The Observer's Notebook: Drone Racing is a Thing

PSA: It’s 2025.

That news out of the way, here are three things on my mind this week, plus some fascinating bookmarks I think you'll enjoy.

🔖Bookmarks of the Week

1. Bench Accounting shut down 4 days before the end of the year. Everyone’s upset.🧾| Charles Rollet @TechCrunch (link)

2. Top angel investors in the US - how have I never heard of Edward Lando?!🤯| Lenny Rachitsky @ (link)

3. The EU now requires all small devices to have a USB-C port. Genius.🔌| Callum Booth @The Verge (link)

🔍Three Things On My Mind

1. Don’t Underestimate Regulatory Risk in Energy

This week I learned that in 1977, President Jimmy Carter completely stuffed a 6-year, $300M nuclear fuel reprocessing plant project in Barnwell, South Carolina (that’s $1.5B adjusted for inflation 1977-2024).

This project had backing from major entities like Allied Chemical, Gulf Oil, and Royal Dutch Shell, and was designed to handle “all of the utility-produced nuclear waste in the United States, breaking it down to 3 percent of it's beginning mass…”*

Basically, it seemed like a great investment.

But shortly after completion in 1976, the newly elected president “forbade the licensing of [the plant] on the grounds that foreign terrorists could take over the plant and use it for plutonium extraction.”*

The plant was never operated.

$1.5 billion dollars (equivalent) down the drain.

Lesson learned: energy investors, deeply consider regulatory (and political risk).

Much more like this in the upcoming Nuclear Energy special deep dive.

*Mahaffey, J. A. (2010). Atomic Awakening: A new look at the history and future of nuclear power. Pegasus Books.

2. Drone Tech is Blowing My Mind

Over the holiday I got to pilot my brother-in-law’s DJI Avata, a camera drone with first-person view (FPV).

This thing cruises up to 30mph, has a range of a couple thousand feet, and is stupid easy to pilot thanks to the VR headset and simple joystick setup.

Considering this experience, plus the multiple Amazon packages I’ve had drone-dropped into my backyard in under an hour, I decided it’s time to get a bit smarter on this industry.

To start, here are the 3 most recent acquisitions in the “Advanced Air Mobility” space based on quick PitchBook* research:

1. Dedrone, a VC-backed developer of a counter-drone technology platform that raised ~$133M, was acquired by Axon (April 2024) for an estimated $400M. →My Take: Something like this is absolutely necessary. Drones are TINY relative to traditional aircraft, have a completely distinct mobility capacity, and as such are much harder to detect.

2. Drone Racing League, which is amazing and is exactly what it sounds like, was acquired by Infinite Reality in April 2024 for $250M. DRL previously raised roughly $120M. → My Take: It’s genius. Anything that moves can and should be raced, and people will 100% watch this. I grew up watching remote controlled robots fight each other on Discovery’s Battle Bots. Do I believe people will watch remote controlled drones fly at 90mph through (or, even better, crash into) LED covered hoops in the sky? Absolutely. Take my money.

3. Ware, an AI powered inventory management system that leveraged autonomous drone technology and previously raised a $2.5M seed round, was acquired by Gather.ai in June 2023 for an undisclosed amount. → My Take: According to this source, this acquisition made Gather.ai the largest “autonomous inventory management solution provider.” It’s certainly a creative application of drone tech. I spent 4 years working in/around an industrial warehouse - to me, fixed cameras, geotagging, radar, and other inventory tracking solutions that are less likely to get whacked by a forklift operator making $12 an hour are probably a better investment.

*Data Source: PitchBook Data, Inc. 

3. It’s Really Hard to Write Concise, High-Quality Content

This week’s “Best of 2024” post took me like 10 hours to prep. (I’m biased, but worth a read if you haven’t already seen it.)

Multiple iterations. Tighter and tighter until only the best nuggets were left.

Here’s how I think about the basic value of content.

Most content sucks, and fits neatly in the low/zero value quadrants.

Great books, podcasts, movies, shows, etc fit in the upper right. They take awhile to consume, but leave us feeling the investment was worthwhile.

The upper left quadrant is where the crazy money lives. Outsized value for minimal time investment. The price for this content is only limited by how much we value an hour of our lives.

Until Next Week👋

Thanks for reading - have a great week.

-Andrew

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About Me

I cultivate flourishing.

I'm also the CEO of PitchFact, where our mission is to cultivate flourishing specifically through efficient and collaborative early-stage diligence. I'm a proud husband, grateful father, and honest friend. My love languages include brisket, bourbon, and espresso.