Tom Verbruggen
CEO
Growing, accelerating and expanding our platform is a very exciting step for us to take. This blog article gives a bit of background info on how we got here, where we are going and what you may see from us in the future.
For the past 4,5 years we – that’s mainly Chris,my co-founder and CTO and myself – have been working and developing IDRONECT before, during and after our other activities. It’s been a long process, with some ups and downs but in the end with a tangible and stable result. The result is that we have built a software platform that allows drone pilots to fly safe, legal and efficient and at the same time connects the different players of the drone ecosystem: pilots to customers, pilots to schools, pilots to authorities, manufacturers to schools, insurances to pilots, … you get the picture:
All these features are made to fulfil our promise to the drone pilot: to Fly More in a safe, legal and efficient way.
The efforts of the last years have made that we are now one of the most complete UAV Management Systems (UMS). In the world. In a next blog post I will be highlighting the difference between so-called UTM’s and UMS’s. Well, let’s give you a quick spoiler alert on that one: a UTM is a special form of UMS. A UMS does more. Traffic management is just one side of the story that a UMS tells. We are a very complete UMS.
In the last year we wanted to see if the value we brought to our home market (Belgium) would also work in other countries. We were happy to welcome drone pilots and enthusiasts from 46 countries on our platform since the go-live of version 4.0. The understanding that people all around the world who believe in drones and the good that drones can bring are finding what they need in IDRONECT gave us the energy to shift the entire project in a higher gear.
We are happy to announce that we have found the necessary investment to be able to do just that. Up until now we were bootstrapping and we were focused on making the product better. We believe that it was the right path to follow: to use our own funds and revenue to build and finetune the product and then to boost the acceleration with new means. It allowed us to grow alongside a drone ecosystem which also became more mature.
In our revived blog and other content we will give updates on how we are doing.
Growing is a step that requires sacrifice as well.
I have decided to stop my flying career so I can fully dedicate myself to IDRONECT. Flying an airplane was a childhood dream and I was happy to have been able to make my passion my job for the last 18 years. I flew real cool airplanes (Learjets and Falcons) and was able to see a lot of the world. I am most fond of my flying for an air ambulance operator in the beginning of my flying career. Flying a Learjet35 from Colombo to Melbourne remains the highlight.
But my passion for aviation grew past the mere flying. I wanted to do more. First by starting a consultancy firm, then by creating a software solution for safety management. The planets aligned when I met Chris, and we started Aviatize LLC. With this company we wanted to build smart software solutions for the aviation industry. We still want. We still do. It is just that IDRONECT has become our focal point over the last 4 years.
It’s time to say goodbye to the cockpit and focus 200% on the building of our products. As one door closes, a new gate opens.
Last week we moved into our new office. We are still settling in but it has all of the trimmings to make it our new home for the next years and growing our team.
Our team in Belgium has doubled in size as well. I will be writing a post on our new team-members in the next weeks.
In the meantime, we welcome you at our new headquarters in Belgium. Give us a shout and come by for a talk and a cup of coffee.
For now, time to push the throttle forward go ballistic with IDRONECT. Join us for the ride !
Fly More !
Tom
Co-founder and CEO
