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Nathan Poon Reduces Air Transport Costs for Logistics Carriers
Hyper-Efficient Autonomous Air Transport

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In today’s episode:
Introducing Avol Aerospace
Detailing their business model, tech, traction and team
Why do we need this now?
How you can help them!
- Angelica 💜
Featured Startup: Avol Aerospace

Autonomous electric blended-wing aircraft
Avol helps logistics companies increase profit-per-flight 12x by operating an air transport service using autonomous electric blended-wing aircraft.
🔗 Check them out: avolaerospace.com

📍 Headquarters
Brooklyn, New York
⚙️ Technology
Avol operates a novel air transport logistics service using patented autonomous electric blended-wing aircraft with 60% to 30x more volume capacity than competitor aircraft, enabling higher load factors and up to 12x more profit per flight while maintaining VTOL and long range capabilities.
💲 Business Model
Avol operates as an air transport logistics service, selling air transport services directly to businesses. Their beachhead market is same-day delivery for kidney transplants, charging an average $1,600 per trip with 25,000 kidneys transplanted each year ($40M SOM). Within a year from launch, the exact same kidney transplant network can be used to start shipping same-day eCommerce, medical supplies, other organs, and spare parts along the same routes ($8B TAM). Avol’s key success metrics are number of flights flown (revenue) and flights/day (growth).
🚀 Traction
Total funding: $500,000 in investments & grants
Investors: Alchemist Accelerator, Naeem Zafar (Telesense), Brandon Kuipers (Zox eCommerce)
They have 2 pilots starting in 2024, 3+ more in the pipeline
Built 3 prototypes with 1 more done in about 8 weeks
🤝 Founding Team
Dr. Nathan Poon: CEO
Spent the past 10 years building logistics, AI, and mechanical products for DHL, FedEx, UPS, and other logistics carriers
Received his PhD in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley
Built/helped build 3 startups from the ground up (1 acquired, 3 still operating) in robotics and AI
His work has been awarded 3rd place at Amazon’s Global Startup Competition, listed as Top 200 EdTech startups globally, and 1st place at the UC LAUNCH competition
Recipient of the 1st place National Occupational Research Agenda award for his PhD research, the Barack Obama President’s Volunteer Award, and Cal Alumni Leadership Award
Dr. Matthew Sargeant: CTO
Spent the last 14 years building and advising industrial companies and startups
Received his PhD in Aeronautical Engineering from University of Cambridge
Developed high-speed aerodynamics for SAX40, the revolutionary blended wing body design created for the Silent Aircraft Initiative, a joint Cambridge, MIT, and Boeing project
His consulting experience includes 6 years at McKinsey, 4 years as a Partner at Ogilvy Consulting and 2 years as a Partner at Genioo

💁🏻♀️ Why Now?
The fundamental problem in logistics is that existing aircraft reach their volume limits far before their payload limit. This severely limits the utility of existing aircraft, which fly at 45-55% of their total revenue generating capacity. But demand for air transport is growing extremely quickly:
The eCommerce market, which is reliant on express shipping, is $4.1T worldwide and growing at a CAGR of 11.5%
Increased pressure on logistics firms by governments, shareholders, and customers to reduce carbon emissions have increased demand for electric air transport by 33% in the past 2 years, growing at a CAGR of 19.8%
The global air freight market is $714B worldwide, and expected to grow to $1.2T by 2027 at a CAGR of 6.1%, with short term growth of 39% as supply chains recover from COVID and the Russia-Ukraine war
Avol is launching at an opportunistic time with unprecedented demand with a patented novel blended-wing aircraft design with 60% more internal volume and 50% higher efficiency, enabling customers to generate up to 12x more revenue per flight.
Secondly, UAV regulation was severely underdeveloped for the past decade. But UAV standardization with FAA, EASA, and JARUS-SORA have enabled rapid development of aircraft with 2-3x faster paths to revenue generation such as Avol’s air freight-as-a-service, enabling the vast majority of air transport customers experience high-capacity, zero-emissions flight without the risk of spending $100M+ on a new aircraft.

How Can the Community Help?
💸 Investors
Avol is raising a $2M round now to fulfill launches in New Zealand, LATAM, and the US worth $3M+, and to complete regulatory and commercial certification of its Avol-10 and Avol-60 aircraft.
🛠 Engineers
FAA certification engineer
Robotics engineer, who can CAD, program microcontrollers, and take leadership on electronics stack (flight controllers, ESCs, battery management, etc.)

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Made with 💜 by Angelica @ The Climate Scout
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