The Future Of Flight Is Silent I Mark Moore and Ian Villa - Whisper Aero I AO 37

The future of flight isn’t louder—it’s quieter.

Mark Moore and Ian Villa are the co-founders of Whisper Aero, a Tennessee-based startup designing the next generation of electric propulsion—technology so quiet, clean, and efficient that it’s poised to transform everything from drones to airplanes to leaf blowers.

After 32 years at NASA, Mark left government research to bring aviation innovation to small-town America. Alongside Ian—a Stanford-trained aerospace engineer who helped build Uber Elevate’s flying car division—they set up shop in Crossville, Tennessee, proving that world-changing ideas don’t have to come from Silicon Valley.

Whisper Aero’s work isn’t just about advancing flight—it’s about reviving Main Street through innovation, creating high-skill jobs, and showing what’s possible when cutting-edge technology takes root in rural America.

From their hangar in Crossville, they’re building a quieter, cleaner, more connected future of flight—and redefining what American ingenuity looks like today.
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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:09:07
Speaker 1
Hard work. Real talk. No shortcuts. I'm Joseph Cabrera. This is American operator.

00:00:09:15 - 00:00:12:10
Speaker 2
all right, gents, we are here.

00:00:12:11 - 00:00:29:08
Speaker 2
Not in the Austin studio, but we are in the booming town of Crossville, Tennessee, right outside of Nashville with, Mark and Ian of Whisperer, the co-founders and the two folks that kind of hold the helm there, for this great company. Gentlemen, thanks for having in your house, having us in your house here today.

00:00:29:10 - 00:00:30:16
Speaker 1
We love having you. Yeah.

00:00:30:16 - 00:00:31:02
Speaker 3
Thanks for coming.

00:00:31:04 - 00:00:36:23
Speaker 1
Making the trip. And we're a little bit more than on the outskirts of Nashville. We're an hour, 45 minutes.

00:00:37:03 - 00:00:37:19
Speaker 3
100 miles.

00:00:37:19 - 00:00:42:04
Speaker 1
Yeah, with, with today's traffic and cars. But we're going to change that.

00:00:42:05 - 00:01:01:19
Speaker 2
I see that, and I know we're going to get into making that maybe closer to a 20 minute trip here at some point. But guys, we're going to go cover quite a bit of stuff today what y'all's company is working on. We were just catching up before we went live here. And it's not just kind of future of aviation and the way people get to places and quiet technology and all the things that come into propulsion.

00:01:01:21 - 00:01:20:22
Speaker 2
But y'all really, I think on the forefront of connecting people in a way that's never really been done before. So we'll get into all those things, but I think would probably help set the stage is just part of this show is always really talking about the humans behind it all. And I've always just when I first met y'all or close two years ago and then coming back here, which thanks again, thanks for the invite.

00:01:20:22 - 00:01:39:05
Speaker 2
Back means at least where we had good house manners when we were here the first time. So, would love to just kind of get, I mean, Mark first, then the and just y'all's background, like, what got you? No one enters this field without seemingly being passionate about it for so many years. So, Mark, we know you've done quite a bit, but go ahead and give us this.

00:01:39:11 - 00:02:04:05
Speaker 1
The version I'm definitely known for being pretty passionate about aviation and statement. Yeah, so opinionated and passionate. But I it started very early for, for me when I was eight years old. I grew up in New Zealand and, knew I wanted to work on vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and I wanted to work for NASA, literally at that early age.

00:02:04:05 - 00:02:33:09
Speaker 1
And I would be jumping off sand dunes and raincoats, to try to pretend, and and learn to fly. Haha. But, so that was my dream. I, I was really focused on it and managed to work, have have the really great privilege of working at NASA, in the powered lift aviation group at NASA Ames and then at, Langley for 32 years.

00:02:33:11 - 00:03:08:10
Speaker 1
I kind of saw it all. Where in those early days in the 1980s, learn from those who who built and designed those aircraft in the 1950s, 60s and 70s who were the pioneers of vertical takeoff and landing aircraft. And, my mission was to to make that become an everyday kind of capability that people could afford to, to, to use and, my whole life, has been focused on and achieving that.

00:03:08:12 - 00:03:37:09
Speaker 1
And unfortunately, Ian and I are at the right place at the right time with the right technology. You were electric. Propulsion is just doing amazing things, not just on the car side, but now in aviation. And it's just, it's it's good fortune for both of us to, to, been at the right place, at NASA, Uber and Northrop to be able to leverage all these new technologies.

00:03:37:10 - 00:03:39:07
Speaker 3
Yeah, definitely. Right place, right time.

00:03:39:08 - 00:03:40:06
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you in?

00:03:40:10 - 00:03:47:21
Speaker 3
Yeah. For me, slightly different story. When I was younger, I wanted to be an astronaut, but then I found out when I was five, I had terrible vision. So you need to be.

00:03:47:21 - 00:03:49:00
Speaker 2
Able to see, to go into space.

00:03:49:00 - 00:04:15:18
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah. Fly, fly. I mean, I could still maybe fly today, but, not astronaut level fly. So instead of flying the airplane or the space shuttle, I thought, okay, maybe I can actually build it. So that just took me down the road of engineering. You know, competed in high school robotics, went to Stanford, got a degree in Aero Astro.

00:04:15:18 - 00:04:38:00
Speaker 3
And then from there, knew I wanted to go design airplanes, went to Northrop Grumman advanced design team, worked there for a few years and design some cool stuff, and then popped out and met Market Uber, one of the first few hires there. We grew the team to about 150 people. I was initially responsible for all of our aircraft partnerships.

00:04:38:02 - 00:05:20:03
Speaker 3
And so at Uber, we would go and vet and see how all of these different companies, you know, the greats like Boeing and Bell, but also startups. Joby, and and then even nontraditional, like Hyundai, Toyota, how they would all potentially come into this space and, and try and revolution is the future of urban air mobility. So did that for a few years, helped incubate some new teams like Hyundai's aviation division, and then in 2019 moved over into the strategy side of things, became the head of strategy, built out a team that was focused on how do we actually go to market and brought together all of these layers, like noise,

00:05:20:03 - 00:05:45:15
Speaker 3
whether air, space, economics, vehicles, in order to figure out how do we actually launch products on the Uber platform that would fly, and no surprise, the biggest thing that we realized was that noise is this big barrier to scale. And nobody had solved it. Not not enough to actually unlock the skies for everyone. So that's where the opportunity for whisper, showed itself.

00:05:45:17 - 00:06:05:01
Speaker 3
We knew that you could be better in terms of efficiency, better in terms of noise, better in terms of community friendliness. And if you had this new, you know, electric engine technology that could propel things through the sky more cleanly, quietly and efficiently, well, turns out you could also move the air on the ground more cleanly, quietly and efficiently.

00:06:05:01 - 00:06:15:03
Speaker 3
And that is the makings for a really awesome business. A 21st century Pratt Whitney plus a Dyson combined. So that's whisper and that's the opportunity we're here to go grab.

00:06:15:03 - 00:06:36:17
Speaker 2
Before we dive into technology. And just I know y'all are giving us the CliffsNotes version, but even in that short note, I mean, you just think about so much horsepower crammed in those years of time that y'all spent in the in the space. What about y'all each other's combo? Like, how did y'all obviously found each other there? It sounds like you were elevate, but what about that relationship made you eventually go, let's go do this thing together?

00:06:36:19 - 00:07:13:20
Speaker 1
So this is an interesting story. And Ian was like one of the very first people that it that I hired to at Hoover elevate. And he just showed himself immediately to be a dynamo, of intelligence and hard work and literally everything that we put him in charge of, he excelled at. But what really drove, me to want to work with him for the rest of my career is, I had had this idea in the back of my mind for about a decade of how to how to do what?

00:07:13:20 - 00:07:49:07
Speaker 1
Whispers doing how to be transformative in terms of making thrust really, really quiet. And so we had this, big team and I, I'd say, you know, I've, I've got this idea and, you know, we could make thrust, like, radically quieter and be more efficient at the same time. And you could do it at any size propulsion class, because usually if you make for propulsion smaller or engines smaller, they get less efficient and less reliable, all sorts of bad things.

00:07:49:09 - 00:08:00:19
Speaker 1
So I gave these clues, like every month I give a different clue and nobody could figure it out. Until like I think it was a like a year and a half in.

00:08:00:21 - 00:08:02:18
Speaker 3
In September 2018.

00:08:02:19 - 00:08:25:07
Speaker 1
Yeah, it okay. Yeah. It was a year and a half in the knee and said, I think this is what your idea is. And I said, oh my gosh, I gave too many hints. I said, we're going to have to do this together again and again. He is the most hardworking person I've ever met. Just keeps everything going.

00:08:25:09 - 00:08:40:18
Speaker 1
And in with such a positive personality. But he figured out, you know, what the magical, new tech was. And, from there, it was just like this. We had to do this together.

00:08:40:23 - 00:09:05:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. I mean, the tech was part of it, but I think we also have a really great working dynamic trying to find a co-founders. Really tough. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And, like, you need someone who is similar enough where you can understand, like the product you're going to build and, and similar enough that you can go and approach building the team in the right ways, but complementary in a way that you can fill each other's gaps.

00:09:05:12 - 00:09:23:17
Speaker 3
Like, you know, you can't always be working in the same thing because you're always butt heads. And so you need to be able to know. And it I've had other founders describe this as like a decision making fabric. You need another co-founder that can build that fabric and like weave in together. I think we've got that.

00:09:23:17 - 00:09:41:02
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I'm much more big picture vision. Ian is in the details. And just execution. I'm not good at execution, but Ian excels at that. So we are very, very complementary in terms of skill sets.

00:09:41:04 - 00:09:56:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. It sounds like in addition to having complementary skill sets, the one thing I've noticed about which you're absolutely right, like, fine, it's rare to see a team. There's teams out there, but the ones that work really well and seem just kind of like the chemistry is on also seems to have like a mutual respect for each other's skills.

00:09:56:13 - 00:10:08:02
Speaker 2
Like I think that's something that oftentimes you can have these opposing skills, but if you don't really respect the other person's, it can just seem like, let's just do more of what I do best, as opposed to saying, no, I appreciate where you're coming from, and that definitely fills the gaps.

00:10:08:02 - 00:10:47:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Well, I, I'm, you know, near the end of my career, 40 years in and, I want, you know, what I've learned, and the connections I've made and the networking to continue, beyond me and very much from the beginning, I said, and it's like, I want, I want you to have all the knowledge and all the networking, all the connections for yourself so that you can just continue to do great things, even beyond whisper or to grow, whisper into the next Pratt and Whitney.

00:10:47:16 - 00:10:49:20
Speaker 3
Well, that it's not just me. I think it's like the entire team.

00:10:49:20 - 00:10:51:00
Speaker 1
Yeah, absolutely.

00:10:51:02 - 00:10:52:06
Speaker 2
Just. Ian.

00:10:52:08 - 00:11:17:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, well, in the beginning, the promise was just to Ian that I would make sure that everything that I could share was, was given. Yeah. I really, felt that very strongly. I just when you find someone like Ian who, you know, has this unlimited potential, it's just like, you know, they're better than you, and you want to do everything to have them be successful.

00:11:17:19 - 00:11:19:05
Speaker 3
I don't know if you can say that.

00:11:19:07 - 00:11:42:08
Speaker 2
Well, there's again, there's the mutual respect. It's there. I can see it. And I think, I think we all probably reach a point and I think it comes at various levels, but obviously at the end of one or towards the, the, the final approach, if you will, on someone's career that you kind of want to know that this, this, this, this ball that we're on, you know, has to continue forward and kind of mean something.

00:11:42:08 - 00:11:52:12
Speaker 2
So I can I can tell that, again, y'all's mutual respect for each other and yours given out is high. You're not just trying to let's go flip this thing and let's go start, you know, no no no.

00:11:52:14 - 00:11:53:09
Speaker 1
No, we're on a mission.

00:11:53:09 - 00:11:55:16
Speaker 2
Taco company definition. Yeah.

00:11:55:18 - 00:12:05:16
Speaker 3
And you have to pour so much of your soul to make it work. It's like, why? If you're going to do that, why do it for something so small? Like, really swing for the fences?

00:12:05:17 - 00:12:28:00
Speaker 1
Yeah. I doubt many people understand how hard and consuming it is to do a startup like we've been doing. All the employees here know, but it's like you got to live through it to believe. I mean, everybody's putting their their heart and soul and sweat into this. So you got to be a believer and you got to have passion.

00:12:28:02 - 00:12:30:22
Speaker 1
And you gotta want to change the world for the better.

00:12:31:01 - 00:12:32:03
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:12:32:05 - 00:12:33:11
Speaker 3
Passion is like the starting line.

00:12:33:14 - 00:12:34:02
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:12:34:04 - 00:12:46:10
Speaker 2
Yeah, I imagine that's what you all like. You got. They got that culturally. Like, that's got to be what you all expect, right? Or like, have to sniff for it, right? Otherwise. Like, you could be a super talented engineer or whatever you might be.

00:12:46:10 - 00:13:14:03
Speaker 3
But we talked about this when you first came here. Oh yeah. Like the our whole recruiting process. It's it's equally about the technical piece as is as it is about the culture. And you could be like, you're saying you'd be someone who's really talented, who knows a whole lot, but if you don't know how to work with people, and there's no way that we can work together on these larger projects, it will inevitably take more people and collaboration and lots of different perspectives in order to get to the best winning product.

00:13:14:07 - 00:13:15:01
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:13:15:03 - 00:13:35:15
Speaker 1
Well, and this is something that Ian insisted on right from the beginning, was developing a really strong culture right up front. So as you walked in, you probably saw on our wall, the different principles, of culture that, that we've implemented. That was all. Ian. Now, a lot of other employees have run with it as well and augmented it.

00:13:35:15 - 00:13:41:11
Speaker 1
But, Ian was really insistent on on that being the core of whisper.

00:13:41:14 - 00:13:58:20
Speaker 2
Yeah. Is one of them. Am I remembering it right? Is ruthlessly prioritizing really? Yeah. Good man. It just, like pierced my brain when I read that. I think it just helped it because it's such a thing that especially in this world, you want to talk about shiny ball syndrome. There's 9000 of them a day in this company and not know what you gotta focus on.

00:13:58:20 - 00:14:06:21
Speaker 2
I can see where, those two things. Yeah, I think it can be seen as just like the window dressing. Not more important to making this thing.

00:14:06:21 - 00:14:23:21
Speaker 1
Well, the rate of change of technology today is, bewildering. It's just staggering. And it's going to keep accelerating. So, yeah, there's so many shiny balls if you can't keep focus. Then it's going to be really hard to be successful. Yeah.

00:14:23:21 - 00:14:45:18
Speaker 2
So tell me, y'all okay. If you get I am into what you all do, but maybe for somebody who's just coming into it, like, how do you describe why the technology is so unique, like what y'all are working on? They probably my thinking. Let me think about Larry and Idaho am I go, it's just airplane stuff, man. Don't we already know how to fly?

00:14:45:19 - 00:14:51:11
Speaker 2
I can understand why we did this in the Wright Brothers. Take care of us. What would you all say in response to that?

00:14:51:13 - 00:14:52:08
Speaker 3
I'm gonna take the first part.

00:14:52:08 - 00:15:16:07
Speaker 1
So it's not just airplane stuff because it is anything that any, any application where you need to move air and you care about it, doing that efficiently and quietly. Whether it's for disturbing cows and you got to have big vans that are blowing on something, or just a leaf blower, like we have it back in the back here.

00:15:16:07 - 00:15:53:04
Speaker 1
It's, our technology goes to all these commercial industrial and aviation Department of Defense applications. Because we have reinvented, the ducted fan, to be absolutely synergistic with electric motors and batteries and to be, again, as efficient, and as quiet as a way that you could ever move air. So, that's my answer. What's yours?

00:15:53:06 - 00:16:09:19
Speaker 3
What we're building. I mean, you said it. It's cleaner, quieter, more efficient thrust. And when you start to think about all the things that harness the power of air every single day, it becomes quite expensive, right? Leaf blowers, Hvac systems, cooling.

00:16:09:19 - 00:16:12:12
Speaker 1
Delivery, drone delivery, which is.

00:16:12:13 - 00:16:14:00
Speaker 3
Yeah.

00:16:14:02 - 00:16:22:19
Speaker 1
And those are flying. We're going to be flying everywhere. I mean, not the ones and twos like today, but there's going to be millions

00:16:22:19 - 00:16:42:10
Speaker 1
in the next 20 to 30 years. There will be millions of drones flying around. And if they're all as noisy as they are today, it's going to be a miserable future. Yeah, but again, I mentioned this before one of our investors, early investors, was, Robert Downey Jr with, his,

00:16:42:12 - 00:16:43:09
Speaker 3
Footprint Coalition.

00:16:43:09 - 00:17:08:13
Speaker 1
Footprint coalition. And he had this really cool thing that he said about our tech, which I totally believe in. And that is the future needs to be as considerate as it is compelling. So it's not acceptable that we we make people's lives more convenient with delivery drones, where you can order something from Walmart and get it, you know, five, ten minutes later if it's annoying, the whole rest of the community,

00:17:08:13 - 00:17:24:02
Speaker 1
you gotta make sure that what we're providing in this future for our kids is considerate, is compelling, is a better way for us all to connect, to move and be productive.

00:17:24:02 - 00:17:24:21
Speaker 1
Yeah.

00:17:24:23 - 00:17:40:13
Speaker 2
Yeah. And you, when you talk about the the consider it part that is kind of also like you can't create a world trying to do a different thing if people aren't into buying into that as well. Right. Even if you only have early adopters into it and you don't get the rest of the folks to come along.

00:17:40:15 - 00:17:58:21
Speaker 3
Well, there's layers to it too, because it's not just the person using the product or using the service, it's the people around them. It's their neighborhoods. So whether it's a delivery drone, you know, you may be experiencing the benefit of receiving this good, but your neighbors may not appreciate a really noisy drone at, you know, 6 a.m. when you're trying to sleep on a Saturday.

00:17:59:02 - 00:18:00:09
Speaker 1
Same for leaf blowers and.

00:18:00:09 - 00:18:06:22
Speaker 3
For leaf blower, you say, well, prove it with leaf blowers. And then that's the that's the proof point for the drones and everything else that we go fly.

00:18:07:00 - 00:18:39:14
Speaker 2
Why did. Yeah, I mean, it again, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's like it's such a y'all are like kind of after going after the foundational mission instead of just saying, let's create a let's make it whisper era, the leading and best company that builds, these drones that are going to be moving around. Y'all are actually going way deeper than that and way more foundational and saying, now let's make sure the technology sounds like it's, we want this to be a technology that's ubiquitous across all folks, using every application of it, not just the one single use it might be.

00:18:39:16 - 00:19:02:03
Speaker 3
Well, the mission is to deliver cleaner, quieter, more efficient thrust. And we acknowledge that, you know, we harness the power of air in lots of these different products. So to to do that and to approach and build a company that can tackle that mission, you got you have to have a foundation of this core tech, and you build that solidly, and then you use that as your base to then insert the technology into as many products as possible.

00:19:02:05 - 00:19:02:15
Speaker 2
Yeah.

00:19:02:15 - 00:19:33:07
Speaker 1
Well, and you have to have a practical business case where you're building revenues while you're building that big dream as well. So that's why for us, we've always thought of having our business model where as you're establishing these long term certified, aviation solutions, aircraft, that's takes ten years to get to a certified aircraft. And it can't just be a leap of faith that, hey, in ten years, we're going to make money.

00:19:33:09 - 00:20:07:11
Speaker 1
For us, we always believed in, hey, let's create commercial products that can get out in the marketplace for one and two years. Like the leaf blower, drone is, both for the Department of Defense and for civil applications in the 3 to 4 years. And that builds the revenue foundation for a solid company that can also do the long term efforts, like ubiquitous air taxis that are so compact, so quiet, so efficient that they can take off and land anywhere.

00:20:07:13 - 00:20:17:21
Speaker 1
I mean, that's the that's the vibrant 20 to 30 year dream where our technology is going to be able to leapfrog and make that available sooner.

00:20:17:21 - 00:20:29:02
Speaker 1
I mean, it is amazing. Just think back ten years ago, you know, I mean that was like pre Uber pre self-driving cars. And you know, ten years ago you said, oh you're crazy.

00:20:29:02 - 00:20:57:03
Speaker 1
If you think people are going to get into self-driving cars and that's going to be a reality. Well I'm telling you now that in another ten plus years you're going to be getting into a small 1 to 2 place autonomous aircraft. That is is the size of a car with a wing attached as well. And it is going to be so quiet and and be able to be flying around at 150mph by itself.

00:20:57:07 - 00:21:07:00
Speaker 1
So safely, with highly redundant propulsion systems that that it's just it's going to give you a mobility reach that you can't even imagine

00:21:07:00 - 00:21:22:08
Speaker 1
where you can be wherever you want in the entire state and be incredibly productive. It's it. I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but it is literally becoming true with our technology.

00:21:22:10 - 00:21:43:05
Speaker 2
I see it, I it it's, I think if history is any kind of indicator of things that you continue to be, why we continue to be surprised by these things, you just got to look and kind of see what give me like a a do you have a technical thing in the back of my brain? But I'll get it like from from Sue out in Detroit who might just be like, well, give me like a day in the life use case.

00:21:43:05 - 00:21:56:00
Speaker 2
Like, why would I, why would I care for somebody who's maybe, you know, in this, why would I care to get to somewhere in an autonomous vehicle? What's an application that someone might use for a very real world problem and they're trying to solve?

00:21:56:03 - 00:21:59:13
Speaker 3
I there's a bunch. Like seeing your family going to school.

00:21:59:13 - 00:22:23:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, it's just like with family. I mean, I don't know about your family. My my family is spread out right? You used to be your family. Stay geographically close to each other. Yeah, but now it's like they're hundreds of miles away and the opportunity to stay connected to them. Sure, you can do a chat with them, but it's nothing like having, a personal, an in-person visit with them.

00:22:23:11 - 00:22:36:14
Speaker 1
And, I mean, if it's hundreds of miles away, that's a real blocker. When that can turn into a 30 minute equivalent car ride, then there's this opportunity to stay much more connected.

00:22:36:16 - 00:22:56:23
Speaker 3
And if you look at history like our lives are defined by the modes of transportation available to us, right? So in the 1800s, like horse, horses and buggies in the 1900s, we got cars. And now we've got traffic. And so I think the 21st century is, is starting to be defined by all these new modes of transportation.

00:22:57:01 - 00:23:18:03
Speaker 3
And we're seeing autonomous cars, but there's there's limits to the mobility bandwidth on the ground. And so, you know, you're saying what is the use case? The use case is any kind of transportation that defines your daily life. When you can fly 100 miles in 20 minutes, you now can live in a whole lot more places. You can access a whole lot more opportunities.

00:23:18:05 - 00:23:35:11
Speaker 3
You can, you know, get the right health care that you need. You can go, you know, hiking and come back in a day and not feel like you've got to spend the whole trip. And when you can do that affordably, that now starts to really change things. It just changes the fabric of your everyday life.

00:23:35:13 - 00:24:06:11
Speaker 1
And again, with the big picture, there's this opportunity, instead of being constrained to very limited geographic spaces, which is what big cities are, right? Yeah, a lot of people live there because there's great opportunity. But what if you could access those opportunities but not have to live in the big city? Like, I'll give you an example. When I moved to Tennessee to for us to start Whisper Aero, I did a crazy thing.

00:24:06:13 - 00:24:34:21
Speaker 1
I, I sold, the, the condo that I had in downtown, San Francisco and for the exact same amount of money, bought a 20 acre, 40,000 square foot resort on a lake. And it's like, oh, I could have had 1200 square feet in San Francisco, or 20 acres and 40,000ft² on a lake in a gorgeous place.

00:24:34:21 - 00:24:48:09
Speaker 1
Yeah. It is giving people that choice to live, work, play, do what they want and have a mobility reach that enables them to have the best access for what they want to do.

00:24:48:10 - 00:25:07:19
Speaker 2
From, the science question that I have in my mind that y'all might be able to help me with you use the word efficient and use the word redundant. How would start with the efficient side first? Why is that an important? Like, how should I conceptualize the importance of efficiency and why does it matter?

00:25:07:21 - 00:25:50:19
Speaker 1
Efficiency typically translates to how much things cost too. So if you if you're inefficient, like general aviation aircraft today, small aircraft that you'd fire on, they're grossly inefficient, aerodynamically from the propulsion wise. So general aviation aircraft, they cost quite a bit of money to move around. Yeah. As soon as you go to an electric based, solution instead of hydrocarbon, the amount of energy that you use decreases by about an order of magnitude, because the aerodynamic efficiency, compared to helicopters is 3 to 4 times more efficient.

00:25:50:21 - 00:26:19:14
Speaker 1
The powertrain efficiency compared to a piston engine is again 3 to 4 times efficient. The overall efficiency is the most application of those two, so about 10 to 12 times more efficient. So that goes directly to operating costs. How much energy you're using. So if you want to go somewhere, it's a lot of it comes down to how much is that energy costing you to do that trip?

00:26:19:16 - 00:26:31:16
Speaker 2
How is it moving efficiently. They actually in the in the in the way that it's operating, but also to the end consumer, it's actually just a much more efficient way to travel than buying your own airplane. And I mean, the Cessna.

00:26:31:16 - 00:26:42:11
Speaker 3
They're paying for the energy. Yeah, they're paying for it. So if you're using less energy for that trip or you're using less energy for that, good, it doesn't matter. That's that's your efficiency. The efficiency benefit is the cost savings. Yeah.

00:26:42:11 - 00:27:11:07
Speaker 1
And look, we should always strive to be more efficient, right? I mean, if you look at the first cars, in the early 1900s, just pigs in terms of consumption. Yeah, yeah. And it's like we kept doing better and better and it's just like, look, at some point you got to whatever your politics are, you gotta realize that the world has an energy budget, right?

00:27:11:07 - 00:27:47:14
Speaker 1
We can't just keep pulling up oil for the next 200 years and expecting that to be the solution. So we've got to find ways to have sustainable energy solutions that require efficiency. Unless we want to cut back and we want to travel less and we want to have, you know, less services. But to me, it's the challenge in life is how do we make everyone's life better and make sure that for the following generations, they're set up for success.

00:27:47:16 - 00:27:57:15
Speaker 2
And the redundant set? It seems like that's a term you use almost for safety as well, and for certainty, or for peace of mind. How do you think about that? Or how should I think thinking about that once two fold.

00:27:57:15 - 00:28:27:20
Speaker 3
So the cool thing about our tech is, you know, we can be over 90% efficient at the fan level, whether you're, you know, a four foot four inch fan or whether you're a four foot fan. And so when you have, you know, that equivalence in efficiency, you basically have what we call scale independent thrust. We can no matter, you know, if you're this small or this large, if you have the same efficiency, you might as well have a lot more redundant, smaller fans.

00:28:28:01 - 00:28:45:04
Speaker 3
So that way if you lose one fan, the net hit to the overall system is much, much smaller, right? If you lose two, you lose one fan. If you have two fans and you lose one fan, okay, well, you just lost 50%. But if you've got 20 of these fans and you lose one, or you have 19 out of 20 remaining, you're still good.

00:28:45:06 - 00:29:22:03
Speaker 3
You can stay aloft, you can do it. You can even shut down another one. You're still 90% there. So, that redundancy adds to the safety and the inherent ability to go small and still go redundant, but still have the same efficiency also adds to the efficiency. And then there's this cool integration benefits. You know, when you have these smaller fans and you're able to leverage cool things like blowing air over the top of a wing that gets you more lift and you can use that lift to have a smaller aircraft to have better ride quality, to get a much better trip, and then again, get to that cost savings.

00:29:22:03 - 00:29:41:02
Speaker 2
Yeah, I think for folks who maybe can't see it, if you look at any of the photos that are up and stuff there, I'll describe it the best way that I can. Maybe in layman's terms, if you look at kind of a traditional way of thinking of an aircraft, you have a wing one maybe two big engines on it, you know, that's about it, where these you kind of see the engine and, the wing or the is a turbine or ninja.

00:29:41:02 - 00:29:42:12
Speaker 2
How should I call it?

00:29:42:14 - 00:29:44:02
Speaker 3
You can call them electric engine. You got.

00:29:44:04 - 00:29:58:14
Speaker 2
Thruster thrusters. It's just it's like integrated part of the design. And it is strung out across the entire length of the wing, which, if you think about it, even if something goes wrong with one of them, you get you're saying you have plenty of you have plenty. Other things are going to keep you.

00:29:58:14 - 00:29:59:21
Speaker 3
Aloft.

00:29:59:23 - 00:30:03:05
Speaker 2
As opposed to that one engine getting hit. Now you only got one to go on.

00:30:03:05 - 00:30:04:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. And that's why, I mean,

00:30:04:08 - 00:30:24:18
Speaker 1
we broke a 100 year old truth that bigger is better. That's why, as you said, aircraft have 1 or 2 engines because bigger engines are more efficient. They're more economical. That's been the truth for 100 years. And why aircraft looks the way they do with ours. Bigger is not better. Smaller is better.

00:30:25:00 - 00:30:35:19
Speaker 1
Smaller provides lower cost and provides simpler systems and lets you integrate in this redundant manner to achieve much higher safety.

00:30:35:21 - 00:30:36:22
Speaker 3
In economies of scale.

00:30:37:04 - 00:31:04:06
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. For manufacturing production, we can hit about one quarter of the cost for what aviation propulsion does today in terms of dollars per pound of thrust, because we can use different processes with with smaller, professors than with great big ones that have highly stressed components. And even more so as you look at our aircraft, we can get away from single part criticality.

00:31:04:11 - 00:31:28:21
Speaker 1
If you look at a helicopter or any EV tool today, they have lots of single parts that are critical. That means if one part breaks, the aircraft comes down. Because of the way we're able to incorporate, redundancy and distribution, we eliminate single part criticality and that means the parts are far less expensive. They don't need frequent inspections.

00:31:28:23 - 00:31:32:00
Speaker 1
And overall it's a much safer solution.

00:31:32:02 - 00:31:49:20
Speaker 2
Makes a ton of sense. Yeah I think it, it it kind of leads me to something when y'all were talking earlier about kind of going back to the human side of all this, I mean, it's all human, but really just kind of the heart of it, I should say. You saying that reminds me of something I thought earlier in this convo, which was, how do you.

00:31:49:22 - 00:32:06:10
Speaker 2
This is a very philosophical question, so please forgive me, but it's more like, why do you think we go so long before someone decides that maybe we ought to think of it differently? What is that in human nature that makes us go for? Is it just comfort or investment or kind of. What is that, do you think.

00:32:06:12 - 00:32:38:13
Speaker 1
It requires a mental change of perspective, like, I'll give you another example. We're just with what's going on in Ukraine. I mean, militaries have their mindset, their perspective, and they thought, hey, these hundred million dollar fighters are and bombers are how you do aerial combat and and win wars. Ukraine. It's completely changed. Now, instead of having one fighter or one bomber, you have a thousand drones that come in.

00:32:38:15 - 00:33:12:08
Speaker 1
And so there is this. This is not just about, military or other things. I'm going to get really philosophical on you go. This is about how the world is discovering distribution has enormous, consequences and potential that centralization doesn't have. And for the last hundred years of industrialization, it's been centralized, centralized, centralized, whether it's making Doritos at a single factory so you can make them really cheap.

00:33:12:10 - 00:33:43:00
Speaker 1
But guess what? If that one factory goes down, no more Doritos, no more drink. Yeah. So and if you think about this really philosophically, what does nature do to be as robust and survivable and, and beautiful? It always distributes a tree doesn't have one leaf or two leaf. It has about 10,000 leaf. And across all of nature you can see distribution has been a key to success.

00:33:43:02 - 00:33:44:05
Speaker 1
In thriving.

00:33:44:05 - 00:34:09:00
Speaker 1
And I think the world is about to go through a fundamental shift across all parts of society where instead of centralizing, again, like with aircraft having centralized 1 or 2 engines, now we have technologies that let us distribute and have really amazing new capabilities that you can't get with centralization.

00:34:09:02 - 00:34:10:05
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think that's that's true.

00:34:10:05 - 00:34:11:18
Speaker 1
Additive printing is another example.

00:34:11:19 - 00:34:54:16
Speaker 3
That's another one. Well, you see this just happening in a bunch of different industries, right? Like crypto GPUs versus CPUs. Distribution is a good thing. The other piece of this though, which makes whisper possible. Now, when it wasn't even possible like ten years ago, is this advancement in all these other fields, like the advances that now we have and additive manufacturing, these advances in other forms of manufacturing, advances in design tools, computational design, all of these were necessary ingredients in order to allow whisper to design these particular innovations, these these quieter, more efficient compact jets.

00:34:54:17 - 00:35:23:07
Speaker 3
And, you know, that's that's part of it. We as humans continue to make all of this progress in these isolated vectors. But innovation happens at the intersection of all these disparate disciplines. And so after a while, you know, we make progress in all these different fields. And it takes, you know, a team to bring that all back together and assess how is the world all shifted all at once, and what can we now build given everything that's changed?

00:35:23:09 - 00:35:35:23
Speaker 3
So that's what we wanted it. We're trying to take advantage of all of these different advances and be able to, you know, build a 21st century solution so that we can break the 100 year old truth. Yeah.

00:35:36:01 - 00:35:54:14
Speaker 2
That timing, I think, in life is everything. Right. And so being also able to do that, how do you think about there's a fact you gave me last time, me and it's burned in my mind about you. Also think about these. Is it 5000 like under utilized regional airports across the country that also are just they're not also being leveraged.

00:35:54:14 - 00:36:03:20
Speaker 2
And now you have this cross-section of the atom. The automotive thing has really congested up the world. Yeah. And so you got this infrastructure that already exists. That's got to be a big part of it too, right?

00:36:03:21 - 00:36:08:02
Speaker 1
Yeah I'm Tennessee, there's 77 small airports that are barely being used.

00:36:08:06 - 00:36:10:02
Speaker 2
77 in the state, just.

00:36:10:04 - 00:36:38:04
Speaker 1
In the state, 5000 across the United States. And the United States has a huge advantage here that other countries don't, where they've already paid for this huge distributed aviation, infrastructure capability. And but if you look how aviation services are provided today, 70 to 80% of the, the the trips done on airplanes are done out of 30 airports, big hub airports.

00:36:38:07 - 00:37:10:05
Speaker 1
So again, aviation has gone to centralization. And guess what? If there's one, bad weather storm in in Newark that's impacting all the operations, across all of, United. So this ability to leverage these 5000 small airports, through distribution, distributed aviation services, has enormous potential. And it's not like, oh, we've got to build all these airports.

00:37:10:05 - 00:37:23:18
Speaker 1
They're literally already here. We just have to develop these technologies into integrated aircraft solutions that can especially have the economics that let everyone take advantage of this increased mobility.

00:37:23:18 - 00:37:32:12
Speaker 2
It's almost the opposite problem that EV cars, hey, we're like, you build the technology, then you're like, oh yeah, these charging has we didn't have that infrastructure with this case. It's like, no that actually already exists.

00:37:32:14 - 00:38:02:10
Speaker 1
Yeah. And I mean the problem with cars are then we're we're like ants, right? You're on these confined trails and you build another line and you just have more ants, traveling through it. But as soon as you get above the 2D and take advantage of that third dimension, instead of their it being pathway dependent, you eliminate that pathway dependency, and then all you're connected with is, is nodes.

00:38:02:12 - 00:38:26:19
Speaker 1
That's kind of like the internet in terms of productivity, because that way your pathway independent. You can go to to from one node to 4999 other nodes in terms of operating and that number of pathways is geometrically, you know, expanded tremendously from having to go along a single path.

00:38:26:21 - 00:38:50:17
Speaker 2
When y'all think about the future, you say ten years, when do you think the adoption like what you get to say, y'all have done this for quite some time, that in addition to or in with the technology being there and the infrastructure set, do you think it'll take even longer for that to fall down? Do you think it'll take even longer for folks to adopt, or do you think they'll kind of get it quickly?

00:38:50:19 - 00:39:29:05
Speaker 1
So I'm going to go back to the automobile age. I've read a lot of books, and the similarity similarities between, automobiles replacing horse and buggy, and where we are today. Yeah. And things are technologies are definitely moving faster, now than in the early 1900s. But for automobiles really to hit, mass market, you know, tens of millions of, of, of cars, you literally had to have one generation die off who were not believers.

00:39:29:05 - 00:39:55:04
Speaker 1
They weren't they didn't grow up with that technology set. So they had to die off before the next generation came with that. Of course, I I'm not going to ride a horse. I'm going to I'm going to get in this car and, and essentially have trusted relationships with these machine machines. So I personally think it'll be much faster than that 30 year arc that happened with automobiles.

00:39:55:07 - 00:40:06:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Just because humans are getting to this state where they can embrace change at a faster pace and you don't need a generational die off, but what do you think?

00:40:06:11 - 00:40:28:02
Speaker 3
You know, I mean, I think maybe you wouldn't frame it as generational die off, but I think there's, I like it that there's a lead lag involved. And like, I think the generation that's going to fly every day is already primed for that. Yeah. Especially in autonomous air taxis, like you look at Gen Z. Gen Z, by the numbers, is driving less.

00:40:28:03 - 00:40:50:10
Speaker 3
All of them have driver's licenses. Many in San Francisco, like, they as kids were in Ubers and now are using Waymo's. Those are the same kinds of people that will be ready to accept and adopt these electric air taxis when they're ready. And, you know, we talked about all of these, you know, taking these parallel advances and then starting to combine them.

00:40:50:10 - 00:41:09:01
Speaker 3
Well, you've got folks used to ridesharing. You've got these advances in autonomous technologies. And now you have these advances in electrified aviation. And the is there. So now we're nearing that point where this comes together in the mindsets already there for people that are using these tech.

00:41:09:01 - 00:41:39:15
Speaker 1
But we we don't want to give any excuses as inhibitors. Like in the early days of automobiles they call them devil wagons. I mean, there was a huge amount of people who just wanted nothing to do with them. They were scaring the horses. So this is part of this being considerate, as well as compelling, where we don't provide any excuses for them.

00:41:39:17 - 00:41:45:22
Speaker 1
This change to happen because they are so quiet, there's so much safer.

00:41:46:00 - 00:41:46:18
Speaker 3
And affordable.

00:41:46:18 - 00:42:04:00
Speaker 1
And and and affordable. So part of it is just a responsibility on us as we create these transformative new products to be responsible and not let those naysayers have valid excuses for why this this shouldn't change.

00:42:04:02 - 00:42:26:01
Speaker 2
Yeah. It's been it's kind of like you need to observe folks step on their toes several times before with different innovation also. Okay, how do we also make sure that we are bringing folks along. Yeah. And not having that excuse. Yeah. That's something that you talk about the end to end thinking on this. It's not just like go, you know, because that is how an engineer would approach it, you know, like just build the thing people will follow because it's definitively better.

00:42:26:01 - 00:42:29:03
Speaker 2
And it's like, well, there's a whole lot of other things, emotion and stuff around it too.

00:42:29:05 - 00:42:52:04
Speaker 1
Well, and this is one of the reasons why Ian and I get along. We have very similar system think where we grew up in our careers as a sense essentially system of system designers and aircraft is a really complicated set of systems that are coming together in a highly integrated fashion, more so than any other machine that I can think of.

00:42:52:06 - 00:42:55:17
Speaker 3
There's more trade offs than in aircraft. Yeah. Any other. Yeah.

00:42:55:19 - 00:43:01:10
Speaker 2
Yeah. When consequences are like if you get a flat tire, you just kind of Yeah. Yeah.

00:43:01:12 - 00:43:04:01
Speaker 3
It could be severe hazard. Yeah, yeah.

00:43:04:03 - 00:43:18:16
Speaker 2
Let's, I mean, I could go down this rabbit hole for quite a while, but I think the other part that when I think of Whisperer, when I first met you all sometime back, it's always stayed on my mind. Was, please take this as a big compliment, but it's how human you all are in the process.

00:43:18:18 - 00:43:36:03
Speaker 2
I meet your teammates all the time, and, not all the time, but when I'm out here, they just. They they flock and they say hello, and they. It's kind of the antithesis of what you would think this kind of company would be like. I think the vision might be Silicon Valley high rise, you know, ping pong with a living wall.

00:43:36:03 - 00:44:00:20
Speaker 2
You know, that nobody's allowed to touch like, that whole thing. Nothing wrong with that. That served a purpose when you come here. If I didn't know y'all built these this technology, it almost be like they do agriculture or something here. Like, I wouldn't, you know, I you just feel like the people are just homey. I guess my question is, is it by accident or what is that part of the secret sauce that makes all this work?

00:44:00:22 - 00:44:31:02
Speaker 1
Well, I personally, I love small town life. So that's just kind of ingrained in me. And that's how small towns you just it's it's different than big city, way of doing things where it is so much more personal and, so much friendlier and so much more polite. That's why I'm hoping our technology enables, people to experience more of that.

00:44:31:05 - 00:45:14:15
Speaker 1
Yeah. And it I mean, in so many ways, the United States seems to be polarizing between big city thinking and, and country thinking and separating, those ideals and, and perspectives. To me, the best thing that could happen is we have such great mobility options that everybody mixes it up more because you realize, I think more here in small town, like everybody has a lot of similarities, and there isn't really that much that's dividing us in our perspective.

00:45:14:17 - 00:45:36:07
Speaker 1
And we can all get along. And, and in whispers case, I mean, we do really feel like a big family. So hopefully. Yeah. What the way we're behaving, is, is indicative of of what the future, could bring at a greater, bigger scale.

00:45:36:13 - 00:46:00:21
Speaker 3
And I think, like, there are structural things that we've done to intentionally make sure that the team that we build, you know, are good humans and also, you know, share this vision of ours, the culture. Right? The values that we, we cultivate, those become like, really easy ways to see if someone you know aligns with how we see the world and is able to work together with us in ways that can build these products.

00:46:00:23 - 00:46:28:16
Speaker 3
And, you know, it doesn't matter how cool the tech is. Like there's a person behind that, right? There's like someone who has to invest their blood, sweat and tears to make that real. And I would much rather have someone that cares that wants to think through all of it, that like, is really thinking end to end about how this integrates into people's lives and then is thinking about this in a positive way and wants to do this not just because they want this for themselves, but because they care about the team around them.

00:46:28:16 - 00:46:57:15
Speaker 3
That's also invested their time and effort in belief so strongly in this product, you know, succeeding and then having a life of its own in the world. So when you build methodically with with those, you know, values, with, a willingness and intent to find people that care about those values and then care about the products as much as you do, then I think you're able to build an atmosphere for where you just find good people.

00:46:57:17 - 00:47:01:07
Speaker 2
You kind of attract other people. Other imagine to your eye, there's a good I'm sure there's,

00:47:01:08 - 00:47:02:07
Speaker 3
It's a little bit magnetic.

00:47:02:07 - 00:47:13:06
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, it's magnetic and fire self-policing. I would imagine at some point two people become protective of a home that they feel proud of, and they built. Right. And they're trying to make sure that that continues forward.

00:47:13:08 - 00:47:38:20
Speaker 3
Yeah. Steve Jobs famously said something like, you know, A-plus players want to work with A-plus players. And I don't think that has to do with just someone's tech sense or someone's like, you know, abilities, skills. Yeah. It has to do with their values in their culture. And you don't have to be some savant that, like, doesn't know how to talk to people to do good work.

00:47:38:22 - 00:47:59:11
Speaker 3
You know, good work comes from lots of people looking to make a change. And innovation happens at this intersection of disparate disciplines. So you need lots of people that care really intensely about something, but, you know, are A-plus in how they they execute an A-plus in how they see the world and want to effect positive change.

00:47:59:13 - 00:48:28:10
Speaker 2
Talking about commitment, you know, a lot of what we do on this show is like our personal mission really is just encourage that next generation, whatever that next generation means. That really an age thing for us is more just like folks who are at that point in life where they realizing that maybe them taking the torch of that small plumbing company in America or starting that thing, or more ownership of their current family or whatever it might be, just kind of celebrating what is in front of them, but maybe haven't taken having the courage to kind of step forward and go do this thing, really just boosting and inspiring them.

00:48:28:10 - 00:48:42:01
Speaker 2
Do that by sharing, you know, stories like y'all. I'm curious from you all. See, just even individually, I think the thing that I definitely don't have a specific appreciation, but being that I've been there before and built companies and done that as well and and served,

00:48:42:01 - 00:48:55:02
Speaker 2
I really it's hard to explain the the grit and commitment that it takes to will something into existence that doesn't organically want to be there.

00:48:55:04 - 00:49:02:05
Speaker 2
How do you think about or what would you give folks as a word of encouragement as they're thinking about stepping into the arena because it is so daggone hard?

00:49:02:05 - 00:49:27:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, but it's never been as possible as it is today. Like you've also seen the investment side where like I can tell you, in my career, when I started in 1982, there was no such thing as an aviation startup, right? You either worked at NASA, Boeing or Lockheed or Northrop. Those were it was big aerospace and it is amazing.

00:49:27:22 - 00:50:08:22
Speaker 1
Over the last 10 to 15 years, how venture capital has come in and completely changed aerospace, you know, not not just on aviation, but in rocketry and on satellites. You have startups doing all the cutting edge stuff now. And the big aerospace not even able to keep up. So and this is not just true in aviation. So, you know, venture capital and investment is thriving in my opinion, in a way where it it can impact all sorts of new startups.

00:50:09:00 - 00:50:32:23
Speaker 1
And we live in a wonderful time of opportunity, but it also in a time of tremendous changes, and they're just really beginning when you start to think about AI and some of the other, big changes that are going to be coming and what people have to understand, it's a time of opportunity as well as a time of change.

00:50:33:01 - 00:50:43:08
Speaker 1
And if you're willing to change, there's a lot of investment to tap into to help you accomplish that change.

00:50:43:10 - 00:50:55:02
Speaker 3
Yeah, I'm trying to think there's a few pieces of advice. I mean, I think like there's there's a point where you you have conviction and then you want to go do it and then

00:50:55:02 - 00:51:06:08
Speaker 3
you wonder, like, is this the right time? So for those folks, I think my advice is, you know there's never really a right time and there's never really a better time.

00:51:06:08 - 00:51:31:22
Speaker 3
You just kind of have to go do it. Once you have conviction. But to get to that point of conviction I think you have to you have to have, you know, cut your teeth. You have to have, like, built up that experience. And so being uncomfortable and seeing a lot of, you know, things and putting yourself into these different projects that will stretch you, that will test you, that's a good thing.

00:51:32:00 - 00:51:39:08
Speaker 3
You know, if you feel like, if you feel like you're in it for, for the glory and for something easy, then you're not ready yet.

00:51:39:08 - 00:51:57:20
Speaker 3
But, if you're if you're fed up with, maybe a, your corporate America job and you've had a taste of, of doing something better. The resources are out there and it doesn't get easier.

00:51:57:22 - 00:52:01:22
Speaker 3
There. They're as close as they've ever been. So you just kind of go try it.

00:52:02:00 - 00:52:24:16
Speaker 1
But I think one thing you said there, in particular, the willingness to be uncomfortable, you know, I worked with so many great people at NASA. And I've tried to recruit them and pull them in and tell them, hey, we're living in a whole new Wright Brothers age now, if you want to be part of great things, go to a startup.

00:52:24:17 - 00:52:46:13
Speaker 1
Maybe not our startup, but go to a startup because the pace at NASA is dreadfully slow. It's the same same at at Boeing or the other big companies. The startup world just moved so fast and is making such tremendous, improvements and changes. But I can tell you the answer that I get back from them is I'm comfortable.

00:52:46:15 - 00:53:06:15
Speaker 1
And it's like, if that's where you are in life and that's, what you want to do, that's great. But I mean, for those who have that aspiration, I want to change the world. I want to make it better. I, I want to be, a doer and a builder. It's like you got to be willing to be uncomfortable.

00:53:06:15 - 00:53:10:19
Speaker 1
That's like the first thing you got to decide. Yeah.

00:53:10:20 - 00:53:31:13
Speaker 3
There's also, like, an element of if you if you want to change the world, you also have to be willing to kind of like reinvent yourself multiple times. I think that's part of like being a founder. You're going to wear a lot of hats. Your role is going to change a whole bunch. And so if you're ready to go be a founder yourself, you should also be ready to embrace a lot of change.

00:53:31:15 - 00:53:35:20
Speaker 3
Yeah. And oftentimes they are I mean that's that is the thing that like pushes them over the edge.

00:53:35:20 - 00:53:55:19
Speaker 1
Well, and one of the things that I'm proud of is I see Ian and I mentoring, a bunch of younger people who want to do their own startups, in the future. And that excites me that we are literally helping them to be successful with their startups someday.

00:53:55:20 - 00:54:11:03
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah, I think that's the that's the part that sometimes it's hard to articulate is that there are a lot of folks that once you do step in the arena, there are, may not be everybody in the audience, but there's definitely a group in the dugout that's going to cheer you on, and they want to help you, you know, because they've been there.

00:54:11:03 - 00:54:39:19
Speaker 2
They understand the pain. I think the part that I see, and I'm saying is really out of respect of you all because this is this is a big arena to step into with a lot of lions coming at you. I do think that even for the person trying to step into the arena, do something small, I often hear the same exact thing you mentioned, Mark, which is like in the end, it's like a combination of maybe I'll wait till the water is a little bit warmer, or I'll wait till it gets a little bit more like I am a little more comfortable, or I can replace my income or whatever the versions of that

00:54:39:19 - 00:55:00:08
Speaker 2
are. And there's a part of me that always wants to tell them, like, I definitely have a respect. There's life stuff that happens, whatever. So I don't definitely don't want to disparage that. But there's a part of me that says, like, the magic is in the grit, the grand and the discomfort. There's a person that you don't even know exists that can come out of that fire.

00:55:00:10 - 00:55:16:14
Speaker 2
But if you wait for it to get to, it's just you're not going to get that version, you're not going to get to see it. And it's such a shame not to see that human. It will be scarred and torn and battered, but it will be this human that you're very proud to look at in the mirror versus this version that, I don't know, maybe you just never get a chance to look in the mirror.

00:55:16:20 - 00:55:31:13
Speaker 2
Do you have, when was there a moment for y'all that existed with. They probably sounded very early. Like that sounded like maybe that's more in y'all's DNA, but do you have a moment? Do you remember where that decision finally just went? All right, I'm doing this thing. Was it before.

00:55:31:13 - 00:55:58:10
Speaker 1
Whisper? There's never been, like, a single moment. But I love what you said there. Because I, I it resonates with me, I feel it. It's like I didn't know five years ago that I could really do a startup. Yeah. And it's just like. It's just like going through it and looking back, it's like, absolutely. Heck yeah. You know, but it's like, you got to learn a lot of things along the way.

00:55:58:10 - 00:56:09:04
Speaker 1
And I can't even imagine if I went through life not doing a startup. Oh man, I would have missed out on so much of myself. Yeah, it would have been just a shame.

00:56:09:06 - 00:56:28:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, I think for me, like in college. So in college, I really wanted to work on a company. My dad, had his own business when we were growing up, and so that was something I wanted to strive for. And I tried to do a startup in college, and that didn't work out like that, like, founded pretty fast.

00:56:28:23 - 00:56:50:15
Speaker 3
And so then I told myself, okay, I'm going to go. I'm going to learn a whole lot more. I'm going to go spend some time in industry, and then maybe sometime in my mid 30s, like that would be a good time. And then, you know, learn a bunch at Northrop that was big company culture, went to Uber and kind of like learned how fast startups can really operate.

00:56:50:17 - 00:56:55:18
Speaker 3
Especially the startup within the startup. Yeah. And then, you know,

00:56:55:18 - 00:57:05:09
Speaker 3
I think we told ourselves in 2018, 2019, like when, when elevate more mature than that will be the right time. And then Covid hit and.

00:57:05:11 - 00:57:06:14
Speaker 1
And it became the right and.

00:57:06:14 - 00:57:14:15
Speaker 3
Then it became the right time. Yeah. There wasn't a right time. It just the time. The time is when you're ready. And yeah you just kind of have to

00:57:14:15 - 00:57:14:18
Speaker 3
you're.

00:57:14:18 - 00:57:15:18
Speaker 1
Never going to feel ready.

00:57:15:18 - 00:57:36:15
Speaker 3
You're never going to feel ready. But you just got to jump in. You just got to do it. And there's no like I don't I don't think there's luck involved. I don't think there's perfect timing. Gary, Gary Tannen, I think he's he said, you know, great founders make their own luck. So, you know, you you seize the opportunities around you.

00:57:36:17 - 00:57:58:17
Speaker 3
There there's not going to be a great time. You can't time a fundraise. You can't time. I mean, maybe you can maybe maybe there's some really great founders that can. But, there's so many different things that can happen, like macroeconomic conditions, Covid politics. So you you do what's best with the hand that you're dealt.

00:57:58:19 - 00:58:14:05
Speaker 1
And but you got to be willing to fail too. Yeah. And a lot of people are just they don't want to feel failure. You got gotta you got to embrace it. That that's, that's one of the solutions. And be willing to fail fast so that you can.

00:58:14:09 - 00:58:15:00
Speaker 3
Pick yourself back up.

00:58:15:00 - 00:58:35:18
Speaker 1
Yeah I mean one of our investors is is a serial entrepreneur. And he's shared many lessons with us where his first, his first company was building, foosball machines when he was in college. And then he did the next one, the next one, and then on the seventh one, then he he got it right. And now he's a multi-billionaire.

00:58:35:20 - 00:58:45:01
Speaker 1
Just by letting it fail and say, okay, I learned a lot on that one. Let's let's do the next one. I've got. I've got more ideas. Yeah. It's not over.

00:58:45:03 - 00:59:03:16
Speaker 2
Yeah. That's the, I think that's the. That's kind of like the, the thing that I think is hard to articulate. And I appreciate you both sharing that because it just it's the if you keep doing what you're doing and you don't decide to maybe take the leap, you almost will never know. That's the part. Like, you actually don't know what you're missing because you never will see it.

00:59:03:18 - 00:59:04:21
Speaker 1
What could have been, what.

00:59:04:21 - 00:59:29:02
Speaker 2
Could have been. And in a weird way, you may never be really bothered by it. Some of us might, but a lot of folks and I think that's always the hard part to try to articulate to the right folks, which is, once you see it, that you can't unsee it, but you have to like, go make that step and then it's it's a world it's hard to climb out of, like having that level of agency, having that level of just like, man, there's just that raw build.

00:59:29:02 - 00:59:36:09
Speaker 2
Like you just get to feel it, touch it, see it, smell it every day. And even if it hurts it just it's like a get hurt.

00:59:36:11 - 01:00:06:10
Speaker 3
Well I think the easiest way to, to know whether you want to do it or not is to like actually just work at a startup for a little bit. That's the closest you get to feeling the energy, feeling the chaos that you've got to wrestle with on a daily basis, and then recognize whether you're you're ready to be the person that has to take on a lot of that chaos, or whether you would just much rather, you know, work in someone else's chaos and still, you know, make big strides on an audacious mission.

01:00:06:12 - 01:00:27:06
Speaker 3
There's lots of people that you know would be comfortable with that. There's lots of people that would be comfortable with corporate America. You have to understand where your risk spectrum like lies and where you fall on that and how how willing you are to like, actually start the company because it's hard, you know, you really you put in a lot more than you expect.

01:00:27:06 - 01:00:28:00
Speaker 2
Yeah.

01:00:28:02 - 01:00:56:15
Speaker 1
So I'm going to share something really personal. I've never shared this before. And that is, at an early age, I had a pretty intense fear of failure, and I could have let that rule my life. But, instead, I purposely, every time I'd feel that, I'd say, I cannot let this one. And I push myself to do that thing.

01:00:56:17 - 01:01:27:05
Speaker 1
And actually, it was funny when, watching one of the Marvel movies, Doctor Strange. There's a line in there where he. Your life, and he's just told the doctor strange. Your life has been, driven by a fail, fear of failure. And it's just like. What a shame that would be if anyone in their life, you know, was limited by just being fearful of, failing.

01:01:27:05 - 01:01:32:04
Speaker 1
It's just like, break out of that, you know? Yeah. Push past it.

01:01:32:06 - 01:01:49:08
Speaker 2
It's such a human trait. But I do think if you can change the narrative, you end up discovering some really beautiful parts about yourself and others that you didn't realize manages. I got two more things on my brain. Y'all been so gracious with your time. One of them just being what are the things that I guess you can talk about?

01:01:49:09 - 01:02:04:23
Speaker 2
I know there's a lot of stuff here. Reminds me of my days in the military to leave your phone in places and you couldn't do things, but, for the right reasons. What are the things right now? Maybe in the near future, coming out with whisper. That is exciting things that you just you want people to be on the lookout for.

01:02:05:01 - 01:02:36:16
Speaker 3
Well, there's there's two parts to this, right? There's the air management side and their mobility side. So on the air mobility side, we recently, announced some work with the Air Force focused on collaborative logistics aircraft. You know, for a long time, you're familiar with with, you know, these sorts of missions. For a long time, we've used C-130s and these much larger aircraft to move, cargoes and pallets to places that need a most, but, you know, in this world with newer technologies, it makes sense to distribute.

01:02:36:16 - 01:03:06:17
Speaker 3
Right? You want to distribute logistics, you want to be able to get the right sized payloads to the right locations at the right time. And you don't necessarily have, you know, for certain conflicts, the ability to wait for, you know, your your operations folks in your pilot and your, your crew to be rested. And, you know, when duty calls, duty calls, and when you have autonomy and the ability to fly, these more distributed and more reliable lower cost assets, why shouldn't you?

01:03:06:19 - 01:03:31:06
Speaker 3
So we're embarking on this effort, in the next four years to prove that out, to prove that you can actually get to these more distributed collaborative logistics aircraft that whether you're a Group three, group four, or Group five drone, be able to move these smaller sized payloads in in a coordinated fashion autonomously. And all of that's powered with our propulsion system.

01:03:31:08 - 01:03:51:00
Speaker 3
Given that with the same, you know, 80 pound thrust van, you can actually have multiples of them to propel that same group three. Group for group five, drone, it doesn't matter what size. You just use more of those thrusters to propel that larger vehicle through the air. So that's the really exciting thing on this incredible man.

01:03:51:03 - 01:04:05:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, it's something I wish we had 15 years ago. I mean, there's so many times we were waiting in the middle of the mountains, waiting on a resupply and pilot rest or in another mission couldn't make it. We had to stay put and survive for a while to get a resupply. That's awesome.

01:04:05:07 - 01:04:35:02
Speaker 3
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a thing that's. It's just needed. And then, you know. Yeah. Logistics wins wars. Oh. So yes, that's pretty core on the mobility side. On the management side, we've started thinking through, you know, how can we actually put this tech in the hands of consumers and actually make a difference in neighborhoods? And so behind us you see the leaf blower people have been asking us for a while, like when the leaf blower coming out, when's the leaf blower coming out?

01:04:35:04 - 01:05:02:18
Speaker 3
We finally have a path to making the leaf blower real. And we've realized that to do that, it makes sense, actually, you know, give it its own brand, give it the right space tone, what's called tone space tone. Character for the leaf blower to live in and for people to actually resonate with the message that we're providing them.

01:05:02:20 - 01:05:26:18
Speaker 3
A lot of people won't actually know the difference or want to know all the complexities involved with our aerospace tech. They just want to make a difference in their neighborhoods, and they want to be able to sleep soundly on, on weekends. So, we are now making that real. And we've got a whole team devoted to making, the leaf blower in that brand tone a reality.

01:05:26:20 - 01:05:35:03
Speaker 3
And that'll be the first product out of that brand. But, it'll grow over time and, encompass many more aspects of people's daily lives.

01:05:35:08 - 01:06:05:05
Speaker 2
Man. It's awesome. It's like the full spectrum. What you all do is like everything from. I mean, that's also it's just neat about it. I think it takes me back to being this five year old kid. I still remember having this 15 little model that my dad gave me and just kind of flat, like, just the idea that you can have something that has the horsepower and technology and all the brainpower behind it in your hand to do your daily chore, as well as seeing into the future and being able to have that be the way that the world changes and moves around this Earth is pretty, pretty rad, man.

01:06:05:05 - 01:06:05:20
Speaker 2
It's awesome.

01:06:06:00 - 01:06:41:07
Speaker 3
That's that's just the start. That's just the. Yeah, right. Like whispers a propulsion company. So we want to have this portfolio of propulsion products and then reimagine all of these new contexts to place that in, to make a difference in hand dryers and server cooling and Hvac systems. And we're going to find the best ways to go do that, whether that means, you know, building a demonstrator or ourselves, whether that means standing up a contract manufacturing line, whether that means licensing the tech to someone like Stanley Black and Decker for a whole myriad of moving products.

01:06:41:09 - 01:06:58:18
Speaker 3
We want to get the product into the hands of people who need it most and make a difference in the world. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we whisper, are building the end product. Propulsion is the core and will empower people with that tech, in multiple different ways.

01:06:58:20 - 01:07:12:18
Speaker 2
And the last one is, I think about, one, I'm stoked to see all this stuff going in. I mean, you guys are already putting it out there. I'm actually stoked when you asked me back, hopefully like eight, ten years from now and I get to like, see all that in ten.

01:07:12:18 - 01:07:13:05
Speaker 3
Years, a long.

01:07:13:05 - 01:07:30:04
Speaker 2
Time. I mean, what's going to be is going to come around and are probably doing this interview in when he yells, jets, doing, you know, moving across. But I do think that the other thing that's really cool is as we drove in this town, I think the one thing that I don't want to we kind of talked about it, but I don't want it to be missed.

01:07:30:04 - 01:07:54:14
Speaker 2
Is y'all doing something neat like you didn't pick a big hub to put this in, you know? Sure. You got some footprint in Nashville because the things you have to be doing out that way makes sense. But y'all really a shining example of like, how innovative companies can bring life into a town that might have been, I want to say, forgotten, but just might have been just kind of seen as another highway town that maybe is kind of wearing out.

01:07:54:16 - 01:08:10:10
Speaker 2
Can you just share to the extent that makes sense, like, what are the things that make you proud about being and headquartered in a town like Crossville? You know what? We're going to be hanging out with your team. You know, afterwards here at one of the local pubs and enjoy that, you know, enjoy that owner and what they've built.

01:08:10:12 - 01:08:18:10
Speaker 2
But I'm just curious, like, what are the things that get you excited also about being able to bring life back into these maybe soon to be forgotten towns?

01:08:18:12 - 01:08:46:05
Speaker 1
So here in Crossville, one of the challenges that the city has faced is, the young people move away right, to go to university to get great jobs. So the demographic graphic is, is very much an aging demographic. And it's it's the town has been losing vitality. And any, any city leader, any person will will tell you that's true.

01:08:46:07 - 01:09:14:17
Speaker 1
So what I love is that we're changing, that we're bringing a lot of great jobs, high paying jobs into this small town. We've hired a lot of locals, so that they can stay here, and and stay in the place, where they grew up. So I think we're just bringing a whole new level of vitality to to the community, and and we're very active in it.

01:09:14:19 - 01:09:43:00
Speaker 1
I personally, you know, I'm on the Sports Authority committee where we're getting a new $40 million YMCA being built downtown and very active in, the rebuilding of the downtown area, so that it can be beautified and become more vibrant and be even more attractive to young people wanting to hang out down there and making it, an even stronger community.

01:09:43:04 - 01:10:08:10
Speaker 1
So I believe in small town America. I love small town America. I feel really privileged, that that we're headquartered here in Crossville and the community has been equally supportive to us. And we see, a vibrant relationship between us and the community. And, and, you know, we're going to keep doing that.

01:10:08:12 - 01:10:29:09
Speaker 3
Well, I think on top of that, too, there's just a respect for, you know, the history and the legacy of this town. This building, before whisper was ever around or conceived, was the trade a plane building, right? Trade, a plane started. World War Two was around for a very long time for people to literally trade or sell their planes.

01:10:29:09 - 01:10:29:13
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:10:29:13 - 01:10:33:02
Speaker 1
If you were going to buy a new airplane, you'd you'd open up the trade airplane magazine.

01:10:33:02 - 01:10:57:18
Speaker 3
Yeah. And you'd come, you know, that magazine would come here. The printing presses were right over there. They would intake the paper over there when we cleaned and open, you know, set up the test facility. We scrubbed the floor for days because there was just drying all over the place. And so we we have the privilege to actually work here in the same story building and continue that aviation legacy.

01:10:57:20 - 01:11:03:03
Speaker 3
And maybe it's not with paper, it's with engines, but cool. We, we get to say they.

01:11:03:03 - 01:11:05:02
Speaker 2
Would say, that's a great way to embody the legacy.

01:11:05:02 - 01:11:18:00
Speaker 3
Yeah, we get that. We get to bring that forward and we get to continue to bring in talent that's local. And, you know, still bring in that vitality, reinvigorate it, maybe with some, some newer, perspective.

01:11:18:00 - 01:11:49:01
Speaker 1
But Trader Plane was the biggest employer in Crossville. And then I mean, it's kind of a cool parallel. Then technology came along the internet that displaced the entire company. The entire company went away. So now we have the reverse. We're now technology is coming in to Vitalize, instead of displace. And so we're coming full circle where technology is now enabling, whisper to become one of the largest employers.

01:11:49:01 - 01:11:51:03
Speaker 1
And in town.

01:11:51:05 - 01:12:11:14
Speaker 2
It's amazing. It's like a kind of a nod back to an early example you both gave about the way nature is it does suck. Like even after a burn does revitalize new grass and new vegetation, it'll grow back again. Gents, really honored to be here. I'm stoked. I know we're going to be hanging out also and doing kind of a walking tour and kind of a little bit of the inside to the things that we can see.

01:12:11:14 - 01:12:31:12
Speaker 2
But always stoked when I get to come down here to tennis. One, I feel like Texas and Tennessee are cousins. And also just I think that your people here just make it really easy to be around. So y'all are reasons why I think we continue to be proud Americans and what we're building in this country, and not just for ourselves, but for the rest of the world.

01:12:31:12 - 01:12:35:23
Speaker 2
So thanks for all you do and your team does. And thanks for letting us be able to chat with you here for a little bit.

01:12:36:01 - 01:12:44:06
Speaker 1
This has been an amazing conversation. So many pearls of wisdom between you guys. So thank you for for coming.

01:12:44:08 - 01:12:51:13
Speaker 3
Yeah. Thank thanks again for for swinging by and deciding to come back and hopefully it won't be 8 to 12 years. Yeah. No, I.

01:12:51:13 - 01:12:53:17
Speaker 2
Mean, you tell me when it come back.

01:12:53:19 - 01:12:55:08
Speaker 1
Whisper jet. Yeah. Yeah.

01:12:55:09 - 01:12:55:23
Speaker 2
Oh please.

01:12:56:02 - 01:12:57:01
Speaker 1
That next interview.

01:12:57:02 - 01:13:01:09
Speaker 2
Yeah. Whenever that time comes, just count me in. Yeah. I'll sign whatever waiver you need.

01:13:01:11 - 01:13:02:23
Speaker 3
Swing by and back for sure.

01:13:03:05 - 01:13:11:17
Speaker 2
Yeah, yeah. Luckily, that's my old background, man, so I know. And, yeah, I have no doubt that I'll be making it safely wherever I'm going. So right on. Thank you. Dance.

01:13:11:19 - 01:13:13:04
Speaker 3
Thank you, thank you.

01:13:13:04 - 01:13:39:10
Speaker 1
Thanks for tuning in to the American Operator Podcast, where we celebrate the backbone of America small business owners and operators like you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, be sure to subscribe so you'll never miss out on more of these stories and insights from people who keep our community strong. Until next time, keep building, keep operating and keep America moving forward.