Drone Data company DroneDeploy Raises $20 Million in series B funding
Congratulations to everyone at DroneDeploy, more money raised.
I have to declare at this point that I am a satisfied DroneDeploy user. The flight planning app is great and I use it rather than others available. I really like the checklist as well!
Today DroneDeploy announces another $20 million in Series B financing led by Scale Venture Partners, bringing its total amount of funding to $31 million.
“2016 was a tipping point for commercial drones. Businesses in every industry are leveraging drones and our software, and seeing that easy to capture, aerial data enables faster and better decisions,” said Mike Winn, co-founder and CEO of DroneDeploy. “With next week’s passing of the FAA Part 107, enterprises are moving quickly to prepare their workforces to leverage drones company-wide.”
“With next week’s passing of the FAA Part 107, enterprises are moving quickly to prepare their workforces to leverage drones company-wide.”
The amount of data that they are gathering on drone use every month is in itself becoming a commodity. Drone Deploy users have mapped more than 5 million acres – equivalent to the country of Wales – across 130 nations. The amount of data generated by their users is doubling every 4 months.
I wonder why the South African-born Nicholas Pilkington, Jono Millin and Michael Winn co-founders didn’t say that is about the same size as the Kruger Park ;-)
So what they observe is real, not made up stuff to satisfy investors and make the press say wow. That is a problem with associations and industry groups that have to justify their existence.
DroneDeploy has more members than they have and those users are actually using sUAS.
In their recently released and second Commercial Drone Industry Trends report they highlight the disparity between fixed wing and multirotor users.
I think next years survey will see a slight up tick in fixed wing use. Why, well until batteries catch up, multirotors just don’t have the legs.
But that’s not the point I want to make, next August we will have three years of their data. They will have a very clear understanding of what the market needs and if we are lucky they will tell us.
Well done on the reports DroneDeploy, the only one that uses real numbers.
Jono made some excellent points last year at our show.
Folks would do very well to listen carefully to what is required of commercial drone operators and where DroneDeploy is aiming to take them.
