Company Name: Dronehub
Company HQ: Rzeszów, Poland
Team Size: 15
Focus: Docking stations for drones
Interview with: Vadym Melnyk, Founder and CEO
 
Tell us about your company:
We are inventors and passionate about robotics. We believe that possible human error can be eliminated from processes like surveillance, monitoring, or package delivery by designing systems in a way that ultimately limits the human factor. Dronehub is an ecosystem of autonomous drones, ground infrastructure, and AI software designed to fully automate monitoring and data collection. Our hardware solutions make it possible to deploy drone services in any terrain and in all-weather scenarios. We are the first company in the world that can put a hub on a boat so that the drones that use our system can maximize the monitoring of an offshore wind powerplant. We are the only manufacturer in the world that offers monitoring, inspection, measurement systems, cargo transport systems, and mobile ground infrastructure. We also make unique, workflow-based software, which enables us to spend minutes (compared to days) to implement customer requests to our drone data. 
 
When and how did your company start?
In 2015, we began as Cervi Robotics, which provided consulting, prototyping and solution implementation services focused on robotics, uncrewed aerial vehicles and the Internet of Things (IoT.)  In 2020, we went through rebranding by narrowing down our specialization and completely switching to building only automated drone systems. The decision to change our focus was caused by the market interest for extensive, modern, and unique drone systems dedicated to inspection and monitoring. 

Where did the idea for your startup come from?
Dronehub helps industries automate data collection to inform business decisions. We replace hazardous man-hours with a solution that collects intelligent drone data in a fully autonomous way. Dronehub is an ecosystem of autonomous drones, a Dronehub station, and AI-based software designed to optimize monitoring and generate real-time insights.

Who is your ideal customer?
Our ideal customer (or in general, a target market) can be defined as autonomous surveillance. We are targeting companies that have large terrains/infrastructures and where human monitoring is not efficient. Over the years, we have defined five sectors for Dronehub: oil and gas, energy market, railway, security, and critical infrastructure. All of them have different sales cycles and require different partners.
 
What can we expect from your company in the near future?
In the context of the American market, we assume that in 2023 we will not only have a company registered in the U.S., but we will also be able to show the effectiveness and innovation of our Dronehub system after their installation in the U.S. This will help us to demonstrate in a practical way the application and efficiency of our system to American customers.

Why are you excited about GENIUS NY?
Participation in the GENIUS NY program is of great importance to us on two levels. Number one, these nearly three months that we’ve spent here as members of the 6th cohort gave us an injection of knowledge, practical advice and contacts that will translate into the development of our business, and the effectiveness of our activities both in the U.S. and in Europe. Number two, we feel honored that out of so many companies from around the world that applied for participation in the program, it was our vision, our development idea and our achievements so far that allowed us to get to the top-five finalists. It is a confirmation that the path we chose earlier is the right one. And this motivates us to keep working hard on the development of Dronehub.

What are you most looking forward to while staying in Syracuse?
We want to win. It is our goal to convince the judges that Dronehub is destined for success. Of course, we appreciate and fully respect the other four startups that are competing with us for the grand prize. Each of them are amazing, have their own ideas for development, and present well. Competition aspect aside, I believe that a program like GENIUS NY is of great importance for the development of the entire UAV industry. During these three months, we saw the great ideas our colleagues from the other four companies have, how much work and thought they put in for their companies and, at the same time, the entire UAV sector to develop. Regardless of which company wins—although I strongly believe that our concept will win first place—we will definitely win together for the UAV industry.

What will you do with the GENIUS funds?
The grand prize will allow us to develop Dronehub structures in the U.S. We want to use this money to create a dynamic and effective sales team, as well as to intensify promotional activities. We are confident that selecting Dronehub as the grand prize winner of the 6th GENIUS NY will also bring many benefits to New York and the tech industry across the U.S. Certainly, building a highly recognizable brand in the U.S. will be supported by the presence of our hubs here in New York State. This will allow us to organize presentations for specific clients as well as organize demo days for the general public and the media. We plan to spend money hiring engineers and local tech talent to kick off and start growing in the U.S. market. The money will also support us in moving part of the manufacturing and assembling to the U.S. If we win the grand prize, we will also be able to provide our Polish services to the U.S. market, which will transfer its experience and knowledge to the U.S. and in New York state. 

Company Name:  Archangel Imaging
Company HQ:  Harwell Space Campus, Oxfordshire, UK
Team Size:  Currently 21. Local recruitment in Syracuse is underway for engineering and business development roles. 
Focus: We make autonomous machines, like drones and ground cameras, smarter, more resilient and easier to work with as teammates, rather than vulnerable tools that need constant management.
Interview with: 
Dan Sola, Founder and CEO
Charles Smith, Founder and CCO
 
Tell us about your company:
We make autonomous machines smarter, more resilient and easier to work with as teammates. Despite advances in remotely operated technologies, problems like people-trafficking, oil pipeline tapping, and poaching of endangered species continue to exist, particularly in remote areas with limited infrastructure.  Police and defense personnel are exposed to even greater risk in remote operations and the infrastructure (including satellite navigation) is often specifically targeted.

Tomorrow, hybrid human-machine teams will be much more effective in protecting assets, people and the planet at scale, but technology must operate without depending on human attention or vulnerable infrastructure. You can think of our products as AI copilots, providing mission decisions and on-board detection, for remote monitoring and platform independence in challenging environments - without reliable communications, power or GPS infrastructure.

Why did you start the company?
We worked on cutting edge drone technology for many years, helping set a bunch of world records. We were deeply frustrated by how little of the world’s leading technology became world-changing. We set out to analyze where the blocks were that prevented drones and robotics systems from delivering more value, and the reasons why problems like oil pipeline tapping, people smuggling and poaching of critically endangered species continue, despite the range and deployability of remote and uncrewed technology.  We realized there are two big blockers:  One, complex problems all need complex solutions, and human attention remains the limiting bottleneck; and two, infrastructure - particularly for communications - is either the target or is missing entirely (because...elephants don't watch Netflix.) 

Who is your ideal customer?
We are veteran-founded and owned, and we focus on supporting users in remote, exposed, or challenging environments, including police, service personnel, first responders and NGOs. The challenges of operating in RF & GNSS denied environments are much more immediate and create a much bigger impact. Our technology helps keep our people safe, and our demonstrable capabilities have led to strong pull across UK MOD, a success we are looking to replicate in the U.S. market as well.

We have built both our airborne and ground AI systems to enable other people's machines to become smart enough to be teammates, and resilient enough to continue operating in austere, changeable conditions.  We anticipate a lot of our future sales will come through channel and partner engagement. We are also operating in huge commercial markets within which we can efficiently scale, but for the next 18 months we'll be doubling down on success with government customers and channel.

What can we expect from your company in the near future?
We're working to grow activity in the U.S. market leveraging our success in the U.K. market. We see many synergies between both, and a very common set of problems that we can help users to overcome. We expect to announce some key UXV partnerships soon and will be flight testing both our non-GNSS navigation and patrol AI copilot capabilities in the U.S.

Version 2 of our Argonaut AI camera will be certified for U.S. markets and will be built in Syracuse.  Argonaut V2 is designed to meet the inbound demand we have not been able to service from the U.K.

Why are you excited about GENIUS NY?
The level of expertise, guidance, mentorship and the size of the network that is available to us as a cohort member is second to none. We have already learned a lot and grown as a business in the short time that we have been in the program and have received great support not just from the GENIUS NY team, but from current and previous cohort members as well. Being part of the GENIUS NY family is a great place to be.  

In addition, the size of the investment that the program offers has accelerated our plans to move into the U.S. and is enabling us to scale our growth at a much faster place that we could have without this. The investor community associated with GENIUS NY, the advisors and the team all provide a support and growth mindset that is significantly contributing to our increasing success. We've been looking at landing in the U.S. for a long time and we're very happy to have finally found our home.

What are you most looking forward to while staying in Syracuse?
Syracuse is a city on the up. The investment from the state, and the ecosystem that this is enabling, gives the city an exciting and energetic vibe. Also, they have a great social scene, with some amazing restaurants such as Dinosaur BBQ, bars and of course the football team – Go Orange! Location-wise, Syracuse is ideal with easy access to the Griffiss Institute and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, NY, and only a short hop to New York City.  Outside of our own growth and hiring plans, we really want to unlock value (and revenue) for the rest of the ecosystem.  You could say we picked Syracuse for our neighbors. Lastly, you can drive to the Adirondacks, Niagara Falls and the Finger Lakes - there's plenty of natural beauty to enjoy.

What will you do with the GENIUS funds?
The funds will be used in three ways:
1. To create the U.S. arm of our business. We have already incorporated, are looking for local manufacturing for our Argonaut product line and are actively recruiting local talent.

2. Accelerate team growth and product releases.  Changing from a bootstrapped to an investment funding model will enable us to bring forward the product roadmap at pace and to accelerate team growth by hiring in anticipation.
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3. Enable partners and grow with them. We have a lot of history in drone technology, but we deliberately don't want to make better drones: we want to make drones better.  That means working with a wide selection of partners and helping them deliver value to their own customers.  We picked Syracuse because of the growing ecosystem in drones, the potential for nearby collaboration with AFRL (we're big fans of their ATAK work), the NUAIR test range and the large A&D primes active in Central New York. 

Company Name: Wonder Robotics
Company HQ: Israel
Team Size: 12
Focus: Autonomous solution for Drone and eVTOL
Interview with:
Idan Shimon, Co-Founder and CEO
Or Epstein, Co-Founder and CBO

Tell us about your company:
Wonder Robotics is revolutionizing Drone autonomy!  We are aiming to be a world leader in vision-based autonomous solutions for Drones and eVTOL, and to provide complete 360-degree awareness--exactly like Tesla's autonomous capabilities for cars.

Wonder Robotics's first product to market focuses on the most critical phase of commercial drone services: low-altitude missions, vertical awareness, ground clearance, and smarter precision landing. WonderLand is our groundbreaking product for the commercial drone industry, as well as for the advance air mobility/urban air mobility market. It utilizes innovative technology to provide affordable and autonomous services, and makes commercial drones safer and more reliable with less crew around the service. 

When and how did your company start?
We started the company at the end of 2019, just when the pandemic hit. But the idea and the strategy started years before. The founding team all have decades of drone experience, so the market's urgent needs were in front of our eyes for a long time. 

Where did the idea for your startup come from?
The company’s idea resulted from the founders delivering a unique drone solution to a customer in their previous workplace (homeland security related). The drone was carrying a heavy payload with limited endurance. The end-user asked for the drone to have a safe, autonomous landing on the target area, allowing for extended operations time. While looking for such a solution, the founders realized that not only did such a solution not exist but that once developed, such technology had virtually unlimited potential to be sold across a broad spectrum of industries. The founders then took a leap of faith, and Wonder Robotics was launched shortly after that.

Who is your ideal customer?
Our primary "go to market" customers are drone service providers. They need autonomy for making their service affordable, reliable, and safer...and eventually certified.  We are also talking to OEMs – drone manufacturers and end users who highly appreciate our technology value.

What can we expect from your company in the near future?
Our goal, after penetrating the drone market with the WonderLand vertical autonomy family of products, is to gradually expand its capabilities to 360-degree vision-based autonomy solutions--not only for drones--as this level of "visual awareness" is a requirement for the UAM/AAM market and eVTOL (flying cars) platforms. Wonder Robotics' mission is to make uncrewed (drones) commercial services more affordable using smarter autonomous solutions. 

Why are you excited about GENIUS NY?
After being in the program for a few months, we can honestly say it feels like we are part of a small family. Everyone is very supportive and encouraging, and it's obvious that GENIUS NY wants us all to be successful. There is phenomenal synergy between the GNY past and present cohort, so we genuinely believe something significant is happening here for the U.S. drone market. It is truly the next Silicon Valley of drones! Wonder Robotics is privileged to be a part of the drone revolution initiated by GNY. Honestly, it came at the right time, as our fast-growing number of U.S. customers and partners expect us to be close to them, helping them with training and providing critical support, while scaling their services nationwide.

What are you most looking forward to while staying in Syracuse?
We love The Tech Garden people; the facility is excellent! We love the unique drone-friendly ecosystem GENIUS NY built with CenterState CEO; we look forward to collaborating with some of the drone organizations in the ecosystem, like NUAIR, Griffiss International Airport, and Syracuse Hancock International Airport. For an international drone company, it is the perfect place at the ideal time to build our future. 
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What will you do with the GENIUS funds?
The market needs Wonder Robotics technology now! It will create a new reality for drone service providers, making their services safer, more reliable, and more cost-effective for everyone to use. 

We need to support our customers' scaling. One of our customers, Walmart, will operate hundreds of drones next year. We are building a U.S. integration lab and operation, support, and training center for our growing community of customers. The goal is also to grow our sales in the U.S. and European markets, which are the fastest growing. We will engage the FAA and the industry market influencers to have a clear technology validation process and, eventually, the road for certification of an autonomous sub-system for drones and eVTOLS. We continue investing to make our product the best of its kind in the world by getting instant feedback from our customers about their use cases. Strategically, $1 million will help us move our high-volume production line to Syracuse.

​The teams also took some field trips, heading out to Marquardt Switches, a GENIUS NY resource partner, who welcomed cohort 6 to their Cazenovia location for team meetings, a factory tour, and happy hour at the Brewster Inn. Marquardt has provided valuable ongoing support to GENIUS NY and to CenterState CEO.

Later in September, GENIUS NY visited and toured the Innovare Advancement Center in Rome, NY, as well as met with partners at NUAIR and the Griffiss Institute. Innovare is a remarkable facility where the teams were able to view quantum computing in action, UAS development--including Skydome--emerging technologies, and team collaboration and innovation areas. The gracious hosts spent time talking with the cohort 6 team members and helped them learn more about the exciting resources available to them in the CNY area. 

Company Name: Fusion Engineering
Company HQ: Delft, The Netherlands
Team Size: 14
Focus: Flight Controllers
Interview with:
Robert Crone, Founder/CEO
Marwan Hussein, Business Developer

​When and how did your company start?
Sharing a technical background from TU Delft in the Netherlands, our founders originally got the idea of creating a drone that can perform all sorts of maintenance functions back in 2017, sort of like a flying robot. However, we noticed that there were several underlying deficiencies in the flight behavior of existing drones (and back then, ours as well) that needed to be addressed first, so we decided to take a step back and tackle the issue at its roots. Having observed a large boom in the relevance of commercial drones in today’s applications, no matter the field, we’ve been focusing exclusively on creating the industry’s next generation of flight controllers since 2018.

Who is your ideal customer?
Given the importance of our solution to the functionality of every drone, our aim is to supply multi-rotor drone manufacturers with scalable businesses who already have a foothold in the industry. This does not exclude us from working with smaller companies that are also building drones or are looking to replace their current flight controller!

What can we expect from your company in the near future?
Ever since we produced our prototype, the “Fusion Reflex” Introductory Model, we had mainly been focusing on maturing our technology with smaller drone manufacturers through a series of technical collaborations, alongside whom we also aim to grow. On the engineering side, we are currently at a stage where our maiden flight controller is undergoing its final iteration of refinement and polishing. Our collaborations continue to grow as we explore new types of applications we can confidently play a key role in enabling, such as VTOL drones, heavy-lift drones…etc. This ties in directly with our commercial endeavors as well. With our product nearing completion, we are actively seeking opportunities to kick-start Fusion’s integration into the market, whether it’s in Europe or elsewhere in the world, which is where GENIUS NY really comes in handy!

Why are you excited about GENIUS NY?
Thus far, our operations have mostly been centered within Europe, where commercial drones have only recently become popular for being more than just flying cameras. Coming to the United States, where the industry is more established and mature, a plethora of new opportunities have presented themselves for us to explore. Being able to do this through the Genius NY program has helped us seamlessly adapt to this market. The resources we get through the GENIUS NY program not only help us address our immediate needs, but also shed light on what we should focus on and consider as we grow in the near future.
Having access to the industry’s certifying bodies has also proven to be quite helpful, considering the complicated nature of acquiring said certifications, particularly for flight controllers. This is proving to be vital to our operations as we get the opportunity to dive deeper into the requirements of each of the certifications before anyone else, and in much greater detail.
Getting the privilege of visiting companies in adjacent industries has also helped us understand where exactly Fusion Engineering sits in the value chain and how we can maximize our output, without interrupting current procedures and supply chains.
Lastly, having spoken to several founders based in Syracuse, we were able to gain more insight into how their companies have grown, how they run their teams, and what difficult decisions they had to make along the way; questions you cannot answer by reading manuals.   

What are you most looking forward to while staying in Syracuse?
We heard that the winter season gets quite intense in Syracuse. Luckily, some of us are avid skiers! We are eager to hit the slopes when the snow has settled in!
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What will you do with the GENIUS funds?
In order to align our technical capacity with our commercial outlook, we will aim to expand our engineering team to accommodate for the expected growth. Additionally, with a large portion of our anticipated customer-base being in North America, we will invest in setting up an entity in the United States as our first step towards addressing the global market’s needs as well!

Learn more about Fusion Engineering: https://fusion.engineering/
Get tickets to attend the GENIUS NY Pitch Finals Night on Nov. 3rd: ​www.centerstateceo.com/news-events/genius-ny-pitch-finals