In each of our podcasts, we ask top hardware entrepreneurs the same 10 questions to better understand the challenges and best practices in starting a hardware company. In Season 2 Episode 5, Lemnos’s Eric Klein speaks with Dave Merrill, CEO and Clint Cope, co-founder of Elroy Air, a Lemnos portfolio company. Elroy Air recently announced that it had secured $4.6 million in seed funding to develop its large autonomous cargo delivery aircraft.

Dave: We are a transportation company in the aerospace space. We are developing a system to carry goods, to carry cargo by air over hundreds of miles. Clint and I realized it could be done and that it could change the world if it was done, and that we were uniquely suited to do it. That was so exciting that we just got started immediately.

Dave: I was at Stanford doing symbolic systems, then I did a Master’s in Computer Science, then went to the MIT Media Lab, and basically fell in love with hardware. I grew up building physical things, like woodworking and building things out of metal. When I discovered electronics and hardware, it was this amazing fusion of my interests in software with building physical stuff. I never really looked back.

Clint: I think I always had like a pretty natural mechanical curiosity and an aptitude toward that. It probably started with radio-controlled cars. I would be hacking parts and moving them back and forth in-between kits. But I think the moment that my parents knew that I was going be involved in hardware was the day my father and my grandfather were struggling to install a hanging toaster in our kitchen, and they tried every which way possible. They were about to put it back in the box, when I grabbed my grandfather and said, “The bracket’s on backward, Grandpa.” Sure enough, Dad and Grandpa turned the bracket around, and the toaster fit.

Dave: We both became very interested and experienced in building things that fly, and realized, “Hey, there seems to be a lot of noise and a lot of competition at the small scale, like the small camera drones, small delivery drones scale, but it seems like there are opportunities to make something bigger and useful that nobody’s doing yet at a larger scale.” So that’s where we got excited and started working on Elroy Air.

Dave: At Elroy we have a handful of advisors that we call upon them when we need their input, and it’s been really helpful. We’re an aerospace company and a transportation company. Right now we’re in our prototype phase and our seed phase. So we’ve gone a little heavier on business and technical advisors, but I think over time we’re very likely to have some key advisors, or even board members, that come out of big aerospace.

Dave: Lemnos is awesome. I met Jeremy when Lemnos was just starting. So, when I was leaving 3D Robotics, I think you mentioned, “Hey, you want to come and be an Entrepreneur in Residence with us?” That seemed like a great next step,