The conversation that follows is with Justin Steinke, Senior Vice President of Commercial Business at Spright. As a senior executive of one of the more sophisticated drone operators in the market, Justin knows the drone industry inside and out. He is just as comfortable discussing macro industry trends as he is getting into the weeds of enabling technologies. Needless to say, we did both. 

We start with a long discussion on the state of the commercial drone market: the remaining unaddressed pain points, technology gaps, enterprise adoption, upcoming market inflection points, the regulatory situation, and the best practices employed by successful drone businesses. 

Throughout the conversation you'll hear Justin highlight the importance of bringing aviation expertise and mindset as a prerequisite of success, and how this is still a rare find in the industry.

We also touched on the relative pros and cons of B2B and B2C drone delivery business models in terms of time to market and ease of proving a safety case. 

And before taking a dive into the medical delivery use case, Justin shared what the Part 107 BVLOS waiver process looks like and what went into their 300 page submission to the FAA.

And as we talked about the medical delivery use case, Justin went into a much appreciated level of detail describing the CONOPS, all of the associated elements, value proposition for hospitals and communities, and other operational and product details that are often overlooked. 

Towards the end of the conversation, we also talked about UTM, detect and avoid, drone type certification, operational approvals, and of course advice to entrepreneurs who are considering entering the drone market.

Justin Steinke is the Senior Vice President of Commercial Business at Spright where he is focused on delivering scalable unmanned solutions into medical use cases as well as providing turnkey inspection services to electric utilities. With 20 years of aviation experience and start up leadership, Justin is highly experienced in system design, manufacturing, analytics solutions and communication systems for the DoD and UAS industries. Prior to Spright, Justin led teams at Volair, LLC, GE Aviation AiRXOS, Data Into Knowledge (DN2K) and Simulyze, Inc., across engineering, product management and strategic business development. Justin holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Aviation Technology & Finance and is a Commercial Rated Pilot and former Flight Instructor.