- I was bored one morning, and I was browsing Reddit, and I saw this interview on the front page with a African bush pilot.

Who was raising money because his anti-poaching agency with a African bush pilot.

couldn't support airplanes.

One had crashed, and they were financially in trouble.

couldn't support airplanes.

And I couldn't understand why in the age of drones they were still using expensive old airplanes to do inspections.

I sent emails to every anti-poaching agency I could find just to satisfy my curiosity.

Like why not use drones?

The folks at the Reserve Protection Agency found that the drones that they could find off the shelf, they would either be limited in flight times, they could fly for 20 or 30 minutes.

Or they couldn't lift very heavy cameras, they were stuck to the old kind of 1080p things of the past.

And what they needed to really do, since poaching can happen any time of the day, and it can happen over a very large span, since poaching can happen any time of the day, they needed to lift really great cameras for a really long time.

they needed to lift really great cameras And luckily I had some brilliant like-minded friends around me that were able to help me sort out how to actually do this.

around me that were able to help me This is Rahul Tiwari, Kevin Cohan.

And so we started looking at first at like can we build better batteries or something.

But the battery tech wasn't there yet.

And so we came up with an absurdly simple solution, But the battery tech wasn't there yet.

we plugged a wire into it.

But the battery tech wasn't there yet.

We took an ultra thin tether, thinner than a headphone wire, But the battery tech wasn't there yet.

and kept the drone powered through that wire day in and day out.

and kept the drone powered through that wire After we told these folks about what our drones could do with the tether system, they almost immediately invited us to come to South Africa and test this thing out in the field.

And we showed these things at the nature reserves they worked at, and it blew people's mind.

And we showed these things at the nature reserves 'Cause then they could put this on a back of a truck And we showed these things at the nature reserves and observe miles and miles around them.

We were able to see elephants on mountains, you know, miles away, just from these 4K cameras we had mounted.

And we could do this in a way that was way more cost effective than the gyrocopters, or helicopters, or airplanes that they were using before.

It turned out that the people we were working with there at RPA, were visionaries in their own right.

It turned out that the people we were working with there And they convinced me that there was, we weren't looking broad enough yet.

Anti-poaching was a great start, we weren't looking broad enough yet.

but from everything from port security, to broadcast journalism, to telecommunications, there were applications everywhere if we marketed this and found the right problems to solve.

And that was the big leap, when we realized that our little science fair project that we came up with at Perdue could actually be a product that could actually help the world.

at Perdue could actually be a product It sorta seemed like now or never.

If we waited someone else would come.

And if we had started earlier If we waited someone else would come.

we wouldn't have had the tech to do it.

I took a leap of faith and I think I was right.

we wouldn't have had the tech to do it.

Coming to Minnesota was one of the most terrifying things I've ever done, because I was leaving back an institution, an educational experience that was just absolutely incredible.

I figured we'd start with the space and work backwards.

But once we had a home base, then I gave Dan a call and he I think drove over that afternoon to see what we were working on.

- He tells me about his, you know, new company to see what we were working on.

that he formed while he was off at Perdue.

I wasn't actually too surprised When Rahul told me he started another company.

He like had company ideas, like startup ideas all the time.

We had a little startup idea back in high school about building like endurance drones We had a little startup idea back in high school for long timed flights.

Which is almost the same project, for long timed flights.

we just didn't come up with the solution yet.

(upbeat electronic music) At Spooky Action I'm in charge of almost all of the technical work.

So I guess I'm the lead engineer of my engineering team of myself.

(laughing) - [Rahul] Dan and I have been best friends since high school.

And what has made him just the most best friends since high school.

valuable co-founder in the world is he knows me really well.

And is genuinely interested in parts of the company that aren't his direct responsibility.

So if I'm struggling with a problem in my space I know I can go to him and be like, what do you think?

- Rahul will come up to me with an idea or what he wants to have done, and then we'll start doing some preliminary designs together before I really get into it.

- We built this thing as a camera that could fly for a really long time.

And there were inherent applications to that beyond just anti-poaching.

And so the big transition for us as a company has been finding problems and then learning how to solve them with a camera in the sky.

And now learning to solve them with a computer that can fly.

(calm electronic music) So I think one of our initial big challenges as we were transitioning from helping anti-poaching agencies to trying to start a company, as we were transitioning from helping was finding actual problems to solve.

And then trying to figure out if our drones could solve that problem.

And we sucked at it for a long time.

But eventually, we started to get okay.

We started to have a high enough hit rate where we were able to find real problems that were financially and in terms of social impact, important enough that we could sell our product in those industries.

The company that we're working with happened to be one of those incredibly innovative companies.

They were looking for a better way to broadcast internet all throughout these North African countries and Middle Eastern countries.

The opportunity to bring internet to so many people is such an exciting endeavor.

And we, after doing some engineering, to so many people is such an exciting endeavor.

learned that we could solve that problem with drones, by putting all the cell phone equipment on a drone and flying it for weeks without needing to land.

with drones, by putting all the cell phone equipment - [Dan] So what I've been working on is actually designing this physical drone and making sure it can withstand the rigors is actually designing this physical drone of extended flight for months at a time.

- We were able to build the drones they needed to do the same thing a cell phone tower could do - We were able to build the drones they needed for 1/20th of the price.

And it worked just as well.

And we were all, like on their side and our side, really excited at that opportunity.

It wasn't necessarily obvious going in that we could use our drones as cell phone towers.

It wasn't necessarily obvious going in But only with digging into the problem and then working backwards to a product could we learn that that was possible.

and then working backwards to a product When I started I was excited in Spooky Action because it was gonna be the thing that made me famous, When I started I was excited in Spooky Action it was gonna be my baby.

But as we've started to find these more impactful projects, bringing internet to people in Africa, helping search and rescue teams, we've learned that we're on a much more valuable mission.

We are helping people save the world.

we've learned that we're on a much more valuable mission.

That's the reason we keep moving more than anything else.

we've learned that we're on a much more valuable mission.

So that we can accomplish things we want to do and hopefully make the world a better place.

(upbeat electronic music) and hopefully make the world a better place.