Comment by crubier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crubier | Hacker News Reader

Sounds exactly like my previous company (Sterblue, YCS18) but with a blimp instead of a drone. Like, same country, same product, same (painful) clients, same vision, similar team, same startup accelerator, same market pitch etc. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17962004

With 8 years experience on this looking back, I can say:

- Good luck guys

- Be very careful to pick the right investors after demo day, that's what killed us in the end.

- You'll have to pick between selling hardware, selling software, selling service. Do not I repeat do not try to do the 3 things at once. Figure out what you are selling early and stick to it.

- The hardware does not matter much, no customer cares if you use a blimp, a drone, a satellite or other, so maybe don't make the hardware your core identity

  - If your focus is to solve customer problems, then don't tie your identity to a particular solution. 

  - If your focus is to sell blimps, then fine, but don't build custom AI for defect detection?

- Wind is already a problem for drones inspecting powerlines and wind turbines, it's going to be a real real big problem for a blimp

- Honestly happy to help you if I can

>- The hardware does not matter much, no customer cares if you use a blimp, a drone, a satellite or other, so maybe don't make the hardware your core identity

I worked at one of those drone-in-a-box startups for a few years. In my experience, some power distribution/power line operators are VERY particular about what kind of hardware you are flying near or above their infra.

Yeah, I mean, if they care, it will be about preventing you from using unproven stuff next to their lines. So even worse in this context :-/

To be fair they only care if you don't show up with a credible insurance policy that makes sure they get compensated for technology failures. Which in the context of a transmission grid operator could be several million dollars per incident.

Obviously any company will want to avoid even a tiny risk of incurring several million dollars of costs in a few seconds, so it's fair to expect the liability be on the solution provider.

Thank you so much for your message! I would love to pick your brain if you are available, is there a way for me to contact you?

You can click through to the commenter's profile https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=crubier and from there you can find their Twitter and GitHub profiles (which contains their email).

Alternatively, since they also went through YCS18 as Sterblue, you could use YC's internal BookFace platform to ask for an introduction.

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