1 .旧金山的无人机创业正在聚集
Galusha一直对飞行着迷，2012年他成立了 一家无人机公司Fighting Walrus，其产品 iDroneLink及相关ios app在2014年上线，让用户可以通过手机或平板控制一个遥控飞机。用户包括做检查的屋顶工人，想抓住优质金枪鱼的渔夫等，每天Galusha都会惊讶地发现有意料之外的领域对他的产品感兴趣。
Galusha在Indiegogo上进行了一次众筹，并决定联合那些志同道合的，围绕尖端技术进行商业化的无人机爱好者，成立了 SF Drones Startup Meetup 。现在Meetup 有1300成员，是美国这类群体中最大的之一。
事实上，一大波无人机制造者和操作者在旧金山的集合并非巧合，硅谷一直擅长在新的创业市场抓住机会，而现在，无人机就是最热的市场之一。
在此情况下，一个相关的创业生态系统正在聚集。虽然目前还没有孵化器、加速器或者VC专门致力于无人机相关的解决方案，但各方的关注都明显上升了。这就是为什么相比圣地亚哥或者华盛顿的无人机群体，硅谷更以商业化为导向。
无人机创业公司 Drone Deploy的业务发展副总监Gretchen West表示认同，这里围绕无人机所发生的是独一无二的。很少有像湾区这样集中的无人机枢纽，这里的相关资源正在发展，协作性的社区非常繁荣。
2 .围绕无人机法规，开展社区协作
亚马逊、Facebook、Google都开始讨论无人机，催化了创业。 Galusha认为过去几年的改变很明显。尤其是亚马逊改变了公众的看法，使人们意识到机器人可以用来做类似于送快递这样的事情。加州风险投资公司Lux Capital合伙人Bilal Zuberi认为，每个人都开始关注，尤其是硅谷的参与者。
另一个重要原因，是法规的更新。在二月中，联邦航空管理局 Federal Aviation Administration发布了关于小型无人机商业用途的指导方针，无人机生态群很高兴，因为此指南从根本上使无人机合法化了。 Frost & Sullivan的首席行业分析师Michael Blades指出，现在有些原本处于观望的投资者将进入。
该指南被广泛认为比预期要宽松。根据指南，无人机要在操作员视线范围内飞，不能爬升超过500英尺，不能飞越人群。联邦航空管理局还规定小型商业无人家不需要商业申请商业飞机师执照，而是申请一个更容易获得的UAS operator certificate。
现在湾区出现了以更有组织方式对相关政策进行考虑及游说的团体，例如亚马逊成立的 UAS Coalition。无人机解决方案是一个全新领域，没有人愿意分享秘密，但是当涉及规则以及无人机的合法化，生态系统内出现了很多合作。
3 .软件，硬件以及介乎两者之间
Drone Deploy 已经有一定有名，种子期融了 2 百万美元，做实时航空成像，并在云端处理。Drone Deploy与无人机兼容，Drone Deploy与一系列硬件公司合作，并把它的软件解决方案卖给采矿、建筑和农业等领域的公司。选择在硅谷使它靠近大型合作伙伴，例如NASA。
其他创业公司还包括，e Airware, Skydio and Berkeley solution 3-D Robotics. Skydio募集300美元种子轮，并使用传感器使无人机在基于外部环境飞行时更加精确化。 3-D Robotics,上一轮募资5000万美元，是北美最大的个人无人机制造商并计划通过资本扩展。
除了这些热门的，还有一些相对少知名的，包括前面介绍的Fighting Walrus。这些小团队往往只有2-3人，针对不同利基市场，提供特定组建或是飞行中的一环。
目前该领域融资较高的是硬件类，这帮助无人机走向大众消费者。未来几年会变化，作为平台的软件解决方案将增强
Blades 认为目前虽然有一些做控制系统的，还有一些做传感器的，还有做平台制造商的竞争比较激烈。但预计现存的50-75%无人机公司将在五年内小时，只有最强壮的能生存下来。目前无人机的复杂性还只是很初级的，未来十年无人机将有令人震惊的应用，从建筑和能源、摄影、农业等一批行业都将依赖于成熟的无人机网络。
Zuberi认为应该把无人机作为一个做有趣事情的平台，而非一个终端产品。无人机作为一个工具出现，但像很多技术那样，随着时间，将具有改变游戏规则的潜力。很多有趣的技术始于玩具般的开始，无论是电脑还是手机，但后来变成了我们赖以生活的集合体。
4 .无人机公司的募资在飙升
无人机投资2014年是标志性一年，相比2013涨了超过100%，达到1亿
风投公司Lux Capital开始支持无人机和机器人公司，Lux 与典型的硅谷无人机不同，因为合伙人只投资能解决真实世界问题的公司。投资包括3D打印、农业智能，数据驱动的医学和能源公司。
2015年预计至少有同样多资金进入无人机领域。甚至关注技术和石油燃气的VC也想来分一块蛋糕。不仅是VC，天使投资人，还有大企业基金也进入了， Airware 从GE获得募资。
The possibility and wonder around flight has always enthralled Bryan Galusha. He considered becoming a pilot to satisfy this passion—and then had a realization.
“There’s always that risk of crashing,” he said.
Instead, he found a way to combine a safer form of flying with his avid interest in video game technology: the field of drones. Three years ago, Galusha, who has lived in and around San Francisco since 2008, launched a startup focused on unmanned flight called Fighting Walrus. Its hardware, iDroneLink, allows users to connect their smartphones or iPads to a personal drone and control it at distances of up to a half mile.
The hardware, along with the associated iOS app, went live in December 2014, and is serving customers that range from roofers doing inspections to fishermen seeking to catch the best tuna in the area. Every day, Galusha says, he’s surprised and delighted to learn of a different, unanticipated sector with interest in the product.
As Galusha ran an Indiegogo campaign related to his new company, he also got the idea to bring together other like-minded drone enthusiasts, especially those creating businesses around the cutting-edge technology. The SF Drones Startup Meetup was the result.
Now 1,300 members strong, the meetup is one of the largest such groups in the country.The fact that such a large assemblage of drone makers and operators is gathering in the San Francisco Bay Area is not coincidental. Silicon Valley is well positioned to seize on opportunities in new startup markets—and right now, one of the hottest new markets is drones.
As a result, there’s an ecosystem within an ecosystem coalescing around drones in the San Francisco area. Though there aren’t yet incubators, accelerators or VC firms exclusively dedicated to drone-based solutions, there has been a noticeable uptick in interest from all of these players, says Galusha. That’s why, compared to drone meetup groups and communities in places like San Diego or D.C., he says the activity in San Francisco is “more business oriented,” serious and concentrated.
Gretchen West, vice president of business development and regulatory affairs for Drone Deploy, a startup based in San Francisco’s SoMa neighborhood, agrees that what’s happening in her city around drones is unique.
“There’s not a lot of concentrated hubs [for drones] quite like there is in the Bay Area,” she says. “Resources here are developing. It’s a pretty robust community that’s very much collegial and collaborative. I don’t know that you’d find that in most other places.”
Community collaboration around drone regulations
What has really changed in the past few years is awareness and interest in drones, according to Galusha. Amazon, in particular, changed the public consciousness and made people realize robots have the capability to do things like deliver packages.
Everyone took notice—especially Silicon Valley’s players, says Bilal Zuberi, a partner at Menlo Park, Calif.-based venture firm Lux Capital.
“The startup ecosystem is excited because Amazon talked about drones. Facebook talked about drones. Google talked about drones,” Zuberi says.
The other major, recent development is regulations. In mid-February, the Federal Aviation Administration released it proposed guidelines around commercial use of small unmanned aircraft. There was some sense of satisfaction and glee within the drone ecosystem: The guidelines fundamentally made flying drones legal.
Michael Blades, Frost & Sullivan’s lead industry analyst, says with the framework out, “some investors who have been waiting in the wings will dive in now.”
The proposed regulations are widely considered less strict than expected. Among the rules, drones have to fly within an operator’s eyesight and can’t climb above 500 feet or fly over people. The FAA also clarified that the license required for commercial small drone operations doesn’t have to be a commercial pilot license, but a special “UAS operator certificate,” which will be easier to obtain.
Now, especially in the Bay Area, there’s unity around regulatory and policy considerations. Groups—such the UAS Coalition that Amazon launched—have sprung up or merged to lobby in a more organized fashion.
Drone solutions are such a new area that, generally-speaking, “nobody wants to share their secret sauce,” Galusha says. But when it comes to regulations and ensuring that drone businesses can legally operate, there’s great collaboration in the ecosystem.
West says Drone Deploy was not expecting two of the restrictions: the visual line of sight requirement for where drones may go, and the requirement of one person per drone.
“Our software can manage fleets of drones…so there are positives and negatives to the framework,” she says. “There’s really a long way to go to enable this industry.”
For the most part, West says, the contingent of Bay Area drone startups agree with the general rules, yet would like to see limits on flying over people lifted.
Zuberi sees the FAA’s actions as key, making drone flying legal and setting some needed parameters. In a blog post last month, he called the FAA regulation framework a “watershed moment.”
“Any industry can benefit from aerial robotics but up until now it’s technically been illegal in America,” he says. “The regulations aren’t draconian laws …They could have easily said that all drone operators would have to have a pilot’s license, but they didn’t. [The regulations] are the kinds of things that will have many more companies interested in drones.”
San Francisco Panorama 3Software, hardware and everything between
So who’s who in San Francisco’s drone startup scene, and what are they up to?
Drone Deploy is one of a handful of well-known companies. The startup, which has about $2 million in seed funding, does real-time aerial imagery and processes everything in the Cloud. West says its capabilities allow for automated drone flight. Drone Deploy is working with a number of different hardware companies and selling its software solution to companies in mining, construction and agriculture primarily.
The startup’s trio of cofounders are South Africans who grew up flying hobby planes. Their shared interest in these sorts of flying objects inspired their focus on drones. Locating the company in San Francisco put them close to big corporate partners like NASA, which only helps them scale, West says.
Other major drone startups in and around San Francisco include Airware, Skydio and Berkeley solution 3-D Robotics. Galusha calls these startups the “core group.” Each has serious financial backing, a growing count of team members and, most importantly, traction.
Skydio, for one, recently raised a $3-million seed round and uses sensors and processors to navigate drones more precisely with respect to their surroundings. 3-D Robotics, in its last funding round, reaped a whopping total of $50 million. The company is North America’s largest personal-drone manufacturer and plans to use the cash infusion to expand both its hardware and software operations.
Besides these heavy hitters, there are dozens of less visible startups, including Fighting Walrus. Galusha says these smaller guys are often two- or three-person teams that are taking on distinct niches of the drone sector, providing one very specific component or mastering one step in the flying process.
The drone ventures scoring the highest revenue at this point tend to be hardware ones, making very easy-to-fly aircraft for general consumers. That will change in the next few years, as analysts see the greatest potential in software solutions that treat drones as platforms for enhanced functionality.
“There are a few companies that make the control system and a few making the sensors and a lot more competition in platform manufacturers,” Blades says. “But that’s becoming played out.”
Blades predicts that 50 to 75 percent of the drone companies in existence will be gone within five years. Only the strongest, most transformational companies will survive.
The sophistication of today’s drones only scratches the surface of what’s possible and how amazing drone applications will be within the next decade, he says. Expect a wide swath of industries, from construction and energy, to photography to agriculture to rely on extremely mature robot networks, he says.
Zuberi urges thinking about drones as a platform to do exciting things, not as the end product. Unmanned aircraft began as tools for hobbyists but have game-changing potential, which is the pattern among a number of technology products over time.
“All interesting tech starts as toys in the beginning, whether you’re talking about computers or iPhones,” he says. “Then they turn into massive entities that we can’t live without.”
Soaring funding levels for some drone companies
As far as investments in drones, last year was an absolute banner year. VC funding topped $100 million—a 100 percent increase over 2013.
CB Insights, which breaks down this massive VC spend, shows that a substantial chunk of it is from the big-name, big-spending firms in and around the Valley, not new investors or specific drone investors. They’re simply making drone solutions part of their diverse portfolios.
Zuberi’s firm, Lux Capital, has started to back drone and robotics companies. Zuberi describes Lux as different from prototypical Silicon Valley ones, because the partners only invest in companies solving real-world problems. Some of their portfolio reflects a particular technology bend, with 3D printing and artificial intelligence represented along with data-driven medicine and energy startups.
“In the broadly defined world of robotics a lot of interesting things are happening,” he says, “and we want to be there.”
For 2015 Blades is expecting at least as much VC money going toward drones as last year. In his mind, any VC with a concentration on tech or even on oil and gas is going to want a piece of the enormous drone pie. Besides VCs, the other drone startup development expected for 2015 is the emergence of more deals between defense companies and startups or commercial companies with them.
“It’s not just VCs and angels. Corporate funding is starting to make its way [into this ecosystem.] Airware raised money from GE. And these large enterprise companies are starting to invest too,” West says. “Certainly a lot of money is flowing into this startup community.”
（1776供稿 清控科创创业研究部翻译 ）
