Use These Lessons Learned by Dane Rudy
In May of 2016, at Purdue University, as one chapter was beginning, another one was ending. It wasn’t until years later that our paths would cross again as I reached out and gained the opportunity to meet Dane Rudy. He is a proud Purdue ME Alum, Founder of Leo Aerospace, and now a Business Development Lead at Second Order Effects. During the next thirty minutes that would eventually turn into an hour, we dove into the depth of Dane’s varied but deeply impactful experiences from the times he allowed himself to get lost in the beauty of nature as a kid to the grueling yet — times when he built an aerospace startup.
Childhood
Dane’s story, although it’s only just begun, is one filled with a strong sense of self-awareness and humility stemming back to his upbringing. “My parents were actually ranchers out in North Dakota. They owned and operated a ranch out there [ with] about 150 head of cattle and just under 1000 acres. They grew up in a time where they [had] to work very hard in a lot of ways. Both manual labor [and] also making really tough decisions when resources were thin, or the environment wasn’t cooperating very much and doing it with optimism and a very positive outlook in life.”
In many ways, our parents shape us into who we are today through much time, effort, and love. While reflecting upon his childhood, Dane recognized that his parents influenced him in two immense ways that he carries close with himself today. “I think the two things that they really taught me [have] been the value of hard work and … really enjoying that hard work.”
Growth
I’m reminded of the old adage, “If it were easy, everyone would do it.” If one were to gander around the halls (especially engineering halls), you would find many students working tirelessly or sleeplessly to complete the next assignment or project. There exists no degree that is simply handed out to students upon enrollment, instead, each degree requires a sizable amount of discipline and motivation, which
Dane would find out while he studied Mechanical Engineering. Interestingly, before he set sail on the adventure of learning Mechanical Engineering, he had difficulty in deciding upon which major to choose. “There were a lot of different things I wanted to learn and wanted to know and wanted to do. [I chose] the broadest one that I could pick to get as much exposure as I wanted to. And then … use my professional career to hone it a little bit more.”
As many of us do, Dane found that he had an interest in many areas including Aerospace. Yet, how does one go about including a different engineering focus on top of an already demanding major? Dane replied, “I think for me since I really cared about it, it forced me to be very involved in other ways…by taking elective classes or by joining organizations or even by starting organizations [where] I could go and try to learn those skills and kind of apply that engineering knowledge. But in an application that I was really passionate about.”
It didn’t take Dane long before he would create the very experience that he sought. “My sophomore year I started an organization called Purdue Orbital with a group of seven other really good friends. We wanted to apply our knowledge and learning in a very hands-on way, on a very complex system that was definitely out of our wheelhouse and kind of above our pay grade.” He had bold aspirations within aerospace, a notoriously challenging and costly arena; however, this would not stop Dane or his friends.
“We started Purdue Orbital to develop a launch system or very very small satellites, in the 25-kilogram range. You know we had a lot of fun, learned a lot, and realized that we were on to something. [We] developed a very solid systems architecture that worked in the real world and worked at cost and at scale.” Luckily, Purdue has continued to invest in their entrepreneurship community, which Dane and his partners were able to utilize. “We went [to] the Purdue Foundry, and did the Regional I-Corps Program and then got accepted into the National I-Corps Program, which we did out in Denver.”
For those who aren’t familiar with the aforementioned programs, the Purdue Foundry is the on-campus resource for graduate students, faculty, undergraduates, alumni, and community members to commercialize ideas or products. The I-Corps program was created by the National Science Foundation to translate promising ideas and technologies from the laboratory to the marketplace. Both the Purdue Foundry and I-Corps use experiential learning of customer and industry discovery, coupled with the first-hand investigation of industrial processes, to quickly assess the translational potential of inventions. In simpler terms, Dane and his partners were able to thoroughly validate their idea.
To make matters more interesting, Dane was interning at Northrop Grumman, a global aerospace and defense technology company, as he desired to gain industry experience and perspective. Fortunately, Northrop Grumman was more than understanding. Dane goes on to explain, “I disclosed that I had this intellectual property and an idea that I was pursuing in my free time, and so I went to their tech transfer office … to declare this to them and they’re like, alright, no problem.”
At this moment, I learned something new. I was surprised to see a leading company allow their employee to work on their own aerospace technology in their free time. Let this serve as a gentle reminder that despite the position that you hold within any industry, at the end of the day you are free to think, develop, and build interesting projects (in your free time).
After a very eventful summer, Dane had succeeded in bringing advisors on board just as the I-Corps program was ending, ultimately begging the question of whether his team would make that leap. The leap of faith that every entrepreneur dreads. The leap of crazy confidence within himself. The leap of fanatical passion in the idea. Dane remembers this moment as if it were yesterday, “We decided to quit our jobs and go it full time. We wrapped [the I-Corps process] up, we realized you know, now is the time to do this. The market looks as promising as it could be.”
Lessons Learned
During the next two years, Dane would go on to learn lessons he never imagined. “I think many astronauts have been quoted …along the lines of, you know, ‘starting a company or running a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass.’ You have no idea what’s going to happen. It’s probably going to be painful. You’re going to have to do a lot of things that you don’t know and you’re not good at, and that’s the day-to-day life.” Dane goes on to add a glimmer of hope, “But if you know the goal is something you really believe in and you know your value system is kind of oriented to really to take that sort of thing on and see it as an opportunity to learn instead of an opportunity to fail, then that’s good.”
Unfortunately, Leo Aerospace closed its doors in March of 2020. “It was definitely a tough call, but it was really the right thing to do for the team.” Leo Aerospace wasn’t a failure by any means rather it was an experience filled with countless lessons that have only advanced Dane’s intellectual toolbox.
Dane, as CEO of Leo Aerospace, handled the closing as gracefully as possible. According to every self-help leadership book, Dane has passed with flying colors, as he turned this difficult decision into a learning lesson for himself and most importantly his team. Dane shared, “It’s OK if we fail, we’re going to jump into it and we’re going to learn as much as we can. Odds are we probably aren’t going to make it. [Our] goal is going to be to learn and to try to do our best and to try to at least provide the industry with some information and some data. Why can we do it? Why didn’t it work for us? What decisions did we make to kind of get there?” His leadership at that moment serves as a testament to Dane’s character and dedication to the empowerment of his team.
Recently Dane has taken his experiences and newfound wisdom to Second Order Effects, an engineering consulting firm, specializing in high-reliability electronics. He serves in a loosely defined Business Development role; he was offered through a connection. “Dennis, our CEO, I got to know him very well when we were still building Leo Aerospace… [he] said you should come over and take a closer look at what we’re doing and see if you might be interested to join the team and luckily we found a good fit.”
The more Dane described Second Order Effects, the better it sounded for him, “My role here is really in business development and leading the business development efforts. And you know, for us and that means a lot of different things. It’s everything from understanding the market movement on kind of a macro level to where should we be spending our time and efforts in the future?”
Reflection
As our time together started to end, I couldn’t help but ask the age-old redo question: What would you do differently if you had a chance? Dane paused for a second but thought some more, “It’s a good question, [because] it makes you kind of think retroactively in a different light, you know?” After another thirty seconds had passed, he added “I think one of the big things that I’ve had to learn and kind of continue to learn is being comfortable in the unknown, you know? When you’re in situations that you really don’t know, you’re not comfortable at the path or you’ve never been there before, but that’s ok, and it’s a good thing.”
Being comfortable in the unknown. A challenge for many and a challenge for myself. The seemingly simple sentence begged for more of an explanation, so I asked for deeper clarification to which he responded with a story.
“I was exposed to that sort of thought process or philosophy maybe, by a math professor at Purdue. Ben McReynolds. I remember on the very first day of class he came in. He just kind of said hello, introduced himself and he just started writing on the chalkboard. He didn’t stop. He didn’t put down his chalk until the bell rang. He turned around and he said, ‘None of you are supposed to really understand what is going on here or what I just did, but I want you to embrace that feeling and think about it and sit in that until our next class because that is the best feeling you can possibly have. That means you’re about to learn something.’ And that was it.”
I hope you enjoyed the interview with Dane. I certainly learned a lot and hope you did too :)
You can find Dane on LinkedIn @danerudy .
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