Startup Spotlight: NABLA Mobility
NABLA Mobility is an AI company balancing safety, decarbonisation, and resilience in flight operations, with comprehensive, multi-factor flight optimisations that provide better information for pilot’s decision-making. In this spotlight series, Shinji Tanaka, founder and CEO of Nabla Mobility, shares his entrepreneurial journey, debunks misconceptions about launching a startup and shares the essential traits required for success. He also talks about the Aerospace Xelerated programme, which helped him acquire the knowledge needed to build a successful startup.
Shinji graduated from the University of Tokyo with a Bachelor’s degree in Engineering and received his Master’s degree from the University of Tokyo and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a research internship at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, he joined IHI Corporation in 2011, where he worked on the research and development of gas turbine engines. In 2014, he moved to Boston Consulting Group, where he worked on business strategy development, business efficiency improvement, and organisational design in corporate integration. In 2021, he founded NABLA Mobility.
What were your motivations for launching a startup?
I have always loved the idea of flying things and knew I wanted to start a business in this area. My initial inspiration goes back to when I was a student at MIT. One day, Dr Cumptsy from Cambridge University came to give a lecture on jet engines and told us, “Engine design and efficiency have been discussed extensively, but the ‘usage’ is not consistent with the design, resulting in inefficiency.” He also told us that the use of the engine is not in line with the design, resulting in inefficiency.
This story stuck in my mind and reminded me of an idea I had. Although large companies are always seeking to improve the performance of their products, the benefits of such improvements are often not fully realised on the operational side. This results in an efficiency gap between engineering and usage. Our goal is to bridge this gap and improve performance on the usage side.
With the rapid development of semiconductor technology, information processing capacity is also increasing at a considerable pace. Furthermore, as evidenced by passenger flights, the communication environment is becoming more capable of handling an ever-increasing amount of information onboard aircraft. We sought to explore ways to combine these technologies and optimise them in a resourceful manner.
While there has been software available in the past that addresses similar problems using classical methods, the application of AI in flight operations for the entire airline industry is a relatively new development. For industries that place the highest priority on safety, the use of unfamiliar AI can be a hurdle.
At NABLA Mobility, we want to introduce a new layer of intelligence into this complex and multi-layered logistics of air transportation, which until now has been impossible to solve, by actively exploring the possibilities of new technologies.
What are some misconceptions people have when launching a startup that you’ve proved wrong throughout your journey?
“Only those who have been working at universities and research institutes can work on projects that are technologically advanced.” or “Only projects undertaken by people who have been working at universities and research institutes can be considered in the Deep Tech field.” This is not the case.
While it is true that a team with the ability to conduct research and development is essential to pursue technological advancement, individuals can develop their careers with technological edges without necessarily belonging to a research institution. It is, therefore, possible to build technological capabilities even in a non-university start-up.
Drawing from your own experience, what are the top traits entrepreneurs must possess to successfully launch a startup?
Empathy and dialogue skills to build a team running toward a goal in the same direction, and mental stamina to keep things moving forward in a stable, calm, and positive manner in any (tough) situation.
Can you share your favourite life quotes with us?
“If you do, it will be done; if you don’t do it, it won’t be done” — Yozan Uesugi
“A sound mind in a sound body” — Juvenal
“With energy, you can do anything” — Antonio Inoki
What are your biggest takeaways from the Aerospace Xelerated programme?
Building a startup business requires a lot of detailed thoughts on a wide range of topics. It is difficult for first-time founders to acquire such knowledge by themselves from the beginning, and we recognized that it is important to implement the knowledge learned step-by-step through this hands-on acceleration program.
Sign up to the Aerospace Xelerated mailing list to hear the latest news from our network, follow us on Twitter or connect with us on LinkedIn.
