology demonstrator aircraft. He holds many patents and major international awards, including the UTC Gold Mead Award, AHS Grover Bell Award, AHS Fellow Award, and the Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Team Award.

You can watch the full lecture above. If you have follow-up questions, check out current discussions about design on the GoFly forum or start your own thread!

For the third in our series of “Master Lectures,” Dr. Paul Bevilaqua shares lessons learned from 50 airplanes that have made it to flight test in an attempt to develop VTOL aircraft.

Dr. Bevilaqua has spent much of his career developing vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. He joined Lockheed Martin as the Chief Aeronautical Scientist and became the Chief Engineer of the Skunk Works, where he played a leading role in creating the Joint Strike Fighter. He invented the dual cycle propulsion system that made it possible to build a stealthy supersonic VSTOL Strike Fighter, and led the engineering team that demonstrated the feasibility of building this aircraft. He received a USAF Scientific Achievement Award, both the AIAA and SAE Aircraft Design Awards, both the AIAA and AHS VSTOL Awards, and the Lockheed Martin AeroStar and Nova Awards.

You can watch the full lecture below. If you have follow-up questions, check out current discussions about design on the GoFly forum or start your own thread!

For the second installment of “Master Lectures,” Dr. Daniel P. Raymer discussed conceptual design and some of the exciting challenges teams may face as they develop their ideas for a personal flying device.

Dr. Raymer wrote the world’s best-selling book on aircraft design, and teaches aircraft advanced design methods around the world. As president of design and consulting company, Conceptual Research Corporation, he’s recognized world-wide as an expert in Aerospace Vehicle Design and Configuration Layout, Computer-aided Design Methodologies, and Design Education.

You can watch the full lecture below. If you have follow-up questions, check out current discussions about design on the GoFly forum or start your own thread!

It’s been 50 days since the launch of the Boeing-sponsored GoFly Prize, and we’re excited to announce that more than 1,000 innovators from over 70 countries have signed up to take part in our challenge to design and build a safe, compact and quiet personal flying machine capable of being flown by anyone, anywhere.

This interactive map shows where our international community hails from. We are thrilled that the prize has created so much international excitement, motivation, and engagement.

Our forum is full of great questions and eager competitors working together to prepare for the first phase of the prize, highlighting not only technical questions, potential collaborations, and new ideas, as well as sharing excitement about the opportunity the challenge presents. A little more than a month in, there are 745 forum posts across 75 threads and counting:

“The personal VTOL transportation vehicle is the best solution to the global gridlock of ground vehicles that will be coming in the not too distant future.”

—Stan, GoFly Community Forum

“I personally like how Go Fly is attempting put some kind of technical requirements out there for everyone … I’m hopeful that something good for human flight emerges.”

—Paco, GoFly Community Forum

The collective creativity and experience of so many curious minds will make the next big challenge in aviation truly achievable.

Within the past month, we’ve brought on new Masters to help guide these Teams and kicked off the Master Lecture series, in which industry experts share their insight and answer questions from competitors. Additionally, over 20 leading aviation and STEM organizations have partnered with GoFly to help spread the word. We’re pleased to continue to grow our network and provide support to our innovator Teams. Find our full list of partners on our homepage.

The aspiration of flight extends beyond our core group of engineers, inventors, and aviation professionals who have accepted our challenge and make up our 447 officially registered Teams so far. Students from over 60 top universities across the globe have already registered to take part and will put up some strong competition. We have also received countless messages from ambitious students who fall just under our age requirements, but who want to be a part of the future of flight. To that end, in 2018 we’ll be rolling out a series of mini-challenges for those K-12 students so that they too have the opportunity to join in our network and shared future.

We are thrilled that the competition has elicited so much excitement from the community, and we’re looking forward to many more months of collaboration, team-building, and innovative design.

With 140 days left to enter Phase I of the competition, there’s still plenty of time to get involved and submit a competitive design. Rules can be found here, and you can register here.

Ready, Set, GoFly!

We’ve partnered with the world’s leading experts in aviation and business to help GoFly Prize innovators during the competition, from specialists in aircraft design to systems engineering, fabrication and testing, and finance and funding. Over the next two years, we’ll be hosting a series of “Master Lectures” where these experts can share advice, insights, and answer questions from anyone interested in participating in the GoFly Prize.

First up: The GoFly Team covers the competition’s technical rules. If you didn’t have a chance to join our hour-long session last week, or if you want to revisit the Lecture, watch the video below for a step-by-step walkthrough of the rules and Q&A from fellow participants.

If you have follow-up questions, don’t hesitate to reach out on the GoFly forum!

Boeing, our grand sponsor, has been at the forefront of aerospace innovation for more than a century. Now, they’re working with us to fuel the imagination of the next generation of inventors, engineers, tinkerers and doers.

This is a story about flying. We’re calling on makers and doers to build the world’s first personal flying device for anyone, anywhere. Will you join us?