Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Of, wow, this is happening. This is the hotbed, the literal epicenter in my opinion of UAS drones autonomy. I mean, that's why I moved back to where I'm from. I'm proud of it. But from just an objective standpoint, I haven't seen this culture, this ecosystem for unmanned aircraft anywhere else in the country.
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[00:00:50] Speaker B: All right. Hey, this is Jon Ramstead, and welcome to the Hanger X podcast, where we interview and have conversations with some of the greatest leaders in aviation and aerospace, all things aerospace. And today we have an incredible guest, Johnny Ryan. Johnny, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Thanks for having me.
[00:01:07] Speaker B: So recently I was up in Grand Forks, North Dakota, which I'm sure everybody has gone there for at least a vacation. I was doing some work with the 319th Reconnaissance Wing at the Grand Forks Air Force Base, and they are in charge of all unmanned assets globally for the Air Force, which is also most of the military. And I did a strategic planning retreat with the wing, which encompassed two groups and about 16 squadrons with all their senior leadership. And they are in. They're doing an incredible amount of work. They're very collaborative with the state and the local up there in North Dakota. And they had booked this place for us to come do our off site. And it was a place called the Hive. And we walk in and we're like, what is this place? It was incredible. It was like all things vtol, uas, drones. It was like, I'm like, I didn't know something like this existed, first of all in North Dakota. And then so, Johnny, I meet you and you start telling me this entire story. First of all, your journey in your career through doing your first drone startup, to getting absolutely hooked in the space, becoming a coder, but now being actually part of this place called the Hive. And what struck me was, and I didn't even know existed, this incredible infrastructure that is developed around Grand Forks to support this movement that's happening in this entire space. Federal resources, state, local, private investments, collaborations with the Air Force, creating facilities and testing and expertise that I didn't even know existed, because we know some of the other drone incubators out there too. So tell us about how you got involved and what is the origin of now what has become known as the Hive.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: Sure.
So the way that I got involved, I had my hands in a few different drone companies building some software, some hardware. First couple generations of a drone in a box solution that I'd worked with with my partners.
[00:03:08] Speaker B: Now when you say drone in a box for somebody that doesn't know what that is, what is it?
[00:03:11] Speaker A: So basically I was working on a drone that would sit idle in a box until some moment where it's needed. And it basically would deploy on a text message and come up to 150ft on a fiber optic tether and basically give eyes in the sky to swat firefighters, anyone going into a potential active shooter situation just to give more clarity for their planning, essentially.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: So they get that instant situational awareness, which could be life or death for sure.
[00:03:42] Speaker A: I mean, if you're a fighter, fighter coming into a situation, I don't think you're always prepared for, you know, somebody sitting on a roof with a sniper rifle. Right. So this would basically give eye in the sky when you need it. And the biggest thing was no battery dependency. So you'd have a fiber optic line that could keep this thing in the air as long as you wanted. So that was kind of my background into drone development, getting into the building software around drones, utilizing open source platforms like Pixar and different open source hardware platforms that you can, you can quickly build, you know, and test solutions just by learning online, essentially. And so that's where my coder knowledge kind of slapped into the, to the aviation world real quickly.
And I, what I stumbled upon was there was a, there was an itch in Grand Forks for all this knowledge. All the people that have been working on drones and drone technology for the last 10 years, I mean, a long time in North Dakota, there's been a lot of people putting a lot of work into it. There wasn't necessarily a physical place for the everyday business to happen for the, you know, not every day does everyone need to go in the field and test a drone or test something that they built or a sensor or cold weather testing. There's a missing part which was the physical, you know, office kind of a flex type of setup where people can come collaborate even more. So collaborate in person. There's a lot of sensitivity around different things that various folks build, whether it's patents, whether it's technology that they want to utilize with other North Dakota companies or if it's partnerships. A lot more happens in person physically.
It happened to be that my company, we needed some very fast Internet for uploads of data for the product that we were building and the fastest speeds I could find at any place that our company as a startup could afford, where, I mean, we weren't even in the same category. And so what happened was the city of Grand Forks had already bought a building. They were kind of in the middle of what were they going to do with this building. And myself and another drone company moved into the building as kind of the first two tenants. I moved in basically to leverage two things. To leverage the Internet connection that they had that then they would, you know, make it affordable for me to use this Internet connection. I think at the time it was 300Mbps upload, which was, you know, before it was everyone's looking for the download speeds. How do you download a movie quickly or, you know, watch it so fast? Well, now it's with drones. The bottleneck is getting the data from the drone and the memory card up to the cloud.
[00:06:17] Speaker B: So upload for the processing. Processing that you're doing to serve your clients.
[00:06:21] Speaker A: Yep. And so they had in this building that used to be the printing press for a newspaper company, Grand Forks, basically they had moved the majority of their folks out and they had 300 megabit Internet. And I think, I think it was a couple hundred dollars for me to rent the space. And there was so much space there because it was this 30,000 square foot building that really didn't have any tenants left after the newspaper was kind of downsizing, downsizing, becoming more digital, moving out. And so I moved in as just a one man band to work on my product. And at the same time I really wanted to support the mayor. The mayor had been instrumental in supporting UAS coming to North Dakota. And all these companies that want to do stuff, they're very business proactive. He played 14 years in the NHL, just head on straight and just very proactive and getting companies to do the things they need to do to support this UAS kind of cluster. Another drone company moved in upstairs and we just kind of, we were under the assumption that at some point there would be this big renovation for this building and some bigger thing was going to come and was going to happen. And it just so happens that the city was awarded a grant that they applied for an EDA grant, match grant for $1.2 million to upfit the building with the intention of bringing UAS Commerce into Grand Forks, bringing businesses in the US Industry into this particular building where they could meet, collaborate, support each other, be competitive most days of the week, but, but team up on different projects as they come that would ultimately benefit the state. And so I gotta tell you, what.
[00:07:59] Speaker B: You guys did with that, that is one of the most incredible incubator spaces I've ever seen. Yeah, it's. It is so usable and so collaborative. And how many tenants are.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: You saw it before you would you. If you're a dental manager before you would think, how could we possibly do this Piece by piece, because it was so specific to this historical building that had been there forever, that was literally built to hold a major printing press operation and everything that goes with that, you know, and so to piece by piece kind of renovate it doesn't seem like something that would work. Well, we went for it. The mayor, this was his big initiative. We got the grant, we started construction. And this was all during COVID And so obviously it was looming of how do you get, you know, we're about to have this brand new 2/3 or maybe half or more renovated building because we started with just phase one, which was this match that we got from the eda, which was amazing. And basically day one, we're thinking, okay, this is UAS focused. We got to stick to our mission. And our mission was supporting UAS beyond visual line of sight operations. Any of these companies come to Grand Forks that want to test do operations, maybe they're connected to the military, maybe they're not. Maybe they're doing food delivery, maybe they're doing medical delivery right to remote areas. But how do we support all those companies? How do we attract them to Grand Forks or North Dakota if they're not already here? How do we make it easier for them to connect to the right answers on funding opportunities? How do we bring some partners in on funding? So there's always different questions. The one of the bigger looming things was Covid, because Covid turned just the whole working from an office up on its head. So basically, you have all these folks and now are comfortable.
And I've said the word folks today about 19 times.
[00:09:46] Speaker B: Well, you are from North Dakota.
[00:09:47] Speaker A: I don't normally say.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: I'm from Minnesota. So, you know, it's like natural to me. Yes.
[00:09:51] Speaker A: It's just. It's coming out of me today. But basically, you know, coming out from working from home, where people get really comfortable doing that, to have a physical office space where you're trying to attract companies to then come back to work, come back to the office. We've been very fortunate. We've learned that a lot of stuff in the UAS world, whether it's private or connected to military, some of it just has to be done in person. There's just an aspect of it that if you're trying to catch John on this one day and you just need to sign off on this and that Tuesday you guys are going to be flying some mission together. It doesn't always happen the same way as other industries where maybe email would.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: Suffice or what's also happened there. If you guys are starting to, you know, doing engineering even around software or the configuration with hardware, and you have a little different application than me for sure, I can go over and talk to you and say, hey, what do you think about this? And all of a sudden ideas just get spawned from having this entrepreneurial, innovative environment.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: For sure. There's, there's been so many times where the right folks are in town, they're talking about what they're working on, what they're testing, what sensors. And then someone says, what about that mixed with this or that? And then okay, we gotta go rethink this whole thing. Cause I mean there's no pun intended. There's just so many moving parts to the drone, uas. Anything in this, you know, up in the skies as you call it? I mean it's just now, it's now.
[00:11:16] Speaker B: How many tenants do you have in the hive right now?
[00:11:18] Speaker A: Sure. So we have, we have some that are full time tenants, we have some that are just members. But across all of our companies we have, we're up to 28 companies that have some type of full time commitment, meaning either a monthly membership where they come when they're in town, or they have their North Dakota location in the Hive. And then we have some companies that their entire company operates out of the Hive. So kind of the whole gambit.
And a lot of them will maybe start as like a monthly kind of flex membership, get the feel of what we're offering. And they might just use our boardroom for their board meetings or they have their off site training where they want to have their executive leadership. Kind of like you guys did with the Air Force. They'll have that maybe in the hive. But it usually turns into more and more and more commitment from them to be in the hive and then a lot of that evolves into maybe more full time space. But since we started we with our grant with the eda, we couldn't legally sign any leases until a certain date when everything was, you know, all the I's were dotted and T's were crossed. And so our original opening date was, I'll probably botch. This was June of 2023.
And so what, 16?
[00:12:33] Speaker B: That's quick ramp up.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: 18 months ago, I started with the city of Grand Forks to run the Hive. And I passed off the operations of my other companies to my partners in California, just like focused only on this and would work full time for the city. And so I joined the September before that. So just getting everything ready, getting the building, finished construction. We have all this new construction. But there was such an eagerness and excitement around the hype that myself and others were building on. Hey, we're going to do this. Do you want to be a part of it? We need the right partners right away. I think that's essential in any of this is if you get the legitimate kind of doers and the people that do more than they say and get stuff done. That's a very solid core for this whole.
[00:13:19] Speaker B: Yeah. Now, talk about the right partners, because there is a reason that this has become this epicenter of things that are really happening with the uas. Because you got the Grand Forks Air Force Base.
[00:13:31] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:13:32] Speaker B: Right. And then I want you to share about what else is kind of in that area and why this is such a unique place that's attracting not only talent, but significant capital and investment into this whole world.
[00:13:44] Speaker A: So although the Hive has only been around for a year and a half, a lot of these drone companies have been in Grand Forks or North Dakota doing very cutting edge, first of its kind operations for 10 years. Plus, we've had the UAS summit started in Grand Forks. Now that's grown up to, I think, a thousand attendees every year. In the fall, a very big conference for us. We had Lucky Palmer was at the last one doing a talk from Anduril. And so some have been part of the UAS Summit, some have been part of creating kind of the other out in the field, operational aspects of it. We have grand sky, which is a first of its kind, a very, very unique entity. Yeah.
[00:14:24] Speaker B: Say more about what grand sky is and who was behind it, the vision and what it is now.
[00:14:29] Speaker A: Yep. So Tom Sawyer is the vision. He's the guy behind Grand Sky.
They've been in Grand Forks for 10 years now, and they have a very, very unique business model that is 10 years into a 50 year private public partnership, essentially between the United States Air Force, the Grand Forks county and Grandsky. So grand sky came up with this agreement. They basically leased land from the Air Force base. And just adjacent to the gates of the Air Force Base is the Grand Sky Technology park, which essentially has, you know, in my mind, it has the Coca Cola and the Pepsi My wife will hate the soda references of, you know, military unmanned companies. They have Northrop Grumman is one of their tenants. They have General Atomics and so basically grand sky will run the operations. They have RQ9 or MQ9 reapers flying out of there every day. They have other testing that they're doing. They have some have some weather drones that basically will deploy every day up to 25,000ft and give micro climate weather data so they can keep operations running on a day to day. So maybe the general weather says Red Flag, they can't fly these operations that day. Well this will give them more specific weather data and potentially let them fly and keep operations going.
Grantsky has received I think $28 million in match funding from the state of North Dakota. So there's a huge support from the legislature to support Grantsky and all the companies that they're bringing under them. I think they've matched that with about 150 million in investment.
[00:16:09] Speaker B: How does what's happening there? Because I'm thinking about these big companies, the Lockheed's, the Boeings, the MTSI people that have a presence up there. How does that benefit the people, the one or two man or 20 or 30 person company back at the hive developing you know, a solution to a problem for sure.
[00:16:27] Speaker A: So a good example of that, there's a project going on right now called Project Ultra and it's basically a logistics project, I think $20 million testing and they're flying 15 kilogram payload 100 nautical miles from Grand Sky, Grand Forks Air Force Base to Cavalier Space Force Base Station and back. And basically, you know, most of the companies that I can even think of, that we have locally, there's some part of that that they're all meeting regularly, that they offer part of those services for this greater project that has seen all sides of how do they carry this payload in this weather.
[00:17:07] Speaker B: So carrying a payload that heavy with a drone that far is clearly a problem that has not been solved well yet.
[00:17:14] Speaker A: It's something that everyone says, oh it's so easy. And you see all these companies advertising they do it, but fact of the matter is it's not that easy. And so they are testing that and there's a lot of companies that are involved in that project particularly. And so you know, projects like that come into North Dakota or Grand Forks and they might be connected to the military, they might be privately funded, but usually it's they kind of need all sides of, of sensors and software and radars and kind of the whole gamut for any of the project to happen, you have to have everything right. Grand sky also has the North Dakota Great Plains or Northern Plains test site, which is now coming up on their 10th year anniversary. We're going to have an event next week and basically they run all the operations for beyond visual line of sight, or BV loss as people call it, that hear it over and over. But basically that's. How do you fly, how do you legally fly a drone beyond what your eyes can see as the operator, you know, so the minute you can't see a drone with your eyes, not through the controller, not through a video feed, then it becomes something that needs a waiver from the FAA to do that legally. And so they have technology, radars, different C2 communications across the state that they can basically monitor from grand sky from their MNOC kind of command center. And they can, they can operate those aircraft safely and they're monitoring and you.
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Guys have the waivers to do all that. So.
[00:18:39] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:18:40] Speaker B: So North Dakota is kind of unique in this kind of test environment also and development environment, for sure.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: They have, I think, grants. Guy has over 40 waivers for different flight operations, depending on what they need to do with the faa.
The test site's great on getting people comfortable filling out those waivers, operating safely. And then. And then you have, you know, manned aircraft like you would do when you're taking off, checking out all the radars, you know, just getting all your bells and whistles in order and then you're mixing that with what's coming from UAS operations and different data that you get from radars or telemetry or.
[00:19:10] Speaker B: So what's some of the testing I might do up there that's giving the designers, the developers that kind of unique feedback that's kind of unique to the North Dakota area.
[00:19:20] Speaker A: Well, I'd say the most obvious one is cold weather testing. Of course, there's plenty of companies who we've talked to that they want to, but they just kind of laugh that they know they're not even close to ready for that. You know, they're like, if the threshold now is 10 degrees and you get hit with 50 below, you know, in snowstorms, that's, you know. But really we hit all sides of the weather. I mean, in the summer it'll get 95 degrees, 100% humidity. That takes a toll on electronics, you know, things like that.
[00:19:48] Speaker B: But also the BV loss testing is very difficult to do.
[00:19:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:19:52] Speaker B: And I would also think that being able to, if you have a military or any kind of classified type mission.
[00:19:59] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:20:00] Speaker B: Being in that environment where you're actually communicating with the actual military, their radars, getting that feedback, getting the telemetry, and there's probably. Those are things you can't talk about on here. But that is. That is priceless to get some of that data. It's very hard to get to.
[00:20:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think when you get the opportunity to learn at a level that would be disciplined enough to be using military radar, I think that covers the commercial space pretty well.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: That's a good point.
[00:20:27] Speaker A: Right. So if you do it there, and that's just our big plug for North Dakota. I mean, if you're doing it at that level, then you go into other states with that blueprint and maybe your. Your delivery system or whatever your drone's doing or for agriculture, I think it's just going to be. The standard is going to be that much higher of, you know, even communicating with, you know, the towers. And if you get commercial pilots that come out of UND that have a degree in commercial aviation, but they have a UAS degree, I mean, I've traveled with some of these pilots to different areas of the country. And when you find regular drone operator trying to do, you know, follow the safety regulations, trying to follow fa, it's totally different than someone like yourself calling the tower and communicating with them at the level that they're used to, to get different manual approval for certain things, you know, and before that's what you need to do. Even without beyond line of sight, like communicate with the tower. Not everybody's comfortable communicating with air traffic control to go fly a drone. And if you have commercial pilots who are also drone pilots doing that, I think that's just an even bigger advantage.
[00:21:30] Speaker B: Better environment.
[00:21:31] Speaker A: Better environment. The safety is totally different. You'll see someone take off, you know, and they have a drone and they're excited, and that's great. But, you know, there's no safety debrief going on. There's no stand back and here are the cones, and here's your vest, you know, orange vest, to be safe. I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen with a drone. Drones can crash. I mean, that's any number of ways. That's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just what you do, how you learn from that, how you make it more safe.
[00:21:56] Speaker B: Especially if you race them. Evidently, most of them crash.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Yeah. If you race them, most of them crash. Yeah.
[00:22:02] Speaker B: So question for you.
There's so much interest in North Dakota Grand Fork, specifically for aerospace, aviation and uas. Where do you think that came From, Because I know that's led to a tremendous amount of capital in investments both public and private. We want to talk about next. But why do you think this culture is developed up there in Grand Forks?
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Well, I think the aviation school is far and away what started all that. I mean, they had the vision of let's get these planes, let's set up these programs. They've done an amazing job teaching students. And I think, you know, aviation students coming out of UND companies notice, you know, whether it's Delta Airlines or some other, if it's NetJets, they notice there's a difference in quality of the student because of the programming that they're getting, because of the training, you know, the level of just on, on stick training that they get from our University of North Dakota aviation school is in aerospace is second to none in my opinion. We'll say that obviously from North Dakota. But now you mix that with them evolving into the UAS program. You know, these students are learning commercial aircraft and then they're building a drone for their next class, you know, and they might even be building a VTOL drone, you know. And so I think that is just amazing. It's hands on experience. It's totally different when you're out in the field flying. If you've only done it virtually, you know, and if you've been training on how to virtually fly a drone versus while you've had 100 hours on an actual drone, I mean that's, you can't really compare the two. And then that's evolved into, you know, we have all these companies that are doing great things. They're out in the field, they're innovating, they're creating companies, they're bringing capital in North Dakota, they're bringing companies in North Dakota, but there's no physical place for them. Just on the general every day to collaborate and meet. Not that they're going to collaborate every single day, but that's kind of where the hive came into play of there's a physical location. It's because of the way our city is set up. It's so convenient. It's literally downtown. We lucked out. There's a brand new boutique hotel called the Olivan which is Olivan beach, which is fantastic.
[00:24:06] Speaker B: Yeah, beach from Beechcraft.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: Right.
[00:24:08] Speaker B: I stayed there. I was blown away at how nice it was.
[00:24:10] Speaker A: It's amazing. I mean in that kind of.
[00:24:12] Speaker B: What was the steakhouse? We went to Harry's. Harry's. Shout out to Harry.
[00:24:16] Speaker A: Shout out to Harry said Matt. Shout out to Matt.
[00:24:18] Speaker B: Shout out to Matt.
[00:24:19] Speaker A: And so, I mean, you have, I mean, it's kind of. You laugh and think, okay, there's some restaurants nearby, there's a hotel nearby. No, having it the way that we have it.
[00:24:27] Speaker B: We have, it's one block away.
[00:24:29] Speaker A: Everything's one block away.
[00:24:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:30] Speaker A: I mean you have basically anybody that you'd want to interact with that is in town. Maybe potentially when you're in town or on an everyday basis, there's a pretty good chance they're within two blocks of where you're at. And so for them to have a central meeting spot with privacy like the Hive, you know, we've had groups in there, we've had the RQ4 conference in there. So for people to be able to branch out and be very like, specific of who needs to be in what room and what meetings. But then, you know, come together and they can have an event where, you know, someone will have a, you know, sponsor food and beer and they can chat.
[00:25:03] Speaker B: What was the last event you had that had about what, 100, 400 people? 400 people show up?
[00:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah, we had, we call it Buzzing at the Hive with Mayor B. Mayor Bochinski. So he's kind of the brainchild behind the Hive. And so we, the first year we did at the UAS summit, we just said, hey, come down to the Hive, we'll rent a bus and you can get some time with the Mayor. And so if there's things that you want to, you know, voice your opinion on with what you're doing right or wrong. And with uas, you know, we'll, we'll give you a ride down to the Hive, we'll give you a tour and you can get 5, 10 minutes with our mayor and he'll listen. And we did that. And we were expecting about 45 people last year and we had about 200, a lot of folks from TRMC, which is the DOD's test center, test Resource Management Center. So it was a huge event, it was very popular. But a lot of folks came up to me after and said, you know, the nine or ten people I was trying to cover at this whole conference, they were all there within this 45 minute window and just checked the box and everything that they needed. It was great. You know, the last person left at 10:00, you know, and it was, you know, these are high up people that making decisions that, you know, either the government or private companies. And then we did it this year. We weren't really sure how many folks we were going to have, but we had about 450, I believe it was jam packed and everybody had a good time. And our panel, it was very laid back. We had General Deptula, we had Mike Friedolf, the director of Northrop Grumman, we had Paul Polandian, who's the CEO of O'Leary Ventures. We'll talk about. And so we really had the right crew. And we just kind of passed the mic around where people could ask really specific questions to people that really know what they're talking about. And that was supposed to be about an hour, hour and a half long. And I think the last.
I think the last person to leave was about 10:00. And so there's people really like actually making decisions on business that needs to happen that's maybe even critical to our nation's safety, which we love to support. Like having the Air Force base in. It's. If it's mission critical, mission related. We love supporting having, having everyone come in and use our space for that.
[00:27:09] Speaker B: Yeah. And do this. Talk about some of the access, you know, all these startup companies. Right. Capital is the lifeblood. That. And a team that's very innovative and knows how to execute. But talk about the capital side things.
[00:27:21] Speaker A: Yes, we.
From the start, we've. We've had a lot of interest in companies that, you know, do funding and various. There's a ton of programs in North Dakota. A lot of them revolve around some physical aspect of being in North Dakota, which I think is great because it basically says, you know, put your money where your mouth is. Anybody can give you capital, you can raise money from anywhere. But, you know, if it's like you.
[00:27:45] Speaker B: Need to have employees in North Dakota.
[00:27:47] Speaker A: It'S not necessarily that. It's just some physical presence. It could be just one person. Right. And it could be your head of marketing, you could be an engineer, could be an intern. And for them to actually show up and find a physical space in North Dakota, which at the high. We really love doing that, that basically enables a company to pursue funding from the state from different opportunities with commerce, from different programs that they have. You know, whether it be a manufacturing company or if they want to move part of their operations to North Dakota. It's really worked out well.
An exciting partnership that we've had through the hive that, that I've been excited about is we partner with O'Leary Ventures.
[00:28:24] Speaker B: Yeah. Tell me about how that happened with Mr. Wonderful.
[00:28:28] Speaker A: Yeah, Mr. Wonderful. And really it's Mr. Wonderful and all the wonderful team, because his team is second to none and they just do business at A totally different level with honesty, integrity. And I think they're so perfect for North Dakota, with North Dakota values that it's been wonderful, to say the least. But basically, we initially started out with a partnership to just have a naming rights for one of our meeting rooms. It's kind of glass meeting room in the center of our first floor. So right when you walk in, that.
[00:28:57] Speaker B: Happen, did you reach out to them first?
[00:28:58] Speaker A: Yep. So they had.
[00:28:59] Speaker B: You're like you.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Their team had come through once before, through North Dakota. And so I started talking to them about, hey, here's something we could do. We could do some type of partnership. And then it evolved into the mayor and I talking about, hey, we should bring them into. We should try to get Kevin here.
We already knew we were going to do a partnership with them with some naming rights for part of our building for the glass conference room, which you saw. And so I thought, well, rather than, you know, we had already basically had made a deal with them, but we thought, let's make it, you know, more of a media thing where we sign this agreement together and let's get Kevin here in person. And I think Brandon Bochinski. Amir had the idea, well, if he's coming here, we should have him drop the puck. And so basically, we said the UND game at the UND game, and it just happened to be. We're playing Denver, which was the number one team at the time last year. And so we, you know, we. We did a lot of planning to make sure that we made the most out of having Kevin O'Leary in town. You know, we didn't want to waste his time. And it was actually, I think I was planning it back in September. And I think in September, some of the members of his team said he has one day open in 2024, and it's February 26th. And that just happened to be the Denver hockey Series. And so we put a lot of time in getting the room ready, kind of getting everything ready, but we wanted to really do it. Just lights out, you know, And Kevin can handle it more than anyone in his team of if he's there, he wants to do business, he wants to make the most of it. Let's show him everything North Dakota has to offer. And so, you know, when he landed and we were ready to go, I had a.
The shuttle from the Olivan, which they were staying at, ready to go from A to B to C to D and see everything that North Dakota has from the Hive to the University of North Dakota, meeting with folks out there. We Went to Grand sky, did an awesome tour of grand sky, had Colonel Monroe out there. So he met Kevin and so we basically just wanted to open his eyes to all this opportunity. That's UAS related and sincerely, they do their homework. Every time they come back, it's. They know more and more about the drone industry. I think for Kevin, I think it was a bit of an eye openening. Thing of this is, you know, he's seen every type of pitch or investment there is. I mean, from a widget to a watch to anything, you know. So I think this was one that was truly unique and new of this is taking over the world drones and there's so many applications. I think it just really got him super excited. I mean, he was go, go, go from the minute he landed in Grand Forks. And he actually gave us such quality time. We, we set up an event at the Hive, which I really, I'm really proud of this because I think, you know, our members have supported us so much that it was great to be able to say, hey, this is what we're going to do for you guys. When. When Kevin and his team are in town, anybody who's a member of the Hive will get. You can have one representative, you know, so if you want your boss to fly in from Florida or wherever they live, or your CEO or if you're going to be the representative, everyone will get a spot at the table and that'll be our private time where no one else is in there. And we'll have our camera crew in there.
[00:32:03] Speaker B: Just to recap, into the big conference room, close the doors with the members. Did like a Q and a. We just said time with Kevin.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: Yep. And Kevin kicked it off. And we had this beautiful boardroom table and has a steel inlay of the Red River.
And so when you walk in, not so obvious to everyone that's from out of town, but to us it's obvious. One side is Minnesota, one side is North Dakota. And it just so happened to be. I was sitting in the corner next to the mayor and Kevin slid his chair all the way over and said, I only want to do business on this side of the river. And everyone kind of left. But then everyone's kind of scrambling to like switch their chair to like the other side, you know, because they're still kind of getting seated. But it was great because everybody, you know, whether there were one person flex member that supported us since day one or even before we, you know, we have people moving the hive before we could even sign leases because they're so excited about it. We're like, well, you can already move in. We just can't make it official until a month or two from now. And they've. And we've had a lot of those supporters, and so we wanted, you know, to give them that opportunity of, hey, say whatever you want to Mr. Wonderful. If his. Fitz, you want to talk about your company or you just want to introduce yourself, I can guarantee that that was unique enough where he'll remember, you know, wherever your. Your paths cross down the road of, hey, I was in this thing at the Hive. You know, it was. It was a fun day. And. And then the next night, we. We culminated with the. The tour of the Ralph and the Puck Drop and had our. Our camera crew there. It was local North Dakotan that we hired, and he was. He had never been to a UND hockey game. Somehow. He's a big Bison football fan, but he got to follow Kevin around the whole time with his, you know, official camera crew. And. And he actually got to go on the ice, lay on the ice, and film while they're doing the national anthem, you know, and everyone's cheering and. And so that was fun.
[00:33:44] Speaker B: And our producer, Martin, would probably love to go do that.
[00:33:47] Speaker A: I showed him the video. He's coming. He's coming to version two of that, for sure. And then you see the video. It's funny because people give me crap.
[00:33:55] Speaker B: But they're like, well, you know what? First of all, where can people find the Hive, your videos? I know you got a lot of great kind of real estate out there.
[00:34:02] Speaker A: Yes. Our website is hivegf.com.
there's quite a few videos on our Instagram and our LinkedIn. And then also there's a few videos on YouTube. We need to do a better job of getting those out there. But we also run a podcast. We don't have a studio as fancy as this, I would say, but we have a podcast that we do once a month at least, called Drones Code. And, well, maybe you can help us.
[00:34:27] Speaker B: Turn this one, this scale model into a drone. We'll get it up and going.
[00:34:31] Speaker A: There's someone in Grand Forks that can turn that into a drone.
[00:34:34] Speaker B: I bet there is.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: And a pretty quick turnaround, probably.
[00:34:37] Speaker B: I got a question for you.
[00:34:37] Speaker A: I'm sorry. You're good.
[00:34:39] Speaker B: So I know that Kevin and his team have personally made investments not only through some of their funds, but they're also advising some of the capital that's available through the state of North Dakota. But as you've watched how he invests and who he invests in. What are some things you've learned from that that you've observed that you would bring into if you started maybe your next drone company? Because I know you've done two already.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think the people aspect, that's for sure what brought him to North Dakota. I think his biggest deal that he had made on the Shark Tank before all this North Dakota Mandate investment fund was called prx. And there it's a. They make weightlifting equipment that's modular, that can like fold up and be put away. It's all manufactured in their massive facility in North Dakota. And that they went on the Shark Tank and I think the people working for that company and the founders whom pretty close friends of, they, they made an impression on him that lasted of. This is a. These are different type of people that are honest and deliver and if they say they're going to do something, they do it. And that's what I think intrigued him to come back to North Dakota. And the opportunity came for what's called the North Dakota Mandate, which is essentially $50 million that's been appropriated out of the Legacy Fund. The Legacy Fund in North Dakota, if you're not familiar with it, is primarily from the oil extraction tax from oil companies pulling oil out of the Bakken. And I believe the Fund's at about $10 billion. Well, 50 million of that was allocated to this North Dakota Mandate Fund. And they selected O'Leary Ventures to be the overseer of that fund. And so they created what's called the Wonder Fund.
And so the Wonder Fund, what's cool about it is they. There's a few different criteria, one of them being you. The company has to be post revenue.
It has to be some level of commitment to operating in North Dakota. And so rather than another investment fund where maybe they just charge a percentage and the money goes into other states and maybe, maybe it makes North Dakota money. Well, does it have as much of an impact? I don't know. Then someone saying, well, you, you have to move part of your operation here. You know, that's just really good for North Dakota. And so they've been scouting companies across the state, not just Grand Forks, not just uas, but we feel we've, we've. We try to give them as many opportunities as they can through uas, but then basically they decide do they want to invest or not.
And I believe they, they only get paid after this. The entire fund has profited, I think beyond 30% or something. So, I mean, it's, it's exciting. It's opportunity.
[00:37:22] Speaker B: So they're in alignment with the entrepreneur.
[00:37:24] Speaker A: Which is nice 100%. I mean, and they, you know, and they know that they're going to be putting in money for a while, you know, and they're not just, they're not just getting paid just to vet companies. I mean, they have to vet companies that will then do well and profit. And so they're really, they're really good at the supporting role of companies. They're really. If a company needs some media boost, I mean, Kevin has a media arm like no other. I mean, they have 9 million followers. So if you blast something out, it really gets the attention. But it's exciting. I mean, they have companies where they say, you know, one of them recently they said, this company is backed by Maria Sharapova. I mean, that's exciting. You know, it's not every day like a company moves in North Dakota that, you know, isn't backed by a, you know, pro tennis legend like that. And so it creates excitement and I think it's really been good for the state. Obviously there's other investment funds as well. We have the Red River Corridor Fund. The CEO of that is one of our tenants that has another company, Praxis Strategy Group. So they also invest in companies. We basically just try to, you know, connect the dots and, you know, make the introductions and then they can kind of go from there. But there's also opportunities for different grants, different programs, different opportunities. If a company is in classified as primary sector or not, if they're manufacturing, there's, there's really endless opportunities. I think a commonality would be North Dakota is really excited about companies that want to come to North Dakota. I mean, they will figure it out if it's an opportunity for them. If there's a way to connect the dots, make an introduction, make it a little easier to meet the right people right away, quickly and have a good first impression. People will go out of their way to do that.
[00:39:06] Speaker B: I love that. And I remember at lunch I asked you, what is the most, if you're looking ahead, what is the most exciting thing for you? And I loved your answer. And you said made in the usa, which, let's just think about it. With all of the technology outsourced around the world, you don't know where your parts are coming from. You don't know. It might be in some of this circuitry for some very sensitive applications. But to have for this application, National Defense Health Safety Security, completely controlled, owned, operated and built in the US By US employees, especially some of these applications. I loved your answer and that is incredibly exciting. And I want to ask you, in addition to that, let's just say we're getting together a year from now. And I want you to think about from an innovation standpoint, what would you love to be talking about a year from now when you're thinking about specifically the ua. What's going on with uas?
[00:40:04] Speaker A: Oh boy, that's a good question.
[00:40:05] Speaker B: Yes, it is.
[00:40:06] Speaker A: I mean, I think another thing that they're made in the US is it's not just a tangible widget, it's not just a drone. I mean, people get pretty hyper focused on like this is all just building drones and they're just flying in the sky. It's not like that's a small part of this whole entire ecosystem. You have investment, you have insurance, you have marketing, you have videos in a studio, you have media, you have all these things.
[00:40:31] Speaker B: You got atc, you got FAA clearances, you know, one of the things we didn't tap into politicians, you got all this stuff we need to bring you back on and actually talk about. You could probably talk about 20 different use cases for these kind of drones that people probably never have thought of before. Problems you guys are solving. But I want you to continue with where you're going.
[00:40:50] Speaker A: Well, so I think an exciting part of the Made in the USA now that's becoming more clear every day with obviously there's, it's no surprise to anybody that it's a race to have certain technologies, whether that's in the United States hands or it's in the, you know, the Chinese hands. And I think the knowledge made in the USA is the number one. So for anybody to just learn, even if they're breaking things, if they're breaking them here on US soil and can learn quicker here and we can have that knowledge that isn't just on chat GPT, it's not public knowledge. And we're learning from our mistakes quicker than our adversaries. I think that's the best made in.
[00:41:25] Speaker B: The US that's actually an interesting point. Right. What we're doing is we're actually building an expertise that we need here that we're keeping here with our talent pool. So with that, as we come in to land the drone, so to speak, we're coming in for that final hover. What's just your final thought you want to leave with everybody? Either about the hive, what's going up in Grand Forks, or yourself?
[00:41:45] Speaker A: Sure. I'd say, you know, if you, you're interested in Hearing more, learning more, or do you want to just show up and check it out? Reach out. You can reach out to me. Jrianrandforksgov.com We. We love giving tours. Depending on what you're working on or who you are, you know, there's different level of access tours that we can provide, not just with myself at the Hive, but potentially out of grand sky. If. If there's some drone company that you're behind or a part of, we. We would love to hear about all of it. And we. We especially love to.
To just show kind of everybody what we're proud of in North Dakota. And people that are excited about North Dakota, we get really excited back. I mean, I feel like when we meet folks that have the energy and they're really excited and they get what we're trying to do, we try to give that back double or triple. And that's, I think, good for both sides of any business.
And really, to have our hive be city owned, it's a very unique setup to have a city support it this way. Like, the city has clearly made the commitment and the leaders behind it. And so the companies that do come to Grand Forks, they can be confident that our leaders are going to support them. Right, because they own the hive. So.
[00:42:59] Speaker B: Yep. I love it. And so, Johnny, thank you for sharing. Thank you for your time. You're awesome, and we're going to have you back, and Tobin and I might even fly up. Actually, we're planning on coming up there and doing some filming and some interviews up there at the Hive. So, brother, keep doing the great work, keep knocking them alive, and we'll talk to you soon.
[00:43:14] Speaker A: Thank you. Appreciate it.
