Podcast - Rethinking Wildfire Response with Drone Technology

Patrick Driscoll: Welcome, everyone, and thanks for tuning in to "The Innovation Imperative." My name is Patrick Driscoll, and I'm the director of client development for emerging companies and venture capital at Holland & Knight. Here at Holland & Knight, we work closely with founders, venture capital firms and investors navigating the full life cycle of innovation, from company formation and early fundraising through growth, scaling and ultimately that exit. A big part of our work sits at the intersection of law, capital and strategy, helping innovators and investors think clearly about how they build, fund and protect durable businesses. "The Innovation Imperative" is really about that journey. Each episode, we sit down with founders or investors and operators who are shaping this innovation economy, oftentimes behind the scenes, to unpack the real stories, lessons learned and inflection points that don't always show up in pitch decks or press releases.

I'm thrilled to have today's guests. The episode itself will focus on one of the most competitive and rapidly evolving sectors in technology: drones. More specifically, we'll explore what it takes to build and scale a company in a market crowded with well-capitalized incumbents, international manufacturers and fast-moving startups. We'll discuss how founders create durable competitive advantages beyond the aircraft itself and how regulatory strategy can really be a meaningful differentiator.

Joining me first is my colleague Katie Inman, a partner at Holland & Knight, who will be leading today's discussion. Katie advises innovative companies operating in highly regulated industries and recently represented Ponderosa.ai in securing a key FAA exemption. And we're thrilled to be joined by our guest of honor, Ryo Chijiiwa, who's founder of Ponderosa.ai. Ryo is building a heavy-lift drone platform designed to support wildfire response and public safety missions. As someone who's based in California and deals a lot with wildfire recovery, this is super exciting to see, and I can't wait to listen in on this conversation. So, with that, Katie, I'll let you get started.

Katie Inman: Thanks so much, Patrick. I appreciate this opportunity, and I'm just so excited to have Ryo here with us to answer a few questions. This is going to be really entertaining, Ryo. I really want to know, could you give us a quick version of your path? How exactly did you get where you're at now?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to chat. I've been interested in aviation since I was a little kid, actually. One of my first dreams as a kid was to become an aircraft mechanic and had tons of airplane models and whatnot. But in high school, I ended up falling in love with programming instead. And so I ended up getting my degree in computer science from the University of Chicago. And then moved out to Silicon Valley and have worked in tech for the last 20-plus years as an engineer, engineering leader at various Silicon Valley companies. I started my career at bigger companies back in the day, but most of my career has actually been at startups, from sort of seed stage all the way through growth. I've been in CTO roles, head of engineering roles, but I also like to be hands-on as well to keep my skills sharp. I'm also a licensed Part 107 drone pilot, and as part of this work, I got certified as a wildland firefighter, and I also go on prescribed burns as a volunteer.

Katie Inman: Wow, that's impressive, to say the least, thrilled that we have gotten the chance to work together and love just supporting the mission, too. And on that note, what was your "aha moment?" Like, what exactly led Ponderosa.ai to pursue drones and wildfire response, of all things?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, it traces back to kind of a personal story, as I think it often does for startup founders. During the pandemic, my family and I moved to a small city called Chico in northern California. At the time, we had a 6-month-old baby, and Chico was in wildfire country, to put it succinctly. We're not that far away from Paradise, which, unfortunately, burned in 2018. And sure enough, shortly after we moved here, there was a wildfire about a mile from our house, and it was at night. You know, we got a baby. I was keeping close eyes on it, and fortunately, that particular fire was brought under control fairly quickly. But then the next day, I saw a new kind of firefighting helicopter I hadn't seen before fly over our house to pick up water from a lake that's in our neighborhood. And I said, wait, I know there weren't any aircraft flying last night. What's this helicopter doing now? The fire is mostly out. And, you know, as an aviation buff, I just had to start doing some research, and I immediately recognized that it was a variant of the Black Hawk helicopter. It's called the Firehawk helicopter.

And I learned that CAL FIRE had started adopting these helicopters. They cost $24 million, cost somewhere around $10,000 an hour to operate. At the time, they couldn't fly at night, and as we know, aerial firefighting is incredibly dangerous. We're lucky to have these aircraft and the brave aerial firefighters who fly them, but there are tragic accidents every year. In fact, this past summer, there were a couple of fatal accidents. And so I couldn't help but think, as a technologist, like, what can we do using modern technologies? The Black Hawk helicopter first flew in the 1970s. They're using S2s and OV-10s from the 1950s and '60s. So, yeah, that was kind of how it all started. It started asking the question, what can we do with modern tech?

Katie Inman: Wow. Yeah. And it all stems, really, from your personal experience and then also, you know, your kind of impetus and your desire to help the public. So, on that note, what exactly is Ponderosa.ai building? And how can that platform, you know, be useful for fire departments?

Ryo Chijiiwa: We're actually working on two concepts in parallel that kind of go together. Our long-term vision is to develop cost-effective fire suppression drone swarms that can be pre-positioned in areas of risk. So, think kind of the outskirts of towns and cities where some of the most destructive wildfires happen, so that we can reach those fires within five minutes. Today, even with aircraft, it can take 20 minutes, 30 minutes or more for firefighters to arrive at a fire, and in that time, the fire can grow larger at literally an exponential rate. And we found that if we could be there in under 10 minutes, under five minutes, we could use a relatively small payload to help control those fires in many circumstances. And so that's kind of our long-term vision, but toward that goal, we needed a drone platform that can carry, say, 10 gallons-ish of suppressants. And we didn't see a good off-the-shelf option, so we started developing our own platform.

Initially, it was designed to be, or intended to be, a development platform, but we started showing it to firefighters, and a lot of firefighters expressed interest in just using it as a kind of multimission, heavy-lift platform. So, we decided to kind of focus on that to some degree, to help serve that niche that exists. We found that fire services are kind of underserved in the drone market. And so, yeah, we're developing the FireSparrow Mk10, which is a heavy-lift drone. It can carry about 80 pounds of payload in, say, a heavy-lift transport roll. It can carries supplies, equipment. It also has a 10-gallon suppression module that you can attach to it or remove to help do what's called "mop-up," which is when you're making sure a fire's completely out, or potentially for helping control sort of small spot fires and what are called "slop-overs" when you have a fire that's starting to creep out of a controlled burn. We also have a real-time hotspot detection and fire mapping system on it. And we're looking to get into aerial ignitions, which I think, from a regulatory perspective, will be interesting. But we kind of want to be the one heavy-lift drone platform that wildland firefighters want to use when they're on the fire line. So that's kind of what we're focusing our initial efforts on.

Katie Inman: Yeah, thanks for that overview, Ryo. I mean, I think what I'm taking away is the step-by-step approach, which I think is so smart in a tightly regulated environment like aviation, you know, having a plan and really having the steps along the way and starting with one model or platform and then evolving it in accordance with the plan. So, what did you need to prove before customers and regulators would really take the platform seriously?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, like I mentioned, the way we happened on this particular initial application, the multimission-capable, heavy-lift platform for fire services, that actually came about from showing an early prototype at a conference. At the time, the drone didn't even fly. It was just supposed to be kind of a cool thing to show at our booth. And then, you know, we didn't talk much about what we were trying to do long-term yet at that point. We were just kind of there to gather information, make connections with our customers. And we had a bunch of firefighters come by and say, oh, man, I want one of those, I would use it for this and that. You know, they literally were telling us, like, what they wanted. And so, you know, having something that customers can see and touch and engage with, like, oftentimes sort of sparks ideas. But from there, we were able to work closely with the San Bernardino County Fire Department down in southern California to co-develop the platform.

I worked closely with the robotics program manager there to, you know, even before we started kind of flying the drone, to really understand his needs, his wants, you know, the operational reality. Even down to things like, hey, do you mostly work alone, or do you have another person? You know, can you carry the drone by yourself? Some of those details, I found in my career, can make a big difference. So, by the time we started flying with them, we had gotten a lot of input, and that went a long way toward kind of bringing something that was close to what they wanted. On the regulator side, you might know more about that side better than I do, but I suspect it helped that we showed up with an aircraft that had already been flying in San Bernardino County under their COA (Certificate of Waiver or Authorization). But it was also, I think, about the whole package, right? So, establishing a safety culture and sort of the operating manual and showing that we're taking safety seriously and are set up to be able to operate responsibly.

Katie Inman: Right. Yeah, I couldn't have said it better. I mean, you have to have a really, kind of a broad view and a big approach, but it's so smart to get on the ground with the actual people who are going to be using it, I think. So, I have to say that I'm sure that set you up for success. So, zooming out a little bit, I mean, the drone landscape as of right now, as far as the commercial drone operations, is so competitive. How would you describe it today?

Ryo Chijiiwa: I would definitely not call it a drone market. There are so many different verticals, if you will. There's the delivery drone companies. There's agricultural drones. There's defense and a bunch of different applications within that. Public safety, again, even within that, fire is different to, say, law enforcement, surveying, aerial photography. And I think all of these verticals are, in many ways, their own market. And some are more competitive than others, I would say, and kind of the dynamics of each market is a little bit different. But what I see, from where I stand at least, are a couple of things. The shift toward domestically manufactured drones, kind of this shift away from some of the foreign manufacturers, is creating new opportunities. There are some really good drones out there that were made outside of the U.S. But, rightfully so, I believe we need that domestic, you know, industrial capacity, and we need to have those domestic drones. And so, we're in a transition period where there are some pain points for some, but also opportunities for others. And then, you know, particularly for us, we found that the fire services were underserved. Usually, they get the drones that were mostly designed for, say, defense, you know, or maybe law enforcement, especially in the heavy-lift category. You know, they've seen some really expensive systems that were more designed for the defense side come to them, and it's just not affordable, right? Fire departments are taxpayer-funded, and you've probably seen fire departments do, you know, fundraising pancake breakfasts. That's kind of the reality they live in. So, having a cost-effective platform was very welcomed in that particular niche.

Katie Inman: Oh, I'm sure. That's an important point. And I couldn't agree more about the many different layers of the drone industry. You're right, it's not just one market. And in that regard, with so many large incumbents and fast-moving startups and just the great diversity of lower-cost international manufacturers, which you alluded to a moment ago, where exactly could a smaller company really differentiate itself?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, this is probably kind of general sort of startup advice or business advice that I think makes sense in many sectors. But, you know, I think you have to find a niche in [an] underserved market, an unsolved problem, something that nobody else is doing. And, you know, the concerns with bigger companies competing, that's always going to be there, right? Take any problem, there's always a bigger company that could do it. But what I found in my time in the tech industry in particular is that big companies actually struggle to focus, especially if they have an opportunity that feels initially small or if there is an opportunity that could be big but takes time. What I found working at big companies is a program that might be allowed to exist for only so long, and if some executive thinks that the progress isn't fast enough, you know, it could get shut down in a day. Versus as a startup, you know, that's what you're doing. And as long as you could keep, you know, making progress, keep finding traction in customers and investors, you could keep doing that. And I think some of the, you know, bigger drone companies that we see in the U.S. today have been around for a while. Some of them might have been in operation for five years, 10 years before they really got big. So, I think that's sort of the advantage as a small company, is you can focus. You can also be nimble, react to market changes, customer requirements, be really responsive to customers in ways that sometimes bigger companies can't. And you can also persevere. As long as the founder and the team keep going, no one's going to shut you down. So, as long as you can make progress, you can keep going.

Katie Inman: Yeah, those are a lot of great advantages. And on the subject of nimble decision-making, how do you decide whether you build a component internally, partner with someone else, use an existing platform? What factors do you find yourself considering when you're making those decisions?

Ryo Chijiiwa: That's always a tough call. We try to use off-the-shelf components as much as possible. I should clarify the FireSparrow Mk10. We're proud to be NDAA-compliant. We use U.S.-made or NDAA (National Defense Authorization Act)-compliant components for all critical components, including the motors. But it's not easy. That limits our choices. Sometimes the prices are higher than we might otherwise be able to get elsewhere. We are also looking, frankly, at vertical integration at the component level, right? We're looking at all the components we're buying today and asking the question, when is the right time to bring that in-house? Whether because we want to control costs, we want to control this for specifications or just to kind of be able to secure the supply chain ourselves. So, I don't have a short answer, but I think it is something that, even for a small startup like us, we need to be thinking about constantly.

Katie Inman: Sure. Yeah, I don't doubt that. And as far as competition, how important do you think it is to choose a narrow, high-value mission rather than trying to serve every possible use case? Do you have a set way of thinking about that?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, not to sound like a broken record machine, but I think it's all about finding a good niche, right? That's, I think, where startups can really find traction and success. The flip side is the economics also have to work, right? There are plenty of niches where, if you stay in that niche, it's just not big enough. And if it's not big enough, you won't be able to track investment from [it], especially if you wanted to get VC funding. They need to see a big market. And so, you know, finding the intersection of those two can be a little bit of a challenge. It has to be a niche that you can grow, and when you grow, it has to be big enough, or at least there has to be a pathway to a bigger market.

In our case, we feel like we found that with kind of, you know, starting with the multimission, heavy-lift drone for firefighters and then kind of expanding into doing rapid suppression using swarms. The first step is that there's high market readiness. There's technology readiness is also there, but honestly, it's a pretty small market, versus if we can stop destructive wildfires quickly, the market for that is huge, right? But it takes longer to get there. It's going to take us longer to build the technology, validate it and get trust. So, trying to find kind of something that overlaps with both of those requirements is, I think, the key.

Katie Inman: Yeah, and on the subject of the fast-paced nature of it, or the need, I guess, to deliver in a timely way, how do you balance that need to move quickly with the hardware reliability, you know, safety, customer expectations, all those considerations?

Ryo Chijiiwa: I think this is generally just a really big perennial challenge in aviation, right? I think we've seen some, unfortunately, consequences of companies moving too fast, "move fast and break things," as they say, in Silicon Valley, literally is not the right mentality in aviation. Having said that, as a startup, you do have to move as fast as you can. You have to try and kind of move faster than your competition, right? And so the need to move fast is certainly there. I don't know if I have any one-size-fits-all answers, but I think we have to go fast where you can, right? In our case, that means things like buying off-the-shelf components as much as possible and using rapid manufacturing techniques like CNC routing, laser cutting, 3D printing, where we can speed up some of the technological development rapidly and iterate quickly. We also designed our drone to be highly modular, so it's actually easy for us to upgrade different parts of it. We don't have to redesign the entire system. We can swap out subsystems really easily.

But at the same time, safety is important, and you have to mitigate those risks the best you can. And we're lucky to also be in a vertical where the market itself doesn't move too fast. The fire services are very cautious when it comes to adopting new tools, understandably so. If you're a firefighter putting your life on the line, you're not going to turn to an unproven tool, right? Because that could get you, or someone else, or someone in your community, hurt or even worse. And so we're finding that drone adoption in the fire services, specifically, is still in the early days. Some fire departments don't have drones, or if they do, they are just starting to adopt drones. So, we have the luxury, in a sense, to be able to grow with our customers at a rate that we feel like is a rate that we can both be safe and responsible but also grow the business as well.

Katie Inman: That's an important point, how the firefighting community is just a little bit unique and aviation is a little unique. So, I think you've certainly fit right in and found the niche and found a need. So, turning to maybe drone companies that are focused on other types of operations in general, why do you think some companies fail to move from demonstration to repeatable revenue?

Ryo Chijiiwa: That's a really good question. And we're still early ourselves, too, right? And so, I do want to caveat my response with that. But I think there is a big challenge in going from demo to an operational product. And some of it is technical, but I think companies sometimes underestimate the nontechnical aspects of bringing a product to market, where sometimes navigating the procurement process can end up being a bottleneck, or even if your tech works, like, just being able to, especially as a new company, being able to gain the trust of your customers, to get name recognition and have people take a chance at a new a company, those can end being the bottlenecks, right? So, I think kind of making sure that, again, this is maybe generic sort of startup advice, but I feel like what they say about startups is generally true, where, yes, of course, you do need to have a good product, you need to have solid technology, but you also need to have a solid go-to-market plan. You need to understand your market. All those things, I think, still apply.

And one other thing I'll throw in there is I've seen a lot of drone companies struggle to span the valley of death because they raise too much money too early, right, where your revenue growth and your fundraising and your valuation have to line up. So, if, you know, you're at a Series A at a certain valuation and you're trying to raise at a certain valuation, you need a certain amount of revenue. And if that revenue is not there, you're not going to be able to raise, right? So, being thoughtful about not raising too much too early is, I think, part of what we're trying to do, at least. We'll see how that pans out in the long run, but I think that could be helpful.

Katie Inman: Yeah, and there's a sequence, you know, to it, and it all comes down to the strategy, I think, too. And speaking of strategy, my favorite topic, regulations, what made the FAA exemption process for Ponderosa.ai strategically important?

Ryo Chijiiwa: The obvious answer is we needed the exemption. Our drones are 55 pounds and over, so we needed the exemption to be able to fly our drones, which, obviously, we need to do. But beyond that, it gave us credibility with investors and suppliers and customers. And additionally, it gives us an opportunity to kind of set up our drone operations, right? Like, establishing our safety culture, our operating procedures, and really kind of start that process early so that we are well-positioned to scale responsibly.

Katie Inman: On that note, how early would you think that drone founders should engage regulatory counsel, and what should they have prepared and kind of ready to go when they do that?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah. The short answer is probably to say, you know, engage counsel early, but in practice, you know, in order to navigate things like exemptions and waivers, you know, it could take a certain amount of capital. You might need to be established in certain ways, have enough credibility. And so it's a balancing act. And I would say, sort of, as early as possible, but within the confines of where you are in terms of your progress, your funding situation. And one other, maybe, suggestion is to be creative with workarounds, if you will. For example, we rented a warehouse so that we can test our drone indoors, right? Because that's not regulated, and we're able to do some basic validation indoors before asking for exemptions. Or there are also UAS (Unmanned Aircraft System) test sites where you might be able to more easily get permission to operate a new aircraft before going for your own FAA approvals. So, yeah, those are some things that I think joint companies can do.

Katie Inman: Yeah, those are important points. And speaking of regulatory compliance, big-picture-wise and sort of getting to the goal, how do you think regulatory progress can become a competitive advantage? Some people see it as just a compliance requirement or a straight-up impediment. How do you it can actually be a competitive advantage?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, it does take a lot of time and money to navigate through those compliance requirements, not to mention doing the actual work, right? Again, whether that's meeting certain compliance requirements or kind of having your operations in order. But once you have that, it is a form of a moat. A brand-new entrant will also have to navigate those steps in order to get to where you are. And, you know, some of these steps easily take months. I believe we waited four months for our exemption to come through. And, you know, for a startup, like, that's a lot of time to be waiting. And so, you know, I think kind of the simplest way in which that helps strategically is it helps establish a moat, and then it also just helps you kind of actually establish your operations and sort of mature a little bit as an organization.

Katie Inman: Definitely. Yeah, and in terms of scaling and just, you know, procurement, how do you think the procurement cycles and mission-critical requirements affect, you know, a startup's go-to-market strategy?

Ryo Chijiiwa: I think it's absolutely important. It goes a little bit back to my earlier comment about sort of spanning the valley of death. For a startup, revenue goals are directly tied to funding stages and valuations, right? And in particular, some segments, fire services being one, there's oftentimes a really long kind of procurement cycle, right? And so making sure that, you know, your runway, but also your kind of, like, fundraising strategy, is well aligned with what a reasonable revenue growth is, is absolutely important. And then, you know, on top of just for procurement, there's also things like testing and validation, evaluation, where, again, in the fire services, you know, the ultimate test, if we're building suppression drones, is, is it going to put out a fire?

And that's the kind of thing that you might only be able to test at certain times of the year in certain ways. If you're doing controlled burns, that might only happen during sort of the offseason. If you are doing field testing and want to try to test with real wildfires, that only happens, well, nowadays, it's turning into a little bit of an all-year-round wildfire season, but in certain geographies, that happens in the summer. And so kind of thinking through, you know, just, say, having capital or just having the engineers to move the technology forward may not actually be sufficient for hitting those milestones, right? And so if those things are in lockstep, I think companies can end up finding themselves in difficult positions.

Katie Inman: Right. Yeah, that makes sense. And then, you know, as far as partnering with other companies, other groups, on the subject of just working together, what kind of partnerships do you think are important, or maybe the most important, for scaling? You know, would it be agencies or manufacturers or insurers, you know, strategic customers and investors? How do you handle them all and prioritize them?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, we're still at the cusp of scaling, but, you know, when I do think about what it's going to take to scale in, the thing that concerns me the most, from where I stand, is actually the supply chain. Like I mentioned, you know, our drones are NDAA-compliant. We're trying to use the U.S.-based components, and even today, there are some key components that we can't reliably get sometimes. And then, on top of that, there's sort of geopolitical risk, sort of market risks specifically. For example, if we can't buy certain components from China for whatever reason, that could be a huge problem. Like, even if we're using U.S.-made components for the critical components, they might still rely on, say, Chinese materials or components, or some of the less consequential components might still be coming from China. And so, you know, that's one of the things that gives me the biggest concern. And so I try to think about that and try to get ahead of that as much as I can. But, of course, you know, vertical integration itself will take time and capital, so we try to get ahead of that as much we can. And, you know, as a startup, we're still fueled by customers and investors, right? So, those partnerships are absolutely critical as well, for sure.

Katie Inman: Right. And on the subject of meeting those goals along the way, how do you think founders should communicate the regulatory milestones and the testing progress and the customer validation? How should they communicate all these different goals and steps that they're accomplishing to investors?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, I think there are different approaches. My personal approach is to be as honest as possible. I'm not afraid to say, hey, this is a hard thing to solve, it's going to take years to get it right. You know, I'm not afraid to go to investors and say, hey, it's going to take a long time for some of these deals to convert and move to the next stage, because that is the reality. And I would prefer to work with partners and investors who understand that and are aligned than end up in a situation where their expectations aren't aligned with the realities that we have to deal with, because I feel like that ends up being extra stress. It does make it a little harder. Like, I wish I could go to investors and, hey, this is going to be a billion dollars next year, but that might be easier now but probably will catch up with me later. So, I personally prefer to just be honest about what is realistic and try to get alignment and support.

Katie Inman: Yeah, and what do you think drone founders should look for in investors beyond capital? You know, maybe drone founders, I think, are somewhat unique compared to other founders of startups and emerging companies. Is there anything unique that you would say they should look for when they're considering different partnerships and investors?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, I think generally, for drone startups, probably trying to raise from investors who've invested in drone companies before and understand some of the market realities and also might have connections with relevant partners in the ecosystem would be super helpful. But depending on your vertical, like in our case, we also care about mission alignment, because I think that's going to help us work more effectively together if they agree on what we're trying to do long-term. And patience, I think, it's important. I think, you know, this is an industry that moves slower than some others. And I think, at least from a founder's perspective, we always would prefer patience over a lack thereof.

Katie Inman: Sure, yeah, and so you've given us so much good advice here, but what are two or three tactical lessons that you've learned that other drone founders maybe should know early?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, this is something I learned, not just from Ponderosa.ai, but just working in tech for 20 years and shipping a lot of products and seeing many of them fail. I think the key thing is to listen to your customers. Really understand what they want. What is their operational reality? What are their budgets like? What's the procurement process like? What kind of timelines do they work on? Who needs to buy into decisions? And keep in mind that, you know, the people who use your product may not be the same person who signs the contracts, you know, and you need to have buy-in from both parties. And there might even be people in between who all have kind of different needs and wants. And so, yeah, like, understanding your customers, I think, is absolutely important, including in the drone space, but everywhere else.

The second thing I would say, you know, domain context, I think, is really critical. So, you know, I think if you're building agricultural drones, you probably really need to understand agriculture. You know, we're in fire. So, I went and got trained as a wildland firefighter. And I, you know, go on prescribed burns. And I don't call myself a firefighter. I'm not a firefighter, but I did as much as I could and continue to do as much as I can to literally kind of be in the shoes of our customers. And there's so much that I learned, even if it's just being on a prescribed burn and seeing the fire on the ground and how it behaves, right? There's just experiential kind of knowledge that I think is impossible to get otherwise. And I often see, you know, sort of founders or engineers being like, oh, like, there's other important things I need to do. And it's like, I'm sure there is, but, you know, having really deep domain context in whatever space you're in, I feel like, will pay dividends. So, that's the second thing.

And then just maybe one more thing I'll say for technical founders is the technology is less important than you might think. I think for technical founders, it's easy to get focused on the technology, but what's probably going to kill your company is probably not the technology. It's something else. It's probably the business or you're fundraising or something like that. So, that's something I tell myself all the time as a technical founder. I love to just be building things, but I try to kind of remind myself, look, there's a lot of things that I need to be paying attention to, and it's not just the technology.

Katie Inman: True words of wisdom there. So, you know, looking forward here, where do you see the strongest opportunities in the drone market will be? Where will those opportunities rise from in the next several years? Where do you see it going?

Ryo Chijiiwa: If I'm being perfectly honest, I don't know if it's actually in the drones themselves. There are a lot of companies working on drones. Any segment I look at, there are multiple players at this point. There's sort of the saying, when the gold rush was happening, the way to get rich was actually to sell the shovels. I think there's truth to that. As someone who's building drones, I see a lot of opportunities, say, at the component level, right? Like, we just need a much more robust drone industrial base here in the U.S. We don't want, you know, all of the components to just come from a handful of companies. We want that to be more distributed so that there's more resilience. We have more choice. There's, you know, more competition. And that's where, you know, those might not be sort of venture-backed startups, right? But I feel like there are a lot of opportunities there to support the whole ecosystem, not just any one vertical, but I think there are opportunities there where you can potentially help all drone companies out. And those could really good businesses.

Katie Inman: And I think that's exactly the model that, you know, policymakers have in mind at the moment, with the challenges that we're experiencing a little bit, you know, with the supply chain, little blips in the radar here. So, yeah, thank you so much for that input. And last but not least, I would just love to know, what would Ponderosa.ai consider as success in just over the next few years? I know we talked about the ultimate goal and the long-term strategy of having the drone swarm operations for firefighting, which is so exciting and so much safer. It has so many benefits, as compared to manned aircraft operations. So, that's really exciting, and I know that's an ultimate goal, but for maybe the nearer term, how would you describe your goals, and what does success really look like?

Ryo Chijiiwa: Yeah, in the next few years, I have two goals. We want the FireSparrow Mk10 to be the heavy-lift drone of choice on the fire line. We want that to be the platform where all firefighters say, hey, if we have them in the fire line, it makes our jobs easier, it makes our jobs safer, we feel better. That's what we want to do. And then we also want our fire suppression swarms to actually have put out a real wildfire. At the end of the day, that's what matters, right? Can you actually put out a wildfire? And we want to have proven that in a few years' time. So, I would say it's those two goals.

Katie Inman: Wow, that's great. And so exciting to see us get to the goal, hopefully, really soon. So, yeah, Ryo, I mean, thank you so much for coming on with us here and chatting about the company and your experiences, you know, when you started out in your career and then all the way through to found the company Ponderosa.ai, which has experienced some success lately. I really appreciate your time here. And I'd love to hand it back over to Patrick, our host. And say thanks also, Patrick, to you for having us on the program.

Patrick Driscoll: That was incredible. I feel like my little drone nerd brain was popping off at a thousand miles an hour. So, thank you so much to both of you. And as I like to do, I'll share some key takeaways from my rigorous note-taking. And there were a lot. I think I could probably do, like, 50 takeaways from this conversation. But the first one, you know, founder-market fit really matters. I think the fact that you went and studied the sector that you were building in is huge. And I don't see every founder doing that unless they come from the sector itself. So, having that deep technical expertise with your firsthand wildfire experience is, I think, incredibly important. And you engaging with the customer themselves, to me, is a huge differentiator. And as a former investor, that's something that would have caught my eye.

Which gets into my second point. Customer obsession really drove this business, and being obsessed with your customers is something that I like to tell founders that I engage with and help get off the ground. You partnered with firefighters early, you tested directly with fire departments, you built around real operational needs, and you kept in mind things like budget constraints and procurement timelines and these important factors that often founders who are moving at a million miles per hour don't necessarily think through. So, the customer is always first. Love that.

To what Katie helped you with, regulation is a moat, not a hurdle. And I love how this was brought up in the conversation. It's its own level of diligence to be able to get through a regulatory process, and I mean, it's hard, right? That's why you have to bring in a lawyer to help you go through these things. So, as an investor, as a customer, having this mark is in your favor. And I like the mention that it goes toward you as a moat.

For companies looking to build, identifying an underserved niche, I think, is critical. Firefighting, when you got into the field, it seemed to not have a lot of solutions, or it was underserved in the greater drone market. So, you identified it. You had a personal story tied to it, too, which I love to see a founder with a personal story. And you got after it, and, you know, you identified the problem, you work with the customer, you got into this underserved niche, and I'm assuming, as time progresses, it'll become more and more competitive, but being first-to-market is obviously very strategic.

And then deep tech success requires more than great technology. I think you mentioned this, like, three times in the conversation. So, technologist founders love the tech, love the product, build, build, build, I have the coolest things since sliced bread. But if you're unable to understand the business aspect, the operations aspect, the regulatory environment which you need to build within, fundraising, runway, you mentioned the valley of death, a lot of very flashy companies will raise a ton of money, and their valuation will skyrocket, and to your point, like, revenue doesn't really make sense when you think through that valuation. So, all of these considerations need to be taken into account. And smart technical founders either upskill and learn themselves through, like, an accelerator program, or they will bring in, like, a CEO-type person, COO-type person, someone to help them, or an adviser, at least, to get through a lot of these components. So, my favorite kind of quote-worthy lesson is the tech is less important than most technical founders think – that's a fun little snippet.

And, yeah, again, thank you so much, Katie, for taking time out of your very busy lawyer day to help out here with this episode of the podcast. Ryo, would love to stay in touch and help you in any way that I can. We're thrilled to have you as a part of the Holland & Knight family. And you can find more information on Ponderosa.ai or find Ryo on LinkedIn or Katie on LinkedIn. You could email me at patrick.driscoll@hklaw.com. And, yeah, I'll say goodbye, and thanks again.

Ryo Chijiiwa: Thank you. Thanks for having me.