Pitch Please

00:02.42
mike_flywheel
What's up everybody. It's Mike we're back on the pitch please podcast today. We've got cameron from hover. They're a drone delivery service from Toronto Ontario um, that's my pitch his is gonna be much much better and way more in depth. Let's jump into it Cameron kick us off, let us know a little bit about yourself.

00:16.72
Cameron Rowe
I mike thanks for having me my name is Cameron Rowe I'm 25 years old from Toronto ontario I've been building hover now for the past 5 and a bit years. It just came up on our 5 year anniversary first three started to note as this kind of a side hustle and now we're. We're really full on launching this drone delivery service I'm full time into it with a number of people on the team and we're super excited about this. Ah happy to do kind of a formal pitch as well. If you want me to to jump right in. But.

00:48.43
mike_flywheel
Ah, oh or yeah, we'll get there. We'll get there. We're gonna learn a little bit about you First we're gonna learn a little bit about you cameron.

00:55.30
Cameron Rowe
Well I went to queens university did my undergrad then my graduate degree there started delph an econ was in my 30 I think when I started hover so it became this part time throw own photography business to take pictures for realtors started kind of. Doing good work and realtors kept hiring us and we got some more revenue which kind of allowed me to help pay for my master's degree in a way which I did right after my undergrad and then the masters were really cool. It's like ah it's a master of business but it's also partnered with the applied science school of engineering at Queens. And so it was really more focused on like innovation and entrepreneurship and that enabled me to spend some time focusing on more technical side of it as well as just having the focus of it's almost like instead of more of the course-based and mbas or of a thesis so it was something I really loved it. It was a little bit quicker than an Mba at about a year and a half and mostly remote which was super great when covid came about because we already were doing everything online so it it really kind of kickstarted my full-time career into hover and kind of supported me for where I am today.

02:08.62
mike_flywheel
That's cool. So when you started this as a you know drone photography business. Um you were you were an entrepreneur obviously that time but not a founder. Um. Have you always been sort of into drones like or into photography like what sort of got that started was it like hey I just need to put some food on the table during university I need some spending money like what sort of got that kicked off and why why drone photography like 11 years drones like that means you've sort of been in the drone space since they really started getting out there and.

02:24.94
Cameron Rowe
The fifth.

02:37.85
mike_flywheel
You know consumer access to drones So tell us a bit about that. Yeah.

02:39.41
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, absolutely I've been as like I feel like most people have sort of at 1 point in their lives had like an ri toy and I think the difference is it was kind of it was always my favorite thing to kind of mess around with I would build them I'd fly them around and be rc cars helicopters I would always crash them. And I think I would I think I must have had them for max a week because I'd fly it like 2 3 hours a day and then these things are not built very well especially in like 2012 it just they're their cheap lot of plastic parts. You'd crash twice something would break go? Okay, it's not working anymore and say throw it out the one that we bought in 2018 was more of a professional grade. It was like 3 grand which was a ton of money for me at the time I was like oh my god I'm emptying my bank savings into this as like this broke student but it's crazy because you can charge five hundred bucks for a video and all of a sudden you really only need to do 6 videos and your cost is recouped. And it's like you can do that in two weeks axe you probably do it quicker if you're really hustle and so for me, it was such a fantastic way of kind of paying for a little bit of school as well as saving up for the future because I didn't know what was going on kind of investing in more gear traveling around a little more to do jobs. Um. Didn't have a car at the time so you got to take ubers all the all the time across Kingston where it started but I loved it. I did a ton of work and it got me into the more commercial real estate side of things and that's when it started being like hey you can do a thousand bucks for a job or seven fifty and then I remember charging twelve fifty for

04:14.84
Cameron Rowe
A big project and I was like wow this is a huge amount of money and then it's kind of funny to look back and be like well now that's like a minimum I wouldn't even like answer the phone for less than something like that. So. It's ah it's kind of cool to see how. You kind of grow and shift over time. But yeah, it's it's really it really just started putting the drone up taking pictures editing it together and in Adobe and sending it to the client.

04:40.29
mike_flywheel
That's cool so and has it always been called hover. So when you were initially doing photos and video was it also called hover.

04:45.64
Cameron Rowe
It was actually called so our official name is hover direct and it was called Hover Kingston and so the incorporation papers something. It's actually kind of funny too because you can kind of call your business. Whatever you want? realistically you you could call it Google.

04:52.11
mike_flywheel
Okay.

05:03.45
Cameron Rowe
But like you'd get sued eventually if you got big enough but because we're some small photography business in Kingston even though there's a couple other hovers that do like job posting then obviously a bunch of other stuff. We weren't I wasn't really worried and so that's when I kind of took off the Kingston part as we moved out and went to Ottawa in Toronto and I just called it hover.

05:22.17
mike_flywheel
Nice. That's um, so that's when it started pivoting into being more of the drone delivery service which we'll talk about in a second. Um before that did you have any sense or reason to become an entrepreneur like it sounded like you went from hobby. I just want to spend more time with these things and I want to afford the bigger and better. One. So let me figure out if I can use the bigger better one to make some money but did you kind of trip into entrepreneurship or or did you sort of always have the sense. You'd be an entrepreneur and not even an entrepreneur but a founder right? This is not just your everyday kind of business.

05:40.23
Cameron Rowe
Just accept the.

05:56.84
Cameron Rowe
I Absolutely I kind of knew that I wanted to do that I think like growing up I was I was I had a really great home environment where my dad's an entrepreneur. My family does a lot like even my mom my grandma my grandpa so everybody kind of.

05:57.12
mike_flywheel
It's a bit of a startup here.

06:14.94
Cameron Rowe
Does their own thing and ah what we call side hus was was more of just like doing work whenever you could you know like you had a full-time job and then you also maybe did like a paper wrote or worked part-time at a store as like a a baker in my mom's case when she was a teacher also but just everybody's kind of always doing stuff and that's something that i. I tried to emulate as well. Even being full-time and student also having a part-time job and then picking something up on the side like this and I think a lot of it is seeing of like what? What do you get traction in so we did me nobody did doornocking for lawn care service and snow shoveling when we were kind of growing up in high school and so that was. That was that was I would say the first kind of inkling of like hey this is actually a pretty good roi for your time spent of like what you can do you can choose when you want to take a break or just not work the rest of the day if you feel tired like it's a pretty unique opportunity that I think I really liked and then. I actually went through the there's a program at queens that's called ah quicksie or the queens innovations summer center initiative I believe it is and it really was fantastic. They they gave you a small stipend for your summer salary. So like the opportunity cost was lower. Because a lot of people are going to toronto for these high paid internships but you still were able to make a little bit of money if you did stay in Kingston and you got some cash for the business and so that actually was was not where hover was born. We were working on something else through that program. But then at.

07:44.16
Cameron Rowe
The end of that I realized like I did want to become a founder and I had been thinking about drones for a while and so it kind of made sense of like hey you know what now that I I have a little more free time I'm going to be doing something on my own now and and it kind of just kicked off from there.

08:01.20
mike_flywheel
It's funny. There's 2 things I want to address first. It feels like I don't know the actual percentage maybe like 50% of the founders I've had on here have had some type of doorknocking experience as part of their like life journey whether it's like lawns or painting or window cleaning.

08:11.83
Cameron Rowe
That.

08:17.70
mike_flywheel
So I guess anybody that's thinking of becoming a founder out there. You should start by knocking on doors in some regard I guess it builds the resiliency and enables your ability to to pitch but I want to go back to that summer program that you were talking about It's pretty cool. Ah, now you said that's not where hover was born. What what were you working on at that time.

08:36.36
Cameron Rowe
It was a company called durabyte we ah we took a patented algorithm that one of the queen's computing professors had made and we attempted to commercialize it but it it was so complex. It. It was my first exposure really into the tech world. It was a patented algorithm that would increase theoretically. Lifespan of flash storage devices. So from a cloud based perspective anyone that really had anything to do with cloud or servers were like oh wow, this is pretty cool but it was mostly theoretical and then I think just just way past my knowledge based so it was something that it's like It's hard as students when you don't have experience in it. Everybody kind of thinks oh you can kind of figure it out and there are limitations for that. Especially when you're talking about sort of advanced algorithms that I'm not I'm not somebody who really understands cloud architecture or even sort of the hardware of layering of nand-based flash storage devices. It just isn't. That's not something I know how to do I can't reasonably contribute so it was it was kind of an easy thing to say hey let's focus on getting your degree I got into my master's at that time so I was like the trajectory was kind of branching off. But.

09:43.11
mike_flywheel
And any big lessons you took away other than you know you can't just commercialize anything and sometimes theory doesn't translate to commercialization but like and maybe those are them. But what are some of the you know key learnings that you think you maybe took out of that program that you. Apply today or are using today.

10:00.46
Cameron Rowe
I think a lot of it was I still some of the contacts that I made and some of the information that I learned about of like simplifying really complex sort of technical. Problems and distilling them in a way that is easy for people to understand was really I think a strength that we were able to do it. It was such a like even reading the patent it just it's like reading a ph d dissertation like every other word is the verbiage is so. Grandiose at times that to kind of break that down in a way that makes sense that like no person would ever talk like that and then even if you had the technical understanding you kind of have to reread it like I would reread this thing 5 10 times before I could even understand a part of it just because it was. A lot of it is simulated as well and then sort of technical terms that have to stop and look stuff up. So I definitely think the ability to understand complex things and distill that down was something that is probably the most important thing that I learned because it just like everybody has a filtering process in their brain of like when they hear something what do they actually take in and so I think it was.

10:54.51
mike_flywheel
Me.

11:07.24
Cameron Rowe
It was a good way for me to flex that muscle a little bit of taking in really complex things and not only being able to kind of explain it to you as I'm attempting to to I'm sure I'm not doing it complete justice. But even just being able to understand it completely I think that's important and not just. In 1 ear and out the other which I think happens a lot when you're reading like if you ever picked up a ph d dissertation on something random a lot of it is just going to go like through. You're not going to be You're not going to understand fully and it doesn't even if that's you'reine subject matter expert in it. A lot of it is going to be kind of not what you specifically. Are interested in or even have learned before.

11:44.28
mike_flywheel
Fair enough. So it's the filtering process and distilling process and some of the connections. Um tell me about I saw it on your Linkedin I saw it popping up on a few other Linkedin's text stars I'm seeing it on your t-shirt tell me about this. What's what's tech stars.

11:57.48
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, well techstars is a essentially an accelerator and for people who don't really know what an accelerator is. It's essentially a a program that is put together by a group or even a single person but this one is is a little bit bigger I think they've just passed now. 3500 total investments which is pretty outstanding and so typically it's based in a location although many have been remote in the past and it essentially helps a company that goes in accelerate their growth. So usually what that looks like is they will take. A percentage of equity within the company in exchange for a mixture of cash to debt to access to network and so in this case with Techstars. It's one of the best incubators and accelerators in the world comparable toycombinator and so they give you a amount of cash for equity within your company and then as a part of that it sort of is a three month program that runs and it doesn't just stop after the three months but when you're in the cohort. That's really when you're setting Kpis you have weekly check-ins that you're doing they set up calls with founders. They assign you mentors. And then you also have access to that network. So a lot of this is really the network effect and to be honest, a bit is social proof I think especially when we start talking about investors people are looking for sort of an example of is this established are other people saying hey yes this is going to work and because I think.

13:24.80
Cameron Rowe
It really is hard for people to kind of make that leap when you do get into an accelerator like techstars. It makes it easier for investors to say it's almost like you've been pre-veettted in a way and then as well. Ah Zipline which is the world's biggest drone delivery company has been through techstars in 2011 I believe in Seattle. So even though it was about twelve years ago it's still one of the best investments that techstars has made and so for us to kind of come in and for them to invest in us and trust us and say hey we think you guys are at a level that could be like that that was a really huge thing for me to say you know what. There's tradeoffs to doing an incubator you give up equity you kind of are on somebody else's timef frameme but at the same token you do get this huge boots. Do you get a ton of Pr and you get this bit of an accolade from going through. So I think for us it was really worth the tradeoff and we're just starting now. But it's It's already fantastic and I love it. That's why I'm I try to rep this as much as I can.

14:20.40
mike_flywheel
I love it and so is that all digitally curated is it in person and in Toronto where you where you're from or how does techstars work in that regard. Yeah.

14:29.50
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, so I'm in Toronto right now in the offices here. It's going to be primarily in person. But so right now we have a dual cohort going on so there are lots of Canadian and international startups and so Sunil Sharma who is the managing director of Techstars Toronto ah he has been really advocating for international startups. Especially those from Africa and that's something that I think we have shared values aligned with so a lot of those companies are still based in other parts of the world some in Africa some in Brazil for example, but for the most part you. The cohort is based in candos we have 12 companies here and then 12 companies international.

15:12.27
mike_flywheel
Nice, well congrats one of 1 of 12 is a pretty big deal so sounds like you're following the the footsteps of Zipline I think you said um so obviously they see something in in you that reminds them of something they saw in zipline that was one of their successful companies. So.

15:15.67
Cameron Rowe
Um, yeah, thanks yeah.

15:28.30
mike_flywheel
Let's talk a bit more about that then um, Cameron and this show's called pitch please so before we dive into learning more about hover. We got to hear your pitch so cameron your pitch please.

15:32.87
Cameron Rowe
The fragment.

15:41.80
Cameron Rowe
Ah, hi everyone. My name is Cameron Rowe I'm the founder of Hover. Ah, the biggest thing when living in a large city like toronto and ordering food online from last mile delivery providers such as uber eats or doordash or even groceries from let's say soies is the cost. When I see the price difference from picking it up in store versus ordering it online. It's a really frustrating experience for me seeing tip tax fees and in many cases what these companies are doing is they're jacking up the price of the food to kind of add a 20% buffer. So even if they say hey it's a dollar delivery. You end up still paying 20 to 30% more and for apps like uber eats or doordash that number ends up being about a 55% higher total and the restaurants themselves are actually frustrated because they're only receiving less than half of what the actual total order value is because of how uber and doordash's process works. And so that was something that I noticed when I was living with my grandparents and taking care of them and it was something that was really frustrating because I am thinking you know if they didn't have me coming to help do their groceries and pick things up for them. How are are they going to do this and a lot of the times the the delivery times are so. Are so variant that it ends up being frustrating for an old person to have to sit at the front door waiting for their prescriptions or groceries or food and so this is where drone delivery solution was born. We started off on the toronto islands delivering whatever you can really think of that fits on the drone under £7 grocery's food. A lot of the times it was actually fast food.

17:12.98
Cameron Rowe
And that was a immediate success there. We've done over a thousand deliveries in a 2 month span. We hit zero to a thousand households and it was something everybody loved. We were able to submit a patent for that and hit a number of different objectives that demonstrated that there is ah relatively early signs of product market fit and. By us achieving these metrics. We're now able to say we believe we can scale this across Canada to be able to reach other households and to do drone delivery to as many households as wanted in Canada.

17:47.60
mike_flywheel
That's super cool and it sounds super easy and super complicated all at the same time. Um, so let's unpack it a little bit um in in this space like are there a lot of other people doing drone delivery is this sort of unique and what sort of. You know it sounded like when we talked earlier you were into you know Rc Cars and flying things yourself. It sounds like you hit some frustration point well with your grandparents around delivery service was that sort of the impetus of how this was born and and what else exists out there like how did that kind of. Begin on the journey of saying I'm going to go solve this problem.

18:25.16
Cameron Rowe
In so going back to 18 when I mentioned I started hover I had wanted to do drone delivery then at oseaga that summer I was always thinking about it and thinking you know how how could we do this I could get Schwartz in Montreal to deliver to oeaga. And I remember thinking of processes and ways to do it and so I have been thinking about it for a long long time I had heard of zipline at that point in time Amazon had posted their prime air that the drone had landed and dropped the box off. So this the concept itself wasn't exactly new. But. It was something that I had been thinking but for so long but it's so expensive to do this that we just didn't to be honest I just didn't have the money to be able to to do it and it was a little early like the tech wasn't that good. The battery sucked still and so now all of a sudden we have battery lifespans that are 45 minutes which is plenty of time to do multiple round trips in a two kilometer radius our range is about five kilometers but for us we were saying this is now the time and so after I'm seeing some of these challenges mount especially for senior citizens like my grandparents and then spending time on the toronto islands and realizing.

19:23.70
mike_flywheel
Okay.

19:37.37
Cameron Rowe
They have an aging population. You know there's there's a ton of factors that are involved in this where it's super inconvenient to do basic things in the winter times. There's no water taxis. There's ferries and if you want to come back and forth. You have to take a ferry or there's an emergency boat and. There's no access through Billy Bishop so it's a really frustrating thing I think to be kind of so close yet a little bit isolated and so for an emergency purpose I had thought that people might be wanting prescriptions or groceries. But the reality is is that the last mile delivery sort of it. It is something people like having the convenience of ordering whatever they feel like for dinner and I think that was the biggest pain point and then because of the volume that we had it just there's going to be 4000000000 last mile deliveries that are taking place this year and I can see why people love it and people are willing to pay. Higher amounts for their meal. Twenty thirty forty bucks for 1 serving of food versus groceries which if you're buying groceries you're saying I'm not I'm not going pay forty bucks for one meal so you have a bit more of a margin there as well and and I think it just this so storm of there's an opportunity I have this expertise. And there's enough money in this space for it to be worth investing in that was something that combined it made sense to say let's invest. Let's purchase some new technology. Let's hire some more people on the team and and that's what it did instead of instead of trying to go pitch to investors and raise the money I just said you know what we have some revenue coming in from our services. Let's.

21:07.34
Cameron Rowe
Rely on that to to launch and see if we have traction and then here we are now a year later about to launch in a couple different locations and I'm really excited about it.

21:16.17
mike_flywheel
That's cool. So so actually maybe talk about that where is this available today and who's generally the type of person using this service. Um, and you mentioned fast food versus groceries and prescriptions is that still the case are you starting to see that evolve over time.

21:31.80
Cameron Rowe
We're definitely starting to see it evolve. We have a couple different locations that this is going to be available in and I think the the most important thing to note is that the hours do fluctuate because we are still in our early stages. If you check our website in social media that is where we post all of our hours and locations so like last summer we operated on the weekends on the toronto islands which it just makes more sense. You have more people there for us to be able to operate what we're planning on doing is a slight variation of that model which. I don't want to announce just yet because we're still kind of figuring it out. So I don't want to get stuck in one but it's going to be more of a schedule-based delivery service for a more variety of things which to answer your second part of your question. It will likely shift the model from more of like a fast food Popeyes type to. Can do frozen meals that can be shipped directly to your doorstep so instead of having one meal you're going to get 5 meals that are delivered at 12 elve p m exactly or 122 if you really wanted it and so I think that's another thing that I just want to briefly touch on is the the precise aspect of. Delivery that we can do because we aren't subject to traffic or even sort of human costs where you have somebody who maybe shows up late to pick up the order or the people who are preparing it. They're delayed. So even if the person gets there on time or traffic or for whatever reason maybe the car breaks down so those deliveries or they they batch the deliveries.

23:02.83
Cameron Rowe
And so now all of a sudden you have 2 deliveries and 1 and they'll go to the other person's house first and then yours and you're waiting for the food and it gets twenty thirty minutes later and and you don't exactly know what's going on and so this this allows us you can track the drone on your phone. You know exactly when it's going to drop the food off precisely within a minute and so we. On the toronto islands we didn't deviate at all really from that it was probably like a 3% deviation I think we calculated so when we would be estimating the time The only challenge would be having the actual preparation of the food because it was fast food that would impact. But once it. Was on the drone. It wouldn't really deviate from the time that we told you it would arrive at.

23:41.14
mike_flywheel
That's that's actually so cool I need to understand a bit more about how this works like I don't know how much you're able to share. But I'm just trying to think of like someone places in order for something it ends up on a drone You also probably are assuming.

23:44.76
Cameron Rowe
Um, first go.

23:58.30
mike_flywheel
Or checking that it's under £7 and I'm I'm trying to imagine like what £7 of like pizza flying on this drone overhead and then it arriving exactly where I am and depending on the areas of servicing how does this all work am I requesting it through an app talking to me through like.

24:03.38
Cameron Rowe
The benefits.

24:15.80
mike_flywheel
Little bit of like the the nuts and bolts behind this is super cool.

24:19.27
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, So what we did last summer which will probably still emulate A lot of the successful parts of it is simplifying the process for you. It's going to likely be a chat based service. So almost like ah like you're talking to a chatbot. And we didn't really want to spend a ton of money developing an app for an idea that we didn't know if it was going to work and so that's what we're putting some money into now. But as of right now the way that you order is going to be through a chat bot and then we will send you payment Links. We will send you links to. Eventually we want to be able to live Stream. One of the cameras on the drone so you can watch your food be delivered which we think is really gonna be cool and that is a super easy process because we're not having to spend a ton of time and money having assigning people to explain it to you but we also don't have to create an app to do it and so there's a lot of like. A lot of what I've been taught by some of the people especially in techstars and other incubators is that there is a good enough where it's like you don't need to spend it. You don't need to make something perfect as long as it does the job and then you can focus on what are the priorities if the priorities are if they are bottlenecks and I need an application to to do that. Okay, well then we'll spend money on it. But if we're seeing success using a chat bot. Yes, it might not be the prettiest sort of user interface. But at the same time we have a limited amount of Cash. Is it better for us to extend our runway and and purchase more drones and hire more people or and so this is the tradeoff that.

25:42.95
Cameron Rowe
We're kind of figuring out right now of creating something that is super user, friendly, but still easy to do and so we actually do think the texting services is pretty simple because it'll still let you know sort of all the faqs while also being super cost-effective for us which means we don't have to charge a lot of money for the customer instead of doing a $50000 app development. Which how are we going to recoup those costs. We're able to do a thirty a month chat bot service that I can program myself so there's a pretty significant cost difference whereas the user improvement might only be relatively minor and so I think as well. We're only launched in.

26:10.19
mike_flywheel
That's cool.

26:19.69
Cameron Rowe
1 location and so as we expand that's going to be different whether we partner with somebody else as well. That could impact why are redeelloping an app when we're going to be partnering with another company that has already a marketplace and so there there are a lot of considerations to kind of figure out at this state which is something that we're well aware of and with a small team at. It's something we think of but we're also kind of trying to say how can we add the most value with the limited time that we do have.

26:46.11
mike_flywheel
Makes total sense I like the the guidance you gave there which sounds like it's been passed down to you but I know others have said this too. Um, which is like it doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to be something that satisfies a problem that people are willing to. Use your service for and then you can iterate from there and sometimes just the speed of execution is most important. So I like this like innovative thinking around like a more efficient cost approach to chat bots that still gets the job done so Sam here. Don't think I'm in a service location yet today but hopefully in the future this feels like something I might use. Um, if I'm on the toronto island ah is it only to like residences or if I'm up at the beach hanging out ah with with some friends can it deliver me some food if I start to get hungry and came there with nothing but you know water and beverages.

27:41.38
Cameron Rowe
And so we intentionally did not want to have it land on the beach because we felt it might be a little bit disruptive and and even just the idea of having a drone kind of hovering above people. Some people don't like that idea.

27:42.64
mike_flywheel
I Can order food through hover and get it right to me beachside is that how this works. Okay.

27:58.70
mike_flywheel
Fair.

28:00.35
Cameron Rowe
So we have a sort of pickup location. That's just off wards beach and so we're chatting a little bit more to see if we can have multiple pickup locations on the toronto islands because I know Hanlon's point is super popular and then obviously center island beach but we didn't want to have it on the beach that actually is something that one of our patents that we submitted. Is for that where you can kind of take your phone and it will interface with the drones camera you pointed out the drone and it'll create almost this sort of link between the 2 using just the camera so that it'll know where you are Gps isn't really great and especially on the toronto islands. It's actually so a problem that we encountered of saying.

28:27.29
mike_flywheel
Wow.

28:37.19
Cameron Rowe
We can't really like we don't have full lte in all parts of the island. So how do we get around that if Gps data is kind of a little bit limited and you can just simply overlay the camera feed with Gps data and then same thing with your phone. To get an accurate map of exactly where you are and sort of the approach corridor for where a a drone can safely kind of go above you and start to lower the package.

29:05.68
mike_flywheel
That's impressive. So there's ah, there's a pickup location. Um, how does my food get on there like are Mcdonald's just like dropping my bag on ah on a drone and it gets it this. How does it go so fast. How do you get this like this is crazy.

29:14.91
Cameron Rowe
Ah, yeah, so for the toronto islands and and this will vary depending on the location and this is kind of where we really want to create something that is standardized which helps us replicate scale that across Canada but for the toronto islands we have a pick a point that is located. Off of the islands close to Cherry Beach which means that we actually are strategically located where there are a lot of different restaurants and you can have runners essentially go to the restaurants and so it's not the options aren't limitless. But for the most part if you did really want something like we had somebody order wanted to order eatily. And so like eatly is that like bluer and young and so we're down by like how does how does that even work. Well we actually had somebody pick it up from eatly bring it to our pickup point which is located closer downtown then we load it onto the drone. So we do a lot of this sort of physical process. Of loading it ensuring the drone can take off and then as of last year this is something that we'll chat a little bit more about later but the the drones are fully autonomous, but the way that the regulatory environment works is that we wanted to ensure we were totally safe and compliant especially because there was an airport right next to it and so having. 2 people monitor on both sides at all times enables us to legally be able to do all these deliveries and do it in a way that is really safe and makes sense so there's redundancy even if 1 person's controller dies. The other person can return the drone to home or land it wherever it is.

30:43.60
Cameron Rowe
And so that we added in a lot of different safety features because we want to do this correctly and we want to do it in a way that is scalable and and in a way that when we build good relationships with the transport candidate inspectors when they're saying are these guys doing it safely because that is relatively new and so then to answer a previous question which ah. Ah, we talked about is there aren't really anybody else doing short range last mile deliveries in Canada there's many companies that are testing larger drones that are doing longer range deliveries like drone delivery Canada but most of our competitors are in the states and so we have a bit of a moat because we have all the regulations in Canada to do these deliveries.

31:16.88
mike_flywheel
A.

31:20.11
Cameron Rowe
Where as in the states they have a different set of regulations and so for us we actually can go and get those regulations but it almost is a bit of a barrier and so we've started building these relationships with the us-based companies to learn from one another and. I Think Also the market's just so early right now I don't even view it as a bad thing if there were to be more competitors I would welcome it because it's indicative that it is being developed. This is something that people want.

31:45.34
mike_flywheel
That I I love that you pointed out the moat. That's super important. Not a lot of startups start with that or start thinking about that as early, but this autonomous so you've got a person on the Gen monitoring it the drones doing every like. They're just there for guidance in case, something goes up but you're saying from liftoff to landing the drone's doing this itself.

32:07.96
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, well the drone has full autonomous capabilities and I think autonomy like differs depending on who you talk about there are different levels of it for road-based vehicles but autonomy for drones is really I I don't want to sort of sip like. Downplay us, but it's it's really not that difficult because a lot of the the hardware already is designed for autonomous flight and programming in kml files and sort of having detect and avoid systems on board that can automatically just depending on perceived hazards isn't a so like this isn't new. A lot of these computer vision algorithms and path planningnding algorithms. We're not creating something completely new from scratch what we're really doing is kind of taking the best of what we believe we need and putting it together and then because we have the operationals capabilities we can test and deploy that in pretty much any environment. And so that is really I would say one of the biggest add-ons is our software and the ability to kind of deploy wherever we really need to and do so in a safe way that can ensure we we're long lasting because anybody can really fly a drone but it's like can you do it for. Every day for 12 hours a day for years and it's like how do you have the systems in place to be able to support something like that and that is really really tough and that's what a part of what we're developing now.

33:28.90
mike_flywheel
And so has that been a ah big piece of sort of this early stage of what you've been doing is really building The how do we make this designed for scale. The autonomous the operating process The regulations. Certifications needed So you're getting the core foundation set so you can go really fast rather than just focusing on like an app interfacere like yay. Well we'll solve that through chat bot we're going to go set up all the other things that actually let us scale this up really quickly to other locations.

33:57.35
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, exactly like we're and there's so so much to do in this space because we're kind of dealing with both sides of it that we we tried to make our life simple as well and and a lot of the like some of the hardware that we're purchasing. We buy off the shelf because we don't want to have to do everything from scratch. It doesn't make sense to do so and then it has a high resale value. We can use it for other sort of services as well and this is something that I'm really really a big believer in a lot of the companies that are doing it. They create custom hardware and that really kind of pigeonholes them because if. Drone delivery isn't going to take another five years and your drone becomes obsolete and I can buy one off the shelf that does it way better or does 80% of what the drone delivery solution is needed but costs like 10 times less I'm going to do that and so I think that's the 1 thing that other companies I look at Amazon and I think like. They built a drone that's like I think £90 and that is over the twenty Five Kilos that is of the like sort of small lightweight uas solutions and they're paying for it because they're basically it's basically an airplane. They're subject to some of the same regulations that aircraft are. Are subject to which just complicates everything and they're trying to build it for scale and I get that and they're trying to build a drone that can do tons of stuff for for the future across the the us and Canada and worldwide. But the challenge is it's.

35:24.28
Cameron Rowe
If they're not even doing deliveries. How do they know that a lot of this is planning and so I think our main focus has been like let's get out doing deliveries to customers seeing what's actually important to them seeing how they use the product how they're using our chat service. What they we ask all the time. Do you need an app and so I think although some people do ask us. Hey. Do you guys have an app. A lot of that is a bit of conditioning and in a way having an app is actually like another app to download another account to create like nobody wants to do that whereas I give you a qr code on a business card and I say hey scan this and text it auto loads a message into your sms you hit send and all of a sudden. 3 seconds later you get a reply that has detailed information about what you need. We're still going through square we're still secure and so for us, it's just why would I spend so much more money for such a small benefit I think eventually one hundred percent we're going to need a dedicated application. But again perhaps we end up working with a company that already has. Frontend delivery solution and all of a sudden I didn't need to spend all this money. Totally.

36:23.18
mike_flywheel
Now you're just working on last mile at that point too which is the point of what you said you're solving which is like short trip last mile and there's a huge opportunity there. Um I want to learn a little bit about the easiest and hardest parts. But I guess at this point I probably should ask. Like how much do I pay for drone delivered food I want to do this so I'm either going to go find my way to Toronto Island this summer or I'm going to wait till you service my area but I can just see myself waiting in my backyard with some friends just the novelty of it I'm loving um, how much does this cost and I assume that's.

36:47.20
Cameron Rowe
And but.

36:59.56
mike_flywheel
And tell us where you where and how you make money.

36:59.94
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, so we charged by seven fifty per delivery and so the 750 on the toronto islands is likely to decrease simply because there was a lot of setup costs associated with it and we do a lot of a b testing like any service we we tried it cheaper. We tried it more expensive. We want to try to find that point where. It's accessible for the most amount of customers. But we're still able to make a little bit of money to cover our costs and so for what we're thinking about in the future is it'll be the same or cheaper to what uber eats is going to cost but the caveat of why you should choose us is it's going to be significantly faster. Uber eats and so when you have a drone delivery. You also aren't really worried about kind of somebody picking up your food swinging it around the timing aspect that I keep mentioning and so a lot of the food. It's always hot when it arrives and then the convenience and novelty of it where you get it to your backyard or other another designated. Location and at least right now that's something that we're really leaning into is there is a huge novelty aspect to it and I think that's something that lots of brands were chatting with because they're saying wow we want to be the first drone delivery Canadian company to deliverxyorz and that's really exciting for me because there's an opportunity there for us to make money on marketing opportunities. We do partnerships we do trials and so for us a lot of the way that we're really earning revenue is kind of in.

38:28.33
Cameron Rowe
Ah, number of different buckets. How I view the company earning money in the future is going to be pretty industry standard to how the food delivery industry is working right now with sort of fees subscription services. There'll be an application that you can log on to. We might even have ads on the app. Even though I know ads kind of suck but it'll enable us to pass those. Savings on to the consumer to have cheaper, cheaper delivery and so in an ideal world once we get sort of more economies of scale going. It's going to be sub $5 super cheap for a delivery and so you would end up ordering it because of that reality. If. It's two bucks for a delivery you might order something that costs five bucks a couple cans of pop for example or like a small item if you're cooking like potatoes if you need that and so that's really kind of where we're focused on getting to.

39:17.38
mike_flywheel
Up to £7 of potatoes. Um, how fast do these things fly like I think you said that you know it's a faster delivery definitely to the island than the new breeds. But how how quick do these things fly these days.

39:28.42
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, about we cap it out at I think about sixty five kilometers per hour and so it's it's faster than a car doing it. You don't have red lights. You don't have to worry about anything and the average altitude kind of depends on the location but the average altitude is going to be a couple hundred feet above the ground.

39:33.33
mike_flywheel
Wow.

39:47.85
Cameron Rowe
And so that enables us, we're high enough that you really aren't going to encounter any obstacles especially on the toronto islands where there aren't really tall buildings but you're low enough that you aren't really concerned about aircraft that fly ahead which if we're operating next to Billy Bishop and there's an approach path close to us that is a concern. That we have to think of but we constantly are in communications when we're operating with air traffic control. We have all of the permissions. They're completely aware of our operations and we get approval prior to all of our flights and so it's the type of thing of. Drones are we're allowed to use that airspace. We're insured. We're regulated a lot of the times we're not even really like the way that the the regulation systems work is you don't have to ask for permission. You're just informing them that you're in the airspace and so I think that's a big change that's going to take place that I think pilots are probably going to. Kind of not push back against necessarily. But it's going to be more of a crowded airspace and so how do you do that in a safe manner and that's something we're really focused on that's why we're working with air matrix. They're the first company that actually invested in us and so. They build essentially drone software and drone solutions for managing airspace as it gets more complex in the future that's going to be something that is going to increasingly be a problem of if you've got multiple different companies I've got 20 drones in the air in Toronto at 1 time and you have a company that also has 20 drones in the air.

41:13.47
Cameron Rowe
How do we know that our 20 drones are talking to 1 another and that are going to avoid it like maybe your software is way better than ours and maybe I don't have any software that can detect and avoid your drones and so that's that's kind of the the challenge of how to do that in the safe environment so you don't have collisions and you don't have drones falling at the sky. And so that's something that we're also thinking of in the future of how do we do this in a way that makes sense.

41:35.50
mike_flywheel
Yeah, these regulations sound like a huge challenge to get through and something that you've clearly worked through and have created a moat I Just want to know if I'm ordering ice cream if you can send it a little bit higher up in the Sky. So I say is super cold and chilled by the time it Arrives. Um.

41:54.26
Cameron Rowe
It's you know what we can do insulated and we even thought about having cooled or heated sort of a compartment to have it. So I think really ice cream it depends on on how hot it is or how far you are but we probably.

42:05.92
mike_flywheel
Um, yeah, Descend a real high altitude stays super chilled. Um maybe on that piece around like getting a bunch of these certifications and approvals. Um, it just leads me to think like what's been like the hardest part.

42:10.10
Cameron Rowe
Ah, the.

42:22.67
mike_flywheel
Of your journey so far and um, yeah, maybe share a bit about that.

42:27.41
Cameron Rowe
I definitely think kind of taking that leap to there's a number of different things but the the time and money that it took to kind of take that first leap and to say dedicate this amount of even just like your energy. Have limited time in the day to do things and I'm putting a ton of time into something that may not work is this worth it and I think that was really hard to overcome and kind of trust yourself and say there are signs that say yes we obviously have to try it to see whether or not that's really the case because people can say whatever they want. But. Would they actually put their like money where their mouth is and if we're running a business That's all that really matters are we getting paying customers and so why he didn't know that at the time I had no idea if anyone was really going to even want the service or if they wouldn't say oh that's cool and then continue along their day and so I think overcoming that a little bit of it was. Even self-doubt in a way of saying like I don't know and you have to trust yourself and and that's what I did and I'm really happy I did where I had I had my family being like are you sure this is the right path forward and then. Being forced to defend yourself with eye which I actually think is a good thing to have people in your circle that will question you so that you don't just go off on a tangent that doesn't make sense and say yes, this is why it makes sense. This is why I'm spending colossal amounts of money developing this technology and.

43:55.27
Cameron Rowe
This is where I'm going to deploy it. This is the estimated time frameme and and as you probably know it's like you have to have these time frames on projects because it can just go on forever if you don't and then you need to set that even if it feels arbitrary because you could reevaluate it at the end and see but having these set timeframes was something that I think really helped with. This uncertainty because it expedited the process. It made me more aware of some of the issues because everything takes longer than you think and so that's something that one of my sort of learnings was it just takes longer than you think I always thought I thought it would be quicker. Turns out, it's about 50% longer than I thought so.

44:27.33
mike_flywheel
Yeah.

44:30.22
Cameron Rowe
As we know living in Toronto like from the eglington construction projects. It's like I'm sure that those guys are smart and they know what they're doing and still they're years behind schedule so kind of building that buffer in as well is something that was super important.

44:44.87
mike_flywheel
Maybe maybe in that vein and maybe that is the advice and we'll just package it up but any like advice from going through that process to other people starting. Um you know a business Obviously hopefully not in in drones maybe in drones but just generally as like a startup founder or someone starting their own business. Um, is there any advice as some of those things that you were saying were seems super helpful. But maybe you have other advice for people starting out.

45:07.82
Cameron Rowe
Yeah, the biggest 1 is definitely trust yourself and do hard things I think you have to pick something that you really love to do because of how hard it is. It's definitely a marathon not a sprint and actually I I found a training for a marathon legitimately helped. I did an ironman last year and I was training for that while I was doing this and it it helped me stay disciplined where I knew I had to wake up early if I wanted to fit in a run because we're doing 12 hour days on the toronto islands when do I have time to work out. Well you have to be disciplined enough and that sort of mentality carries over of like doing hard things is worth it. And I think there has to be like an end to it and so having a goal of like we're going to do this for the summer and we're going to see what happens or we're going to complete this race and we're going to try to get under this timeframe and this is our training plan. It's so important and I think that's 1 thing that I tell everybody that. I can is like try to if there's something hard that you want to do that. You're unsure of just because it's hard. It's like still try it anyways, there are ways that you can do it that aren't the full development. You don't have to spend a ton of money to do it. But if you're trying something hard. It's so rewarding at the end of it and it just has kicked. Hover off from this company that was doing well into this company that's getting the attention of some really cool people and it wouldn't have happened unless I kind of took a bit of a leap of faith and we still have ways to go. But I think it's like from how I look at myself now versus last year I'm like I'm so

46:41.33
Cameron Rowe
That I had done these challenging things and I remember feeling the stress and anxiety of not knowing if it would work out and it may still not work out like I don't think by any means we've kind of made it. But I think we've made enough progress that gives me more confidence to continue on this path and I think that's that's really all that. We can hope for is just a so little more information that gives you slightly more confidence to be able to do this thing that you're really trying to accomplish and it might sound vague but I think the general themes are there because everybody knows their own strengths and weaknesses and I think if you're confident in yourself to be able to learn or develop something I think you should just go for it. Just continue trying and make the time and get disciplined so that you are doing the best that you can and I think being honest with yourself as well of like what are my limitations You know what are my skill sets like I have to bring on some more software people because I personally am not the best software engineer I'm not an embedded systems Engineer. So I need somebody like that on my team which is who we're looking for Now. So.

47:42.69
mike_flywheel
I like that so you package up a few things there just like that. It's a marathon. Not a sprint keeping yourself accountable. Um, the whole aspect around. You know, courage and confidence to keep going because you're going to have highs and lows and I think it's just. Continuing to be persistent that that pays off out of your whole Journey. What's sort of been your most memorable moment or favorite moment and in you know the journey of hover.

48:08.54
Cameron Rowe
Definitely going on dragons done. It was a culmination of a lot of like going on there and and seeing people that I've watched for years and years be kind of. Asking us questions be curious. We spend like an hour and a half on the dragons den and it's going to be distilled done to like 7 minutes so it's going to be like it just was a really fun time. It was stressful but it was a really cool experience going in and sort of saying like wow this is a. This is this is exciting. This is kind of one of the reasons why we're doing it. We get to do really cool exciting things.

48:42.40
mike_flywheel
That's awesome. Um, did you get invested by the dragons. Oh it's still it hasn't been aired yet. Ah ah, but has it been. Your has your episode been aired yet.

48:47.23
Cameron Rowe
You'll have to you'll have to watch to find out I thought I'm not allowed to say they the under penalty of death or whatever they make us something really? No So the.

48:59.73
mike_flywheel
Okay, okay.

49:00.61
Cameron Rowe
The new season and so everything is has been recorded I'm allowed to say that I I hey if you see me in first. Maybe I'll tell you you but I can't can't i.

49:03.75
mike_flywheel
Okay, that's fine. No, that's cool. It's funny because we've had a couple people talk about their their dragons den experience and I think it's so funny because like I obviously love just like meeting new people. And talking to startups and doing what we're doing here like if 5 people listen to the episode or 500 people listen to the episode like peace I'm I'm happy their way as long as other people are having enjoyment out of it. We get to talk about this but I could listen to.

49:31.98
Cameron Rowe
F.

49:35.73
mike_flywheel
Or watch like a dragons den or Shark tank like all day just to see like all the cool innovation that's out there how it's working. There's obviously a pivot around like the investment there and the drama of that but I just want to learn So I'm like I'm kind of real-time creating these mini Dragons dens where I don't have any money So I don't invest but I just listen.

49:48.92
Cameron Rowe

49:53.39
mike_flywheel
Um, so it's cool that a lot of people call that experience out a couple times is probably the the third or fourth episode where someone's mentioned um dragons den so clearly I've got a lot of people from dragons den I got a lot of people. Um. You know our sibling founders I've got a lot of people that like have been doorknoers. There's like some themes I'm I'm finding out here. Um, which maybe I'll write a book on how to be a successful a successful founder do with a brother or sister. You know do some doork knocking go on dragons then it's going to be like a recipe. Um.

50:07.77
Cameron Rowe
Your cut this point.

50:14.65
Cameron Rowe
Um, yeah.

50:25.24
mike_flywheel
But Cameron um, before we kind of wrap up today. Any additional kind of final words or thoughts on your side and if people are looking to either follow the journey or maybe you know be a customer of hover. Where should they where should they go next.

50:37.54
Cameron Rowe
Absolutely yeah, social media is the best place to check us out. We all of our social media handles are hover direct or hover dot direct and so you just type that into any social media you can even do hover drone delivery I think our Seo is pretty good so that we're any sort of. But it in no browser or even on Instagram we should pop up our website's hover.direct. There's no.comor.ca and so you can keep follow along on our journey. It's gonna be really exciting. We have some cool announcements that we're gonna be making soon some cool partnerships. We're currently developing some new tech that we're going to be demoing. So everything's just getting. Slightly better and that's that's a really big iterative step I think that I'm proud of it's like we're it's hard to have these monumental shifts and usually it comes in the form of every month you make incremental improvements and testing we're going to be out in the field this week doing some more testing of heavier packages to see how that works of. Less aerodynamic packages like pizza perhaps but we'll we'll keep that under wraps and and yeah, that's everything.

51:38.85
mike_flywheel
I love it I can't wait to order my first hover food delivery. So either when I find myself to 1 of your locations or when it's available my area you can count on me to do this at least a couple times probably going to become an addiction.

51:49.43
Cameron Rowe
How awesome.

51:54.78
mike_flywheel
Um, thank you so much for your advice today Cameron you're sharing your journey. Super excited to follow along and see some of these upcoming announcements. It sounds like your next 6 to twelve months are going to be filled with exciting moments. Um, that'll keep you riding through some of those you know, challenging lows because not every day is as exciting as you were saying so. Um, thanks again for coming on the pitch please podcast. Thank you, everyone who tuned in today. Hope you enjoyed it hope if you find yourself on the toronto island you too use hover direct to get your food orders there and as they expand to other areas and regions that you they give them a ah checkout. So.

52:29.20
Cameron Rowe
Thank you so much mike.

52:29.42
mike_flywheel
Cameron. Thanks again for joining today.