Great companies are built by strong teams. Like at AirMap.
Teams, teams, teams…VCs sing this mantra all the time. We want to invest in strong teams, and we want entrepreneurs we back to hire even stronger people. As the old saying in this industry goes “A quality people hire A+ people. B people hire C people”.
That is why I am excited to see Ben and Greg at AirMap take this to heart and bring on another really high quality team member on board as CTO.Daniel Rubio is joining AirMap as CTO, joining the team from HERE where he was the CTO, focused on high definition mapping for self-driving cars. At HERE he did many things that carry over well into his role at AirMap. He helped build and led the team behind company’s cloud platform for autonomous vehicles, a system that utilized high definition maps, location services, and data exchange platforms.
I first met Daniel nearly a year ago now when Ben first introduced us. We had a long dinner together and chatted about the future of drones, autonomous vehicles in general, IoT, high volume online transactions, big data management in such situations, and digital privacy/security. I was extremely impressed by his command of the tech space, but also that he understood how business objectives related to technology imperatives. He had some good advice for me regarding AirMap’s future direction. Post dinner I encouraged Ben to find a way to work with Daniel, and voila — here we are now!
AirMap is building the airspace data platform to handle millions of drones doing billions of flights across the globe. They are already providing airspace data and communications platform to major drone manufacturers, and key stake holders in airspace safety and management — like airports, etc. AirMap has ambitious plans, and it is their team which includes people like Daniel, Jared, Matt and others that keep executing without fail. Daniel will be critical in helping build a technology platform that is secure, scalable, and flexible. He will be leading AirMap’s global engineering team and helping accelerate widespread adoption of their partners’ advanced drone capabilities. Exciting times ahead!
