BetterView: Where Drones Meet Traditional Industry
One of the recurring themes we consistently gravitate towards at Metamorphic Ventures is how technology both disrupts and partners with traditional industries. For us, being headquartered in New York isn’t only necessarily about the incredible tech community that continues to thrive, but also the number of traditional industries represented. Access and understanding of those industries allows us to seek solutions to specific challenges and opportunities as it relates to technology. Many of our investors and advisors are comprised of people that represent these industries.
As a result of this theme, we were thrilled to meet both Dave Lyman and David Tobias from BetterView. BetterView is a platform that connects businesses with drone service operators. BetterView’s key value proposition is in creating a more cost-effective, safer and easier way for traditional businesses to capture and parse aerial building imagery data.
As Chris Dixon wrote over the weekend in his post “What’s Next in Computing?” as he talks about drones as one of the next major technology markets, “There are tens of millions of dangerous jobs that involve climbing buildings, towers, and other structures that can be performed much more safely and effectively using drones”. We couldn’t be more excited about the value proposition of BetterView’s platform for several of these use cases.
Their first vertical is the commercial roofing insurance market, a vertical that is both expensive and dangerous to inspect. It’s also pretty massive (everyone has a roof both at home and at work), with $20 billion in claims every year. We have a number of investors that are operators and/or have decades worth of experience in the space. The excitement about the company and desire to partner with them made this an easy investment decision.
We’re excited to announce the investment alongside Arena Ventures, Haystack, 500 Startups and others. Despite all of the factors discussed above, the team is always the most important variable in our investment decision-making. BetterView’s founding team, David Tobias and Dave Lyman have the perfect blend of industry experience (Dave Tobias grew an insurance inspection reports business to 500 inspectors across the US), technical expertise and ability to execute (David Lyman sold his last company to ConstantContact in 2010).
If you’re as excited about this as we are and are interested in working at BetterView, they’re hiring for several positions.
