#StartupsEverywhere Profile: Jamie Gull, Co-Founder & CEO, Talyn
This profile is part of #StartupsEverywhere, an ongoing series highlighting startup leaders in ecosystems across the country. This interview has been edited for length, content, and clarity.
Fast and Efficient Middle-Mile Cargo Delivery
Talyn’s eVTOL aircraft system is automating middle-mile cargo with aircraft that can take off and land without a runway. It utilizes two separate vehicles to bring aircrafts to a cruising altitude with 100 percent battery, allowing Talyn to fly faster and farther than its competitors, thus expediting the cargo delivery process. Co-Founder and CEO Jamie Gull spoke to us about his company, his experience working with various government entities, and his thoughts on the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
Tell us about your background. What led you to create Talyn?
I worked on prototype aircraft at Scaled Composites in the Mojave Desert for a few years. Then, I went to SpaceX, primarily designing Falcon 9 rockets. After that, I did a satellite antenna startup based out of Colorado for a few years and then started Talyn with my co-founder Evan Mucasey, who was one of my friends back at SpaceX. That’s what led us to where we are now and so far it's been going pretty well. We're growing and we’re excited to build large scale aircrafts.
What is the work you all are doing at Talyn?
We're a 3-year-old company based in Los Angeles that builds an electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft system. It’s unmanned and aimed at cargo and defense uses. We have a pretty unique approach in that we're doing a staged system, where an Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft launches and retrieves a fixed-wing aircraft in midair. We do it that way so the aircraft don't have to carry the extra batteries, rotors, and motors required for the takeoff and landing. This allows for a higher performing system. In some ways, it is analogous to staged rocket designs, where the first stage rocket provides the heavy lift, then after you get rid of that, your much lighter second stage goes into orbit. We’re applying that thinking to aircraft. Right now our primary customer is the U.S. Air Force, and military applications are top of mind, but we are working on more general commercial applications as well.
Can you describe your relationships with various government entities? What can policymakers do to help those relationships flow more seamlessly?
We have multiple grants from the government. As I mentioned, our primary potential customer right now is the Air Force, and we are in a heavily regulated industry. In terms of funding, we are funded privately and we have Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants and follow-on SBIRs from the Air Force, and are working on grants from the Department of Energy and state-level zero emissions grants.
With the Air Force being a customer, we also have experience on the federal contracting side. The Department of Defense (DoD) is becoming more streamlined, at least in the early stages and is changing some of the ways in which it operates when it comes to contracts with smaller businesses. They are starting to move away from specific requests to more of what they call “open topics,” where they will look at all sorts of new technology that's interesting to their work rather than requesting a specific technology. That’s making the whole process faster, but the government contracts work is still challenging. I think they recognize that and they're trying to fix it, even though there's a lot of pushback against those efforts.
On the policy side, especially when it comes to commercial operations, we are in an industry subject to a lot of regulations from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and others, which can impact our research and development and business planning. For example, the FAA has taken a slow approach to figuring out how to certify electric aircraft and how to let them operate unmanned. Those rules are there for a reason and safety is important, but it feels like the regulations are not moving fast enough and that slows our operations. Airspace integration has been another challenge through all the different levels of government, anywhere from city governments with local airports up through state and federal.
Our relationships with the FAA are still pretty nascent, but we are engaged heavily with the Air Force, which creates opportunities for us to start operating. We're going to fly at Edwards Air Force Base under military flight rules, meaning we don't have to deal with the FAA while we are working on an experimental certification to fly in public areas.
The U.S. is the leading market for the type of aircraft Talyn is building, but there are people taking them to fly in Africa and Asia because they can't fly them here. So the U.S. stands to lose ground in the market. I don't know if it's the right approach, but it's something to consider from a policy perspective. Do we want to let them outpace us, especially on green tech? There's probably a middle point to find that's safer than China’s approach, but faster than the U.S approach.
What is the value of having the government be your first customer and having the opportunity to test in a military airspace? What can the government do to make those experiences better for startups?
The government is our early customer. They provide support, testflight facilities, and the ability to fly without FAA oversight. There is a group at Edwards with a mandate to work on unmanned systems with commercial companies, which lets us fly more freely, and we are doing it in the middle of the desert where if something crashes and nobody’s on board, it's not going to hurt anything or cost the government money. They're changing their mindset around testing, which has been great for us. If the Navy, Army, and Marines also improved their interactions with innovative startups and companies like us that would be helpful.
Can you tell us about your experience with Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants? If the SBIR program was to end, how would that affect startups? And do you have suggestions on how it could be improved?
If the SBIR program isn’t reauthorized, that would be, in my opinion, fairly disastrous. It would kill a bunch of companies, especially those functioning in the DoD space, and it would be terrible for the country if that happened. It's also important for government agencies to work on bridging the funding gap between Phase II SBIR and something bigger. That gap between early stage funding and actually getting out into the market and selling a product is what we call “the valley of death.” For companies like mine, a million dollar SBIR is great, but it's not going to get you through that valley.
Right now, we're receiving Air Force SBIR funding from their Tactical Funding Increase (TACFI) program. Funding is up to $1.7 million with matching private funds. We’re also trying to go after the Air Force’s Strategic Funding Increase program (STRATFI), which is up to $60 million total funding, $30 million from private funding and $30 million from SBIR and government matching. If the country can push those programs to grow, that would be really useful for startups with both government and commercial applications. And if similar funding could be rolled out to the other military branches, that would be beneficial as well.
What are your goals for Talyn moving forward?
We've got our team in place, we’re scaling up the aircraft size and flight testing, and we want to increase our federal dollars so we can build something bigger. We want to build up something that would be used as a product rather than just as a tech demonstrator.
All of the information in this profile was accurate at the date and time of publication.
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