Posted on 09/19/2017 6:16:31 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
For the first time in history, investments in drones--those buzzy airborne gadgets that used to be called UAVs--have crossed a billion dollars. $1.2 billion has already been invested in unmanned aerial tech in 2017 so far, according to CB Insights. When I invested in a drone startup last year, there was only about $600 million in venture capital deployed. Drone pilots still had to be licensed like fixed-wing aircraft.
"In the past several years, the drone space has crossed the threshold from being driven by hobbyists and experimentalists to being largely enterprise-dominated," says John Frankel, founder at FFVC, a New York venture capital firm and early drone investor. He invested in Top Flight Technologies in 2015, and later, Skycatch, an autonomous aerial mapping startup that helps international construction and mining companies like Komatsu automate the collection, processing, and analysis of aerial data."
The doubling of investment and FAA deregulation now are driving a mini job boom. It's fast creating a workforce as large as that of private school teachers in the U.S.--about 400,000.
Deregulation is driving the drone market.
Seeing the need for more licensed drone operators, about this time last year, the FAA created a new commercial drone pilot licensing program that requires no hands-on demonstration and onboards commercially licensed pilots fast. How fast? Plunk down $150, a 70-question multiple choice test, and the license could be yours. In the first 3 months, 300 new drone operators were minted every business day. Out of the first 28,000 applicants, some 22,000 passed. Those numbers pale, however, in comparison to the number of commercial drones registered in the same period--2,000 a day.
The FAA's young drone pilot license program is also creating sub-industries that create jobs. For example, the University of South Dakota just added drone operations to its academic curricula. Instructor Byron Noel shared recently with the Brookings Register, "It's useful in any field where an aerial perspective is useful."
"The drone industry is a great place to find a job," says Aerobo's Brian Streem, an Inc. 30 Under 30 honoree and the founder of that startup I invested in last year. His offices in Los Angeles and Brooklyn are hiring drone operators, production, and sales talent. Streem believes there are lots more changes to come in how users interact with drones. "A lot of people underestimate the complexities of actually pulling off a drone operation because of the 'unfun' stuff--charging batteries, performing flight maintenance, checking airspace. Automation only gets us so far. There is still manual work to do."
Many drone startup CEOs are pushing the FAA to ease back even further on regulation and further open the market. In a recent meeting with President Trump on emerging technology, former founder of Blackboard and current CEO of Precision Hawk of Raleigh, NC, Michael Chasen, lobbied Trump to relax regulations that are "limiting what drone technology can do," as reported by Recode.
Another big driver of the drone age is the promise of easy access to hard-to-reach locations.
Whether you're Qualcomm and AT&T, which are piloting drones for cell tower inspection, or Amazon and Wal-mart, which are both investigated airship warehouses, not every business location has a highway. Drones are making a significant business case for extending the eyes, ears and operations of a number of enterprises at a cost that's worth exploring. Amazon is even looking at an "Alexa in the sky."
Corporations are on pace to acquire a drone startup a month this year.
Increasingly, drone jobs aren't just at startups--they're at big corporations. Already in 2017, Intel acquired MaVinci. Boeing bought Liquid Robotics. Verizon snapped up Skyward and Snap snipped Ctrl Me Robotic.
FAA predicts the U.S. registered commercial drone feel to climb to between 442,000 and1.6 million in the next few years. Every few new drones create at least one job, at a minimum, to maintain, deploy and operationalize the asset, so we're looking at a new job force of a few hundred thousand created in just a few years.
Vet, you’re a smart guy.
If you were 49 and wanted a career change...which one?
Cyber security, Drones, 3d Printers, Driver-less cars...
Or “stay where you are, you’re too old!” :)
Graduates of this Hot College Program Are Earning $200,000 Right Out of School
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3586830/posts
Updating My Resume!
Bookmarked.
WOW.
That’s quite a bit more than I was making in Manhattan before TBI and a LOT more than I’m making now ten years later!
I shall investigate.
Thanks.
The only time I made that kind of money was selling pay phones. Those really don’t exist anymore.
I caught the tail end of that business when it was deregulated.
Some company was giving me 150 a pop for finding locations.
Only lasted a year but made a bundle.
All that money they put in and then cell phones came out!!!
There are still a handful in NYC. They’re good for billboard advertising :)
I was paid $450 a pop for finding locations, so on the average day I picked up a $900 check in the mid 1980’s. Some days I made over $30,000.
“Deregulation is driving the drone market. “
Nah.
Actually it is regulation that has opened their future!
Drones haven’t been regulated but, effectively, banned- the regulators had no idea what to do with them.
GOOD GOD!!!
I caught it at the end unfortunately, somewhere around ‘93.
Others might find that hard to believe but I don’t. I made four or five hundred some days only getting 1/3 or 1/4 of what you made. And I didn’t work that long everything LOL
When I did it we were able to offer the company whose grounds that was placed on $200 and a small commission every month
Maybe they can combine drones with phones.
A drone-a-phone.
Bookmark
I think the “matter-net” they are setting up in Africa to make drone deliveries of drugs where it otherwise takes days to reach people is very beneficial.
They are already being used for building inspection and site inspection.
We paid them 5% to 15% commission but no up-front money depending on what kind of phone it was presumed to be.
Fascinating. Besides the pay being drastically slashed by the time I got to it, it was quite similar.
Born in ‘68 so I caught the very end. ####
I sold electrolux in college. That was back before you’d get a hole blown in you for walking up to a door :)
Was 18 and sometimes made 1k a week in the summer. I twas like a MILLION!
Made 3.65 an hour before that stockings shelves at (Geez..what shoe store did i work at?) Kinney? Dont remember :)
bkmk
I have a Go Pro 5 already. Great camera.
Although I couldn’t see myself spying on people, I see the requests for drone stuff on sites like Thumbtack that involve property surveys.
I might have to look into actually getting one and see about that license in the article.
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