Runways not needed — Why we invested in direct air shipping company DASH Systems
When we first met the founders of DASH Systems, Inc, we were excited by the cool factor of a delivery-by-air anywhere company, and curious about the business opportunity to expand the market beyond the currently addressable market for air courier.
Joel Ifill, engineer, dad, & entrepreneur, had a dream to drop packages up to a half-ton out of the sky and land them within three feet of a target.He wanted to create warehouses in the sky to solve a lot of the “last mile” challenges in air cargo.
In early 2017, Joel showed us a video of a drone plane dropping a package in someone’s backyard (although that drone may or may not have crashed in that video). We were moved by Joel’s mission driven nature and his desire to take the industry expertise in guided missile defense systems and appropriate it for commercial applications. That’s the kind of #moregrit, #morekarma, #morehardware that moves us to action, and in September 2017, MiLA started working with the DASH team.
DASH stands for Direct Air SHipping. The team initially explored air shipping and logistics for the oil and gas industry. And then Hurricane Maria happened. Puerto Rico suffered major damage. Roads were closed across the island, and many towns were cut off from the aid supplies that were being delivered to airports (which are typically near the coastline). Joel jumped on a plane and started dropping packages to a sports field near these remote areas. For nearly a week, he successfully dropped supplies to people in need across Puerto Rico, getting full FAA clearance for Part 135, Part 107 and Part 91. He proved that he was able to perform what Google and Amazon drones can’t. Air drops are nothing new, but this was the first time the world saw a company using tech and data as a tool to improve accuracy.
Prior to DASH Shipping, Joel was a welder and fabricator all through college, and later worked as an engineer in aerospace, nuclear reactors, and luxury water fountains. And because this is Los Angeles, he also had an acting stint. The aerospace industry has advanced guided munitions technologies by leaps and bounds. There are laser guided bombs that can hit incredibly precise targets. Joel saw an opportunity to take some of this technology and use it for humanitarian purposes.
Maria was not the last hurricane that Joel visited. Over the past few years, we have seen the team hustle around the globe to bend the world to the DASH vision on unmanned urban and rural package delivery. Government agencies were excited to deliver packages in remote areas. DASH also found incredibly motivated customers in Alaska, where airplanes have a hard time landing due to ice and fog conditions. A grocery chain owner in Alaska told the team “Every day I think about the value of groceries I have to refund because they rot while waiting for transportation.” Weather delays is the status quo for Alaskans. To borrow a Steve Blanks-ism, DASH found a “hair on fire customer.”
DASH has quietly built out a community of advocates and interested partners and customers globally and the world may soon see DASH packages zooming across the sky. The engineering team continues to improve the delivery vehicle, working at breakneck speeds to advance some really hard technology.
If you want to join a company bringing about the future of logistics, check out the openings here.
