18-Year-Old Founder: Why America Needs Its Own Drone Industry

Meet Tom Rein, the youngest entrepreneur ever featured on the Altium OnTrack podcast and founder of Tom's Aerial Vehicles. At just 18 years old, Tom is revolutionizing American drone manufacturing with AI-powered development processes and proprietary hardware designs. In this compelling interview, discover how this young innovator is building police drones "for Americans, by Americans" while addressing critical national security concerns and manufacturing gaps.

Tom shares his remarkable journey from collecting light bulbs as a child to building a six-figure speaker company, and now developing modular drone systems that could reshape the industry. Learn how AI has reduced his development costs from $10 million and 25 engineers to a $30 ChatGPT subscription, and why American manufacturing needs to catch up to China's ecosystem advantages. This episode explores the intersection of entrepreneurship, technology innovation, and national security in the rapidly evolving drone industry.

Watch the Episode:

More Resources:

• Find Tom on LinkedIn
• Find Tom on YouTube

Transcript:

Zach Peterson 

Hello everyone and welcome to the Altium OnTrack podcast. As you can see, I am in a temporary podcasting space as we make a transition into a new studio. Today, I am very happy to be talking with Tom Rein, founder of Tom's Aerial Vehicles. Tom is a young entrepreneur. I've seen him on LinkedIn posting and I've been wanting to get up and digitally cheer for some of the stuff that he's been saying, especially about American manufacturing. So I'm very happy to be talking with Tom today.

Tom, thank you so much for being here.

Tom Rein 

Well, I appreciate you having me on the show, Zach.

Zach Peterson 

Thank you very much, yes. So as I mentioned, you run a company called Tom's Aerial Vehicles, and most listeners who are watching on video will notice that you're probably pretty young. And I can confidently say that you are actually the youngest person we have ever had on the podcast. So you take the record. So if you could, why don't you take a moment to just tell us about yourself, tell us about your company, and what got you interested in Electron?

Tom Rein

I appreciate it and I'm honored to be the youngest guest on your show. So I would say I really got into electronics since a very young age. I used to collect light bulbs as a kid. So every weekend I would go to the hardware store and I would beg my parents for this new light bulb. And frankly, I drove them crazy. But this eventually led to me building my own light bulb, which almost set the house on fire. Probably wasn't my proudest moment. And I did get grounded for that.

But that led to me doing other things like building things out of popsicle sticks, building speakers out of cardboard and tape. Now I started my first company. run two companies. The first one is a drone company that Zach mentioned. And the second one is a speaker company that builds speakers for corporate clients. So I would build speakers.

and I would sell them to corporate clients in batches of 75 units at a time. And this started because I was building these cardboard speakers and I realized some of the speakers I was building out of $5 materials were sounding better than $500 speakers that I would get at the store. And I realized that this was because cardboard allowed me to create complicated acoustic geometries, things that just wouldn't be possible with, you know,

plastic mold injection. So then I wanted to replicate this in a commercial product, but obviously you can't ship a cardboard product as a commercial product, right? But then the thing was there's additive manufacturing. I realized that

wait a minute, additive manufacturing is quite a new thing. I can do this with additive manufacturing and I could make speakers that sound better than the competition that are cheaper. So essentially I went down that rabbit hole of building speakers and selling them to corporate clients. And it was quite a success. I got six figures in revenue and I got two patents relatively early on. But that eventually led me to building my drone company, which builds police drones for Americans, by Americans.

Zach Peterson 

That's pretty incredible. I have to wonder, how did you find time for school and friends and all that other kind of stuff that young people do? And I say young people, I like to think I'm not that old, but I'm hearing everything you're doing here and I'm kind of thinking back to my days when I was closer to your age. So how did you find time to do all of it?

Tom Rein 

Well, I would say it's definitely difficult to balance, right? I mean...

Um, I ended up making it through, but you know, you have to figure out like, how am going to allocate time for homework? How am I going to allocate time for school? Um, now this is the responsible answer I'm giving you. Let's be honest. I kind of just locked myself in my lab for hours a day. Um, and I said, no mom, I don't want dinner. No mom, you know, I'm not doing homework now. Um, eventually, you know, I started taking school more seriously, um, especially after middle school. Um, but when I was eight years old, when I was 10 years old, frankly, I just wanted to have more time in my lab. Right.

And some of the experiments, some of them were pretty dangerous, frankly. So my parents were a little concerned because I would just go in my lab and I would just lock myself in there and be like, okay, today's lab day. So I would say when I was younger, I didn't necessarily balance it very well. I was really in on this.

But as I got older, I found time to have fun with friends, found time to of course do homework and do schoolwork and make sure that I was balancing. But I mean, there's definitely a lot of things to consider. There's a lot of time that I had to put into this.

Zach Peterson 

And then are you in university now?

Tom Rein 

So I'm actually an incoming student at the University of Texas at Austin. So I just graduated high school a few months ago and I'm looking forward, I just moved to Texas as well. So I'm looking forward to enrolling in University of Texas.

Zach Peterson 

Okay, that's excellent. So I think my next question is kind of interesting, right? Because I think a lot of people who are interested in technology, that's what they focus on, and they don't always focus on the entrepreneurship side and building something into an actual business. So what made you want to pursue entrepreneurship at such a young age?

Tom Rein 

So I would say there's two things. First of all, it was very specific to what I wanted to do with speakers. And the second thing is why I wanted to do entrepreneurship in general. So first of all, I was building those speakers, right? And I thought...

Zach Peterson 

Thank

Tom Rein 

Well, you I could really be saving people money by making, cause I enjoyed speakers. I'm a bit of an audiophile myself. and that started off with cardboard speakers and stuff that wasn't so high end, but I was still really into audio. was like, okay, well, this speakers has this much base and this speaker is this much clarity. so was really tinkering with things and trying to get things perfect. And I realized, well, you know, how cool would this be to be able to give this to somebody else, you know, make these cheaper speakers that

sound just as good, can be commercialized. So I really wanted to do that. And I thought, there's this huge opportunity, right? Because obviously a speaker business is not going to be a billion dollar business like a drone business. But as a middle schooler, six figures in revenue, that was a lot. So I really wanted to do that because I wanted to commercialize my speakers. Now, why do I want to do entrepreneurship in general? I feel like entrepreneurship is a way for me to make my inventions or innovations actually matter.

Right? Because I can build cool things. I can sit in my lab all day. I can do stuff that makes me happy. But how are my creations actually making the world a better place? How are my creations actually being used in the way that they're intended to be used that actually prove that they work? So I feel that by doing entrepreneurship, hopefully I'm making the world a better place. And I'm also making my innovations more worthwhile.

Zach Peterson 

Great answers. Next question. One thing that I've seen you talk a little bit about is how you've been using AI to keep your costs competitive. So I'm pretty interested to hear this because we're living, of course, in the age of AI. I'm amazed we only got seven minutes into the podcast before I had to mention AI. Usually it's even shorter than that.

If you could just tell us a little bit about how you've been using AI to keep your costs competitive and if you've been using AI in any other ways in your companies.

Tom Rein 

So AI has been a key to this company, and I think it's a key to a lot of industries, right? What used to take $10 million and 25 engineers, six months, now takes a $30 chat GPT subscription and a cup of coffee so you can make it through the night. This is very revolutionary, honestly. There have been a lot of things that seem revolutionary, but AI has really streamlined the... Sorry, I'm getting a call. Can I? Can we restart the segment?

Zach Peterson 

Yeah, you handle it real quick and we'll restart it.

Tom Rein 

Sorry, sorry.

Tom Rein 

My bad, I thought there were...

Tom Rein

Sorry, I'm in a hotel room so I'm not sure why they're calling me. Sorry, I'll be right back.

Tom Rein 

Okay, I actually can't find the phone. Or it needs two seconds. If I can't find it, I'll just, can just restart and Yeah.

Tom Rein 

Okay. I unplugged it. Let's see if that works. Okay. you know, sorry about that. if that happens again, we can just, I'll try to call them back, but I can't, it's a, it's a hotel phone. So I don't really know who called me. anyway, so where were we?

Zach Peterson 

Here we go.

Zach Peterson 

Yeah, no worries. We've had weird stuff happen. Just go ahead and start with the same answer and we'll edit it back in.

Tom Rein 

The question was why, what have you been using AI on?

Zach Peterson 

Yeah, yeah. How have you been using AI to keep costs competitive and what else have you been doing with AI?

Tom Rein 

Okay. So I'll just start. So AI has been incredibly revolutionary for my business. And I think the industry as a whole, right? What used to cost, you know, a huge team of engineers, you know, hours and months to do. Okay. So like, can I restart that for a second? Can I, can I, are we going to use, what part are we going to start from? Just the whole.

Zach Peterson 

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

Zach Peterson 

So we'll cut right in, like right after I asked the question previously. Yeah, and it'll just jump cut over to you.

Tom Rein 

Okay.

Tom Rein

Okay. sorry.

So AI has been incredibly revolutionary. What used to take 10 engineers six months and $10 million to do now takes a $30 chat GPT subscription and a cup of coffee to keep you up at night. This is definitely revolutionary and has made it a lot cheaper to develop specifically for my company and for the industry as a whole. So with my drone business, I've been able to use AI to really quickly code things and create minimum viable prototypes and minimum viable products

in a way that just wouldn't have been possible before. So let me give you an example. I was trying to do vision recognition for my drone, an obstacle avoidance.

That was something that I thought would take, you know, six months and would take millions and millions of dollars and a lot of capital raised to be able to do. With AI, however, I just put a prompt in and I realized that, well, wait a minute, this is already 80 % what I needed. I just need to go there and look at, make sure there's no security vulnerabilities, make sure that this is actually working. But AI has been able to really lower the costs and lower the barrier to entry for drone companies like mine. Now, I think one of the big problems

with American drone manufacturing, and I know we'll get more into this later, is the high cost, right? American drones are significantly more expensive than Chinese drones, and it's making it very difficult for American police agencies, American consumers to buy American drones. I think with the advent of AI and with the ability for companies like mine to significantly lower development costs, it makes it more feasible now to build drones in America for Americans, by Americans.

Zach Peterson 

So I'm interested a little more about your workflow with AI here, specifically with the coding, right? I think you, know, vibe coding is a new thing. And so, you know, people will kind of have the Q and A session with their AI until they get a code that they at least think works and then they have to go and test it. I think other people will probably start with like, for example, like an open source package and there's a lot of open source software out there.

especially in the drone space. how did you do, like for example, the obstacle avoidance? Did you start with like an open source package and then just kind of push chat GPT or one of the other AIs in the direction you wanted it to go until it gives you some code that, like you said, is 80 % there and 90 % there?

Tom Rein 

Well, I think there's kind of two ways of doing this, right? There's definitely ways to use, you know, like existing frameworks and use open source stuff. But what I've been trying to do is I've been trying to develop, you know, code that is not really being used currently. I'm trying to build something completely new. And I think that, you know, while AI definitely has its weaknesses and, you know, it does do better when you try to develop off of frameworks and develop off of existing operations, especially for what I'm doing. I think that.

There are ways to use AI to develop something completely new. as for my workflow, for example, I might have a feature that I want, let's say obstacle avoidance, which is actually a fairly basic feature, but let's just use that example of obstacle avoidance. And I would probably go into AI and say, okay, what are some things that I need to think about from a hardware perspective when I want to build obstacle avoidance for my drones? This is what's currently in my drone. And I'll tell it a list of basic

things that I currently have in my drone. How can I use this in the cheapest way possible or in the most efficient way possible to support software? And then it will say, OK, well, here are the three things you have in the drone. You can use this component for task A, this component for task B. So then I will use AI to start coding. So I'll be like, OK, start coding it for me. Start giving me suggestions. Start pointing me in the right direction. Start giving me code blocks.

And when I do this, eventually it will lead to something that actually works. there'll definitely be some bugs, but, it can be something to be refined.

Zach Peterson 

Yeah, I think a lot of the criticism I see of AI is that, well, know, what you get out of it is buggy. And you said, yeah, there are some bugs, and that's true. So you're not putting superhuman level expectations onto the AI, which is good. So once you get the code block created by AI, you then have to go through manually, debug it, put it onto a prototype, make sure it works, all of that.

Tom Rein 

Absolutely. So AI isn't perfect, right? Like, you know, AI has significantly sped up the development, but I think a big misconception with AI is that you just plug it into AI. And even the way I described it, it might seem like you just plug it into AI and then it just uploads it into the drone or whatever you're doing. And all of a sudden you have a drone that beats DJI, right? Like definitely not.

AI is good. There are certainly things you can do. It has been able to lower costs as dramatically as I've explained it to be. But you still have to go in there and just see, okay, what are some problems? Because I would say like 99 % of the time when the AI gives me code, it just doesn't work. It just plain doesn't work.

Now, this is usually because of one tiny little syntax error or it referenced the wrong thing, which is very easily fixable. And frankly, if you know how to code, can probably fix it in 30 seconds. The key though, is that it's able to generate that 80 % of code that might not work without a little bit of editing, that might not be secure without a little bit of editing. But with that editing, you can make that something really good. And you can use that code that the AI generated to significantly speed up development.

Zach Peterson 

Yeah, I 100 % agree with you on that point, especially that if you learn or if you know how to code, it's going to be much easier for you to take the thing from the AI and actually now take it and turn it into something you can use in production. The other thing I'm interested in is your hardware stack. Obviously, drones are a piece of hardware. They have a bunch of electronics. And so they need a circuit board to run everything.

So what are you using for your hardware stack? Are you using like an off-the-shelf module like a Raspberry Pi or are you using custom printed circuit boards or how are you doing all this?

Tom Rein 

So with me, I'm using custom printed circuit boards, so PCBs, and I'm designing them in software very similar to Altium Designer. And I'm using that PCB and using chips like the NVIDIA Jetson series to build basically an AI-capable hardware stack and to integrate that with the rest of my drone. So I would say the drones that I'm building right now, basically most of the hardware is proprietary. I do have patents on my drones.

that allows me to make the drones cheaper, make the drones do specific things and create specific functionality so I can control it. I would say that the hardware is certainly more complicated than the software in the drone currently because the software is something that seems complicated on the surface who think, it's all software. But it's something that can be debugged. It's something that can be, as we say, worked on with chat GPT. But the hardware is something that you really have to go in

and just make sure it's completely safe. You have to get certifications for the hardware. And you have to make sure that that hardware can support the software. If you have a bad voltage line, for example, and it fries a chip, then no software is going to fix that. So I would say they're both very important. And I am developing proprietary hardware right now.

Zach Peterson 

So this is interesting, right? Because with proprietary hardware, a lot of times, like you have to go through EMC testing. You may have to do some other kind of reliability testing before you can get, for example, license to sell it into the market. I don't know the rules and regulations in different municipalities or different states. So how have you been navigating that? Because it seems like we're kind of in the early days of drones here in the US, at least like drones en masse.

So I'm wondering if this is going to be a bit of a minefield for you.

Tom Rein 

So this is what I would say about regulations. Drones are one of the most complicated things in the world, not just to build. You need billions of dollars, many of the competitors. Now that has been really going down. And I've been able to do it with much less because of additive manufacturing and because of AI, and frankly, because I think I've really optimized my workflow. But a lot of companies pour billions of dollars into this. And I think that there's two reasons. First of all, you have the hardware and how difficult that is to prototype.

You can make one iteration of hardware, but what if it vibrates too much? What if the design software didn't account for that vibration? And then that vibration leads to your flight controller vibrating too much and giving you erroneous data inputs, which then leads to a crash. So something as simple as maybe a screw that's not put together properly can cause those vibrations, which can then cause a crash.

So that's the first difficult thing. And the second difficult thing is the regulation. So you'll have drone side regulations like what the FAA wants with remote ID. And you'll have regulations with general electronics. I would say those are difficult to navigate. I have made...

I think I've done a pretty good job in navigating them because I've looked at them list by list and said, okay, well, these are the things I need to solve. And I have had a pretty systematic approach to solving them. But I do believe, yeah, there is high barriers to entry. And that's frankly why drone companies, a lot of them, they're unable to succeed in this market because of how competitive the market is.

Zach Peterson 

Okay, okay. So I think that's a great answer and it's good to hear that you have kind of a systematic approach for addressing multiple areas of regulation. And you mentioned FAA, which I didn't cue into mostly because I don't do enough work with drones to actually focus on the NPI side. So switching gears here, one thing that you mentioned a couple times earlier in our discussion today,

and that I've seen you talk about on social media is American manufacturing and specifically a lack of American manufacturing capacity for things like drones. And I think that statement really applies honestly for a lot of different products that we're going to need a lot more of here domestically in the U.S.

So if you could give us your perspective on what specifically is lacking in US manufacturing. mean, most people when they bring up the of the drawbacks of US manufacturing, they always point to high labor costs, right? And then they say, well, China's cheap labor. And if you talk to guys like Tim Cook in a video that went viral recently, he says, well, that's not actually true. They have a better supply chain over there.

So give us your perspective on this.

Tom Rein 

So I'd like to talk a little bit about the supply chain and all that, and then talk a bit about how it would benefit to move some of that to America. So first of all, as Tim Cook says, it is true that it's not just about cheap labor. You have an unprecedented ecosystem where you'll produce one thing at one factory. And then there's almost like a whole network of factories that will then add on and produce things that fit that. So there's this whole ecosystem of stuff that's

you know, very high end manufacturing and manufacturing that kind of just fits together.

in a way that just hasn't happened in other countries. Now here's the statistic, right? So if we talk about drones, America produces a couple thousand drones a month. That was the statistic. China on the other hand produces over half a million drones at that same time. So that's a huge difference, right? And I think this is due in a large part to the lack of manufacturing ability to have a whole coherent manufacturing ecosystem.

It's not just that China does it for cheaper. It's that they can do it fast. They can get parts sourced overnight. They can get people working on your designs very quickly. They have a whole team of engineers that have seen thousands of designs just like yours and can design it for manufacturing. So there's a lot of an ecosystem that is frankly missing in America. In America, I see that you might have standalone machine shops. You might have some factories, but that general coherence is just lacking.

There's just generally not the same level of ecosystem in America.

Tom Rein 

Now, for drones, why do I think America needs American drones? Drones can collect a lot of data. You send a drone over a city, you see a lot of people's houses, you see roads, you see exactly where everything is. That data, if given to the wrong person, if in the wrong hands, especially with police drones that are very accurate in the data that they collect to be able to keep people safe, but if that data is given into the wrong hands, it could cause a real problem.

them.

Right? So we need to make sure that whoever's building these drones has America's national security in mind. Now, you know, I'm not saying anything about China. know, frankly, I love China and I think China is a great place. But I think it's important for America to have its own drones because, you know, you really need to make sure that the person making drones for American police forces has America's best interest in mind. Right. Replace China with any other country. And I still think it's a problem. think that America shouldn't be reliant on another country for, you know, 80

plus percent of its drone supply chain. Now the second thing is about manufacturing, right? If you look at China, and I actually grew up in China, so I know it's a little weird, I'm making American drones, but I grew up in China and I'm trying to make drones for Americans, by Americans. Now I'm American citizen. But if you look at China, right? And you look at China 25 years ago, it was nowhere near where it is now. Now you have modern cities, huge infrastructure.

things that just look like they're from the future. And I think the rapid GDP growth, the rapid growth in infrastructure, a lot of that stems from the push of manufacturing. Manufacturing, I believe, really caused a lot of that. It created a lot of jobs. It created a lot of growth in the economy. And I think that by creating more manufacturing opportunities in America.

Tom Rein 

Not just with drones, but with other things, you'll be able to create more jobs. You'll be able to stimulate the economy and you'll be able to make America more self-reliant on things like its own drones and other things that are pretty important as well.

Zach Peterson 

So you brought up something really important, one of our earlier guests named Case Englund has brought up. he runs a company called Taitoma. And they operate out of Taiwan. And I believe they started operating out of Central America. I believe he's the one that said this. So we've done a lot of podcast episodes. So Case, if you're listening, forgive me if I'm incorrect.

But he was the one that said that if you want to build something in China, the ecosystem is very interesting because they have these WeChat groups where you go to one factory and it's kind of like you mentioned, right? You get one thing built at one factory, but they'll immediately get on to their WeChat groups and talk to everyone they know and then source all the other things that you need for a complete product and then kind of instantly create this one-stop shop.

for innovators who want to get a product built. Now, as you mentioned, we don't have that here in the US, and frankly, I would agree. Whose responsibility is it to create that ecosystem? If you're a company that wants to manufacture in the US, is it your company's responsibility, or do you think there will ever be any kind of impetus among manufacturers in the US?

So then go out of their way and kind of create these ecosystems where they can get these types of products to market faster.

Tom Rein 

So here's the thing, right? So when you think about China, you're absolutely correct. And that other guest is absolutely correct too, based on my experience. Yeah, you will produce with one factory. And let's say you want one part for a drone, maybe the outer shell, right? And that factory will produce it. And then they'll realize, okay, you need an airframe. So then they'll refer you to an airframe factory. And then the airframe factory will produce that airframe and send it to the first factory and they'll assemble it. It's basically a very coherent

very connected, interconnected manufacturing ecosystem. Now, whose responsibility is that, frankly? I think it really depends on the industry, but...

you know, when you have a lot of people, a lot of demand, I think there's going to be supply, right? You know, in China, you have huge demand for manufacturing. So then they've been able to create those ecosystems. They've been able to create those processes that support that kind of demand. Now, I think in America, frankly, there just isn't that kind of demand because you see China has that ecosystem already. frankly, I think it's going to take some proactive companies to really ignite that kind of ecosystem.

And once people follow, it will come. But there definitely needs to be a proactive approach to say, okay, we need American manufacturing. We need to build stuff in America and we need to start building factories up in America.

and once America starts offering the level of ecosystem that China does, then I think there's going to be, it's like a snowball effect, right? You're going to get more people who want to produce in America, then you're going to get more of an interconnected ecosystem and more people are going to want to produce. so I think that's what it comes down to now with my company. hope that, you know, one company isn't going to completely change the manufacturing ecosystem, no matter how big I get. but, you know, I hope that I'll be able to contribute to starting that kind of ecosystem to being one of those.

Tom Rein 

early customers and early adopters of American manufacturing, which will eventually lead to hopefully more people wanting to produce stuff in America. I believe that's how we can get more American manufacturing and the general ecosystem.

Zach Peterson 

So speaking of an ecosystem, you're a popular guy on social media, and I'm wondering if other manufacturers out there have been taking notice of what you've been doing and what you've been saying and what they think about it.

Tom Rein 

So I think there's kind of two aspects to this, right? First is my company specifically. And second of all is more the industry response. And that does relate to my company, but also just generally the industry response. So I'm unfortunately in a position where I've had a lot of people reach out to me for potential collaboration opportunities. I've had a lot of potential investors reach out to me. Now, I've made it pretty clear that I'm not fundraising right now, but I'm always open to discussions. And I think that...

You know, it's something that...

I'm in a fortunate place to be in. Now in terms of the entire ecosystem, entire drone industry and how that relates, frankly, I don't think there's enough attention to this matter because you have, you know, an 80 % manufacturing dominance by DJI and DJI is about to get banned, right? And they're already self exiting. Their newest drones are not available in the US. I think there's a huge, you know, kind of opportunity, right? If it's a $5 billion market and you have 80 % of that

market that's being exited, you basically have four billion dollars cold. It's up for grabs. So I do believe that there should be more attention to this and people should be thinking more about American drones and American manufacturing and getting NDA compliance. But personally, I think I'm in a very fortunate position that people have taken notice on what I'm doing. And I have gotten a lot of requests because I do have a proprietary technology. But I think there generally should be more focus

in this industry frankly.

Zach Peterson 

So what's the path to scaling for a company like yours? Because at some point, I'm sure you want to get these products out there in higher volume, get them out there far and wide. And I'm just wondering what that looks like. A lot of the business folks on LinkedIn, mean, they're so focused on software and scaling a software business and all that. But a hardware business is totally different beast.

And you have elements of both, right? You have the hardware that you design and manufacture, and then you also have the software that goes on to it to run it. So tell us a little bit about what scaling looks like for Tom's Aerial Vehicles.

Tom Rein 

So yeah, you're absolutely right scaling for a hardware business is is completely different from a software business, right a software business You can frankly just bootstrap make a product, you know ship it online And if you get ten users, you're probably gonna get a hundred and if you get a hundred you might get a thousand And it's a type of thing where you can rapidly scale and once you get you know an annual reoccurring revenue you get capital that's pouring in from investors because they're like well you've validated the market with a hardware company, it's very

different, right? You have to have a product first and that could cost millions and millions of dollars and that's before you've even validated consumer demand by selling to anybody. Now there are ways to talk to people and of course I did a lot of market research but with hardware companies it's really a much slower process to scale compared to a software, know, like a software as a service product. So you know for Tom Zero vehicles what I've been able to do is I've been able to

use the capital that I made from my speaker company and inject that into my drone company and use that to scale and bootstrap some of my initial prototypes. But I think, you know, it's also the difficulty of hardware startups also applies to my competitors, right? Once I get drones out there, my competitors, if they wanted to make drones like mine, would also have to put huge amounts of capital and go through this exact same process. So I believe that with my drone company,

might be difficult to enter, but I think I've navigated a lot of that by injecting some of my own capital into the company. But I think that once you enter, you have a moat around your business that essentially prevents other companies from taking that position. Now, think, you know, think about DJI. They've had this moat for years. They've had an 80 % dominance and no one's been able to replace them. And frankly, it's because of how difficult drone companies are to start. Now, with my drone company, I've been able to take advantage of new

technology, I've been able to take advantage of new things that have emerged on the market and a really warm market frankly to American drones. So I hope that by almost taking this cheat sheet and kind of establishing myself now, I will build a moat when it's the easiest to build a moat, which will make it more difficult for people who want to compete to take my place. Now I think that that's something that is definitely something to be considered when starting a drone business.

Zach Peterson 

Okay, okay. Well, I can tell you've thought through this pretty thoroughly and I really hope that your path to scaling this business is as smooth as possible. I know there's gonna be a lot of bumps along the way. I guess that's a good segue into our last question, which is what do you see as the future of your company, whether it's at the product level or something grander?

Tom Rein 

future.

Tom Rein 

Well, I think, you know, at the, at the product level, I really want to create, you know, drones that are for Americans, by Americans, but also modular drones. So that's what I'm working on right now. Right. while you have other drones that, you would have to buy one drone for, you know, this kind of inspection, one drone for another kind of inspection, one drone for firefighters, one drone for police. I hope that I'll be able to standardize the drone and change things like the battery, like the payload.

like the landing gear, things that can be modular. So what I'm developing right now, for example, is an engine that slots into the place of a battery. And this engine generates power. So it's basically like a generator.

And what this allows me to do is basically fly the drone for much longer compared to a battery. But there are downsides to an engine too, right? It might be more difficult to fuel up. It might be more expensive to maintain. So by making a modular, I allow my customers to choose between a battery and an engine for different purposes. Say one police station might want a four hour flight time and doesn't really care about the mess. Well, then they can use an engine. But another police station might want to be environmentally friendly.

then they can use the battery and it's a snap in, snap out type of situation. Now basically that's what I'm working towards in terms of the product line and making my drones modular. I already have panted technology for how I'm making that work.

Um, now from the company perspective and how I hope this, this will scale. Um, I think in the next two years, it's going to be a scramble, frankly, for drone manufacturers that want to replace DJI. Right. Um, you're going to have a lot of drone manufacturers. You're going to have me, you're going to have other startups. You're going to have Skydio, um, want to take that 80 % market share. And I think frankly, it's going to be whoever makes the best drones is going to win. Uh, now I believe I have good technology, but you know, obviously I'm biased because I, I'm the founder of one of

Tom Rein 

of the companies. But I believe that if my technology is really as good as I hope it is, and I've really listened to people in the industry, like police and firefighters, and I've built what they wanted. But if this is really what they want, and if people really think that my drone technology is good, I see potentially this thing being worth $10 billion. Because you can have a $4 billion dominance in an industry if somebody replaces DJI. And then you can have even more, because the drone industry is growing. You have government support for drones.

While I think there's not necessarily always enough attention to the drone industry from private individuals, I think the government is doubling down and saying, definitely need American drones. We definitely need drones for Americans, by Americans. So if I can overcome this scramble for first place, essentially, I believe that this could be worth a lot.

Zach Peterson 

Well, I hope it works out because everything that you're talking about is right along the direction that I think a drone company needs to go, especially if they're going to be producing for the domestic market. Tom, where can folks go to learn more about your company and maybe interact with you on social media?

Tom Rein 

Well, I appreciate that. You know, I think people can see me on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn a lot. You know, I don't post all the time, but always feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I do try to respond to comments and I definitely try to respond to my direct messages. So I'm definitely more active on LinkedIn.

But I'm not super active on social media these days in general. I think I've posted maybe at most eight times on LinkedIn. They've done pretty well. the last year, I think I posted eight times. I'm really focused on building right now, and I'm really focused on this company. But feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. And I look forward to connecting with you guys.

Zach Peterson 

Excellent, excellent. And we'll include a link for that in the video description for folks watching on YouTube. Tom, thank you so much for being here today. As I mentioned earlier, you are officially the youngest person we've ever had on the podcast. And I don't see anyone taking the cake on that one very soon. So thank you very much for being here today.

Tom Rein 

I appreciate it, Tak. Thank you very much for having me on the show.

Zach Peterson 

Thank you. To everyone that's out there listening, we've been talking with Tom Rhine, founder of Tom's Aerial Vehicles. If you're watching on YouTube, make sure to hit the like button, hit the subscribe button. You'll be able to keep up with all of our podcast episodes and tutorials as they come out. And last but not least, don't stop learning, stay on track, and we'll see you next time. Thanks, everybody.