From Wall Street to Flying Cars (eVTOLs) | Adam Goldste… — Transcript

They was a result of many, many failures to lead to one that worked. And after you pivoted six times, like who cares on the seventh one? You're used to pivoting. My second day of work was 9/11, so I'm walking to work and literally the first plane flies over my head and into the building that was connected to the building I was working. Every founder has some type of brutal story. It's not easy for anybody. If I'm going to do it again, I want to build a product that is so good that if we can build the tech, it'll sell itself. Hello, and welcome to First Money, a show focused on extraordinary founders and their journey to getting their companies off the ground. My name is Nicole Wiof, and I'm thrilled to bring you our latest episode. Today, we welcome Adam Goldstein, co-founder and CEO at Archer. Archer Aviation is designing and developing electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft for use in urban air mobility networks. Join us as we dive into Adam's story: co-founding and selling his first company, getting Archer off the ground with no background in the industry, and scrapping together the first 50 million, going public in the future. Adam, I am so excited to have you on the show today and to learn everything about you, your first company, and now Archer and the journey they're getting towards today. Give us the scoop. You're currently in New York. It seems like you've been in New York. Did you grow up there? And then how did you end up in this crazy world of startups and companies? Yeah, so I'm actually in the Bay Area. I don't live in New York. I live in the Bay. The company is out west, but it's out west because of what we do, and it doesn't make sense to be in New York. But I'll start from the beginning. So I grew up in Florida. I went to the University of Florida, had an amazing experience. College was great. Late '90s, it was kind of like the pre-internet age. There was internet, but not really. And so everything was really done manually. I started my first business in college. It gave me the entrepreneurial bug. It was a magazine, actually, where I effectively redid the career resource center in the form of a magazine to help people get jobs, organize the college career affairs, and then ended up moving to New York. I lived in New York for about 20 years, half the time in finance, half the time in tech. New York was going through this amazing renaissance period where tech was booming. It was so exciting. There was this energy in the city, and neighborhoods were transforming. Flatiron and Chelsea were all turning into this tech hub. And I started a bunch of different companies. Most of them failed, but my last one, which was called Veter, worked and it scaled. And we were, you know, friends and close with a lot of the other startups in that period of time like the Pelons and Warby’s and Rent the Runway and Jet.com and WeWork and all those types of companies. But ultimately, I sold the company and used the money to start Archer and had a really fun journey. But happy to dive in wherever. Yeah, let's double-check a little bit. So for your companies prior to Veter, were they venture-backed? Did you bootstrap them? And then what about Veter, which was obviously your first winner? Maybe I'll take you back even further. I moved to New York in 2001, and my first job was actually an investment banking job. I was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch. If you go back a couple of years when I was in college, I didn't know what investment banking was, but I found out what it was and I was interested only because it was viewed as the most competitive job to get out of college. And more importantly, it wasn't a job that was really meant for college kids that went to state schools. It was all very Ivy League, and I was a big outsider and had a huge chip on my shoulder and would break down any barrier that was in front of me. And so I loved, loved, loved that challenge of trying to get that job. And so I ended up getting the job through crazy stories that I had to go through to get it, but I ended up getting that job and I moved to New York. I lived Chambers and West at the Westside Highway, and I went through the two-month investment banking training program. It was a lot of fun. There were 200 analysts. It was a big group coming out of the tech boom. And my second day of work was 9/11, so I'm walking to work and literally the first plane flies over my head and into the building that was connected to the building I was working. So I was working in the World Financial Center that was in the World Trade Center. My investment banking experience was not typical. It was very much one of chaos and really as a new employee in the workforce just trying to figure out what was going on. I literally remember standing there looking at the World Trade Center on fire and calling my dad and being like, "Dad, I've got this crazy job that, you know, on this journey I've been on, and the building next to me's on fire. Am I supposed to go to work?" Bankers work no matter what. I mean, it was the craziest day, probably my life. So I ended up, through my journeys in finance, meeting some incredible people on the hedge fund side. And so I ended up going to work for a fund that was two guys and a very little amount of money. They were three years older than me at the time. I was 25, they were 28, and we ended up scaling that business. I should say they ended up scaling that business. I was an analyst and having a good time learning to a pretty big size fund, a big player in the space. But it was very entrepreneurial. It's not like it is today. The hedge fund space today is very institutionalized and it's very systematic. Back then, it was full Wild West. You could do whatever you wanted, invest in any asset class, any time, any size. There were kind of no rules. It was a bunch of young people figuring out and breaking down doors the same way I feel like I had broken down the door to get into that first finance job. And then the same way now, I feel like what I do now is very entrepreneurial, trying to break down new industries. Very similar type of things. And the guy I worked for taught me an incredible amount, but a lot of his philosophies and lessons were all about really trying to understand how the world really works and how to find value. And so it's shaped a lot of the ways that how I think today and ultimately how I ended up getting into the aviation business in this crazy world of eVTOLs that I'm in now was really trying to understand true contrarian thinking and be willing to go for it. That really set me up. I ended up then working on a website that kind of told a lot of my journey, a lot of my story, and that really kind of morphed into building products because I had this blog with lots of traffic where we had lots of interesting users and then could effectively take that web traffic and showcase different products, try things out. Part of my philosophy, not a unique comment but a philosophy that I'd buy into, is that there are features, products, and companies. And we were very much feature stage and maybe we were product, we certainly were not a company. And so many of those features, I'll call it, just didn't really scale. And so it was a really interesting way to learn about how to build products and how to build technology and how to recruit and how to raise capital, all that kind of stuff. But ultimately, none of them were really actually companies until I hit Veter. And Veter was the first one that actually really worked, it scaled. And so not knowing what product-market fit is and then hitting product-market fit is very obvious if you've done it. I think we did it six times, failed each time, and then finally found product-market fit and then actually scaled. Veter was, I think, a great success for a, you know, I'll call myself a first-time entrepreneur then, even though we had been through lots of stuff in history, but really like a thing that actually is working and scaling. But it really was a really fun experience to get to that. I start. Where did the idea come from for Veter?

walking to work and literally the first plane flies over my head and into the building that was connected to the building I was working every founder has some type of brutal story it's not easy for anybody if I'm going to do it again

I want to build a product that is so good that if we can build the tech it'll sell itself hello and welcome to First money in a show focused on now extraordinary Founders and their journey to getting their companies off the ground my name

is Nicole wiof and I'm thrilled to bring you our latest episode today we welcome Adam Goldstein co-founder and CEO at Archer Archer Aviation is designing and developing electric vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft for use in Urban Air Mobility networks join us as we dive

into Adam's story co-founding and selling his first company getting archer off the ground with no background in the industry and scrapping together the first 50 million going public in the future Adam I am so excited to have you

on the show today and to learn everything about you your first company and now Archer and the journey they getting towards today give us the scoop you're currently in New York it seems like you've been in New York did you

grow up there and then how did you end up in this crazy world of startups and companies yeah so I'm actually in the Bay Area I don't live in New York I live in the bay the company is out west but

it's out west because of what we do and it doesn't make sense to to be in New York but I'll start from the beginning so I grew up in Florida I went to the University of Florida had an amazing

experience college was great late '90s it was kind of like the pre internet age there was internet but not really and so everything was really done manually I started my first business in college gave me the entrepreneurial bug it was a

magazine actually where I effectively redid the career Resource Center in the form of a magazine to help people get jobs organize the college career Affairs and then ended up moving to New York I lived in New York for about 20 years

half the time in finance half the time in Tech New York was going through this amazing Renaissance period where Tech was booming it was so exciting there was this energy in the city and neighborhoods were transforming flat iron and Chelsea were all turning into

this Tech Hub and I started a bunch of different companies most of them failed but my last one which was called veter worked and it scaled and we were you know friends and close with a lot of the

other startups in that period of time like the pelons and waries and Rent the Runway and jet.com and we work in all those type of companies but ultimately sold the company and used the money to all start Archer and had a a really fun

Journey but happy to dive in wherever yeah let's double cck a little bit so for your companies prior to veter were they Venture back did you bootstrap them and then what about veter which was obviously your first winner maybe I I'll

take you back even further I I moved to New York in 2001 and my first first job was actually an investment banking job and I was an investment banker at maril Lynch if you go back a couple years when I was in

college I didn't know Investment Banking was but I found out what it was and I was interested only because it was viewed as the most competitive job to get out of college and more importantly it was it wasn't a job that was really

meant for college kids that went to State schools it was all very ivy league and I was a big Outsider and had a huge chip on my shoulder and would break down any barrier that was in front of me and

so I loved loved loved that challenge of trying to get that job and so I end up getting the job through crazy stories that I had to go through to get it but I ended up getting that job and I moved to

New York I live Chambers and West at the Westside Highway and I go through the two-month Investment Banking training program it's a lot of fun there were 200 analysts it was a big group coming out of the tech boom and my second day of

work was 9/11 so I'm walking to work and literally the plane first plane flies over my head and into the building that was connected to the building I was working so I was working in the world financial center that was in the World

Trade Center my Investment Banking experience was not typical it was very much one of chaos and really as a new employee in Workforce just trying to figure out like what was going on I literally remember standing there looking at the World Trade Center on

fire and calling my dad and being like Dad I've got this crazy job that you know on this journey I've been on and the building next to m's on fire am I supposed to go to work Bankers work no

matter what I mean it was the craziest day probably my life so I ended up through my Journeys in finance meeting some incredible people on the hedge fund side and so I end up going to work for a

fund that was two guys and a very little amount of money they were three years older than me at the time I was 25 they were 28 and we ended up scaling that business I should say they ended up

scaling that business I was an analyst and having having a good time learning to a pretty big size fund a big player in the space but it was very entrepreneurial it's not like it is today the hedge fund space today is very

institutionalized and it's very systematic back then it was full Wild West you could do whatever you wanted invest in any asset class any time any size there was kind of no rules it was a bunch of young people figuring out and

breaking down doors the same way I feel like I had broken down the door to get into that first Finance job and then the same way now I feel like what I do now is very entrepreneurial trying to break

down new Industries very similar type of things and the guy I worked for taught me an incredible amount but a lot of his philosophies and lessons were all about really trying to understand how the world really works and how to find Value

and so it's shaped a lot of the ways that how I think today and ultimately how I ended up getting into the aviation business in this crazy world of eeve talls that I'm in now was really trying to understand true contr and thinking

and be willing to go for it that really set me up I ended up then working on a website that kind of told a lot of my journey a lot of my story and that really kind of morphed into Building

Products because I had this blog with lots of traffic where we had lots of interesting users and then could effectively take that web traffic and showcase different products try things out part of my philosophy not a unique uh comment but a philosophy that I'd buy

into is that com there there are features uh products and companies and we were very much feature stage and maybe we were product we certainly were not a company um and so many of those features I'll call it just didn't really

scale and so it was a really interesting um way to learn about how to build products and how to build technology and how to recruit and how to you know raise Capital all that kind of stuff but ultimately none of them were really

actually companies um until I hit veter and veter was the first one that actually really worked it scaled and so not knowing what product Market fit is and then hitting product Market fit is very obvious if you've done it I think

we did it six times failed each time and then finally found product Market fit and then actually scaled V veter was I think a great success for a you know I'll call myself a firsttime entrepreneur then even though we had

been through lots of stuff um in history but really like a thing that actually is working in scaling but it really was a really fun experience um to get to that I start where did the idea come from for

veter so the original website that I had built with my my partner at the time was really about our story of breaking into this job of Finance in this High Finance world and then taking that same philosophy and kind of extrapolating

that to some other sectors and sub sectors of here's how you can go do that kind of thing and it had a it just drove a lot of uh web traffic we were really good at identifying keywords that Google

would rank very highly and it wasn't that competitive in the space we were doing it and so because we had like a job oriented type of setup it allowed us to start building products in the job space so an example was everything was

going mobile at one point and it was like okay well none of the websites especially job websites were optimized for mobile so if you wanted to apply to a job on your phone you get this big screen shrunken down and you're trying

to like fill out your resume on a phone it doesn't work and so you can build o off features from LinkedIn and suck down social profiles and lots of different things that you can do to help make it a

much better experience so there were things like that that were very good ideas like they it was like made perfect sense but it didn't work as a company necessarily and so the concepts around finding jobs evolved as I was building

features or products and not really turning them into companies knowing when to Pivot when it was time that this wouldn't really scale and then ultimately going in trying the next one veter was an evolution vet was not a

direct like hey let's go try this veter was a result of many many failures um to lead to one that worked um and after you pivoted six times like who cares on the seventh one you're used to pivoting

pivoting is a very hard thing because most people are not willing to do it because it's your baby that you built and you put so much hours in to just destroy it um so it was an evolution but

I because of my past I was able to raise money from people who knew me and so I was not your typical you know back then it was like well did you go to Stanford did you work at Google it was like a

very like the the Silicon Valley funded companies were a pretty particular profile and I was not that profile but hey that's my whole life that's what I've always been is I've never been the right profile and so same thing today

I'm not the typical Aviation founder but that type of setup was a fund challenge so I raised money from some non-traditional people and then used that to start and then was just very tactical in making sure we could not

burn through it make a real business and really stretch those funds did you end up raising from your traditional VCS for veter before the acquisition so there was one I'll call it U traditional VC that first started there was a guy named Rick Zulo who was

working out of Chicago who had met us and he was yeah equal now equal yeah so he was one of the first guys from a VC that said wow actually these are like smart people and this might make sense

and willing to take a bat and so he worked at light bank at the time and so he was great and then another guy named will zerak who was at gcraft at the time Rick brought the deal to Will and then

will um really believed in it too and then will brought in Ian sigalo who was the co-founder of grcraft and they really liked the concept in the end what the way I think it always is is they just ended up betting on like the people

like me and then rather than the idea and it was just to you know Force there's certain people that will force an idea to work no matter what it is and that's kind of was the mentality we will

make this work no matter what and what I believed was the the company were building this Marketplace concept it really was like a a CAC business right it was all about acquisition and managing acquisition cost of the items

we would put on our Marketplace in our case it was candidates so candidate acquisition cost was the whole game we had a big competitor called hired hired.com was the big competitor they had raised over $100 million we raised n

and we effectively put them out of business um ended up acquiring them at the end for nothing effectively assuming their debt and it was all because we were very efficient and how we ran the union economics of the business and

maybe that was just because at the time in York the money was not as free flowing as it was on the west coast and so we protected those dollars I hope Founders are listening and taking notes the market is still interesting and I

wish more folks were focused on unit economics what made you sell this and did you already have the idea for Archer so it was time so veret was such a fun cultural experience we hired like when we started

scaling we built the first like you know our SDR team our sales team our Enterprise sales team there was at one point like I don't know 150 or so like between 22 and 26 year olds like working at V out of the 200 something people and

so it was like a very young fun company people would get bettery tattoos which we we banned we said no tattoos like stop this is it's fun but it's like that's permanently on your body we had to like ban like everyone was like

smoking Jewel at the time because they were one of our big clients it was like this party kind of like thing and it was all working too and it was scaling and so it's always fun to be part of one of

those things that can really build but it was a brutal business what we did as a company just so so you get the perspective is we would take the best candidates that existed and almost like put a reverse job board so we would

showcase candidates and then the companies would come and they would effectively request interviews with the candidates but in order to request an interview you had to say here's how much comp we'd pay roughly here's what the company ideas and you'd match up these

candidates with these companies the reason why the candidates would do that it's very interesting to see 20 30 companies say hey I'd interview you and I'd pay 200 Grand oh I'd interview I'd pay 500 Grand and cross serious seed to

public companies would do this so the better the candidate the more attractive they are on the platform so it attracted really attractive candidates so it just worked but it is an incredible grind and the scalability of it I think was really

tough along the way I had met the head of Corp Dev from the Adco Group which is the biggest Staffing Company in the world and they were looking for something interesting so we initially started talking to them about investing

in the business which turned into more of an acquisition kind of conversation but it was a really interesting fit and so I I've kind of explained the story to to to many founders like selling a company isn't necessarily what you think

and so a lot of it has to do with really making sure you're in the sort of the path of progress of these companies there are real champions in there happening so what was going on at a deco

at the time was they there was a lot of pressure from Wall Street for them to get involved in hrtech and they were not necessarily investing a ton and so they did not want to go bet the house on it

but they wanted to invest something so we were a really nice tuck-in size acquisition $110 million it wasn't too much where because they were a big 10 plus billion dollar market cap company it wasn't too big where it would hurt

their earnings but it would be a big drag on their metrics because it was a very metrics expense Centric company but at the same time it was big enough where it wasn't like 10 million where nobody would really care so they could kind of

like show us off as hey this new hot tech company but at the same time not really have to spend too much money so it was perfect it worked for everybody because they saw growth in it it wasn't

too big they could try it out and that's really kind of the real reason why they wanted to buy it and when you're going through this and how hard the businesses are and you get offered a lot of money

it's very tempting to go do that and especially in a grinder business like that but for me the lesson was I wanted to be in a bit if I'm going to do it again because these because startups are

so brutally hard the lashes on my back are so deep right it's like every founder has some type of brutal story it's not easy for anybody if I'm going to do it again I want to build a product

that is so good that if we can build the tech it'll sell itself and that was the different philosophy I had where I did not want to be in the monthly sales game where I'm grinding it all down for some

virtual product you can't see in touch I love the concept of Hardware that you can have an emotional connection to the product which allowed me to start thinking different about and working on something new got it so you obviously

took the opportunity you guys hopefully had a decent exit for you you know personally and then you're off to the races again to build your next company and obviously not anything close to your recruiting business so walk me through

what is Archer what are you up to and how did all that get started where the idea come from yeah so Archer is building everything for the future of vertical flight so you can think about there's helicopters out there today um

there are vehicles that you can build that are lower cost safer quieter that can be scaled at much greater lengths than what you could scale the existing uh Solutions of helicopters today you can see that across commercial and

across defense applications the defense side is being talked about a lot in the news right now why are we building expensive f35s and f-22s and same thing on the helicopter side there extraordinarily expensive Vehicles they don't need to be that expensive we need

to be building for the modern-day problems so really exciting new category to go use electric power trains to go build totally new types of aircraft that can take off and land vertically so they can offer a really great solution for

people for products and think about ultimately Saving Time whether it's Goods or people and moving commercial or defense so starting into it though you know when you start to think back to the philosophy of what I was talking about

the other big characteristic that was really important was if I was going to do it again again it had to be something really big and so as I learned about recruiting so veter was a recruiting based company so I got to see the

dashboards of you know we have 20,000 customers at the peak and all the big companies used it I got to see the dashboards of the best companies in the world and how they recruited and the talent they would get and I'd always be

so jealous of the quality of talent some companies could get and I always wanted to build something that could attract Talent like that too and so why is that I remember reading Peter Teal's books and elon's books and really thinking

about going after some of the bigger harder things most people think building a crazier idea or a bigger company is actually harder in a way it's easier it's easier to track Talent it's easier to attract Capital because people want

to bet big and win big it's easier to be inspirational about changing the future of Aviation than it is about changing the future of recruiting and so when I started thinking about the um kind of categories of things when you think like

that you think energy food healthare Transportation right and so you start looking at the world from that lens when you start to think about about what Elon did on the ground with electric power trains and you listen to the words that

he would say which he still says today which is everything will go electric outside of rockets you start to really imagine what the world could be and so the philosophy I like to use is I want to build the world that I want to live

in and if I'm going to spend the time doing this again and go through the pain of the startup again it better be for a world that I want to live in I went back to the University of Florida and we

started build an airplanes and so he said okay can you take the same electric powertrain that they're using on the ground put them into planes and build this and I wasn't the first one to think about that this the first person to do

this was Larry Page and so Larry Page started doing this back in 2009 and he started a company called Z arrow and so when zero got started they were very much in R&D mode trying to figure out if

this could work the sort of a pathway that they took though was they were going to build things that were extremely low cost and would be autonomous from the very beginning and that posed or turned out to be a very

challenging Pathway to bring the product to Market my whole philosophy was survival I am not at the time was not you know ultra wealthy with unlimited money that could fund these things into Infinity I was a if I'm going to do it

again I I come from a world of vety where we're very conservative we we operate by the metrics and we're all about survival and it doesn't matter how small you are you can take down the big guys if you can survive that philosophy

I think really resonated with a lot of the engineers so once I figured out that okay eall works this concept of electric vertical takeoff and Landing aircraft can work it was okay how do you go build a real Aerospace company and the answer is

you can't even start unless you have a billion dollars and so that posed the next layer of challenges and so how does a guy that sold so I raised $9 million before and sold my company for 110 million so it was a great exit you know

made some money but not that kind of money not a billion dollar Aerospace company out of your pocket and I didn't have the credibility ility right out of the gate to go raise a billion dollars and so the question was how we're going

to do it and the answer was by having a really credible team but then you're stuck back to the chicken the egg scenario how will the team join me if I don't have the money when the whole team

understands that this is going to cost a lot of money you can see some Founders do this journey by lying and telling twists of what they have and don't have and there's a lot of people do that in

the hardware space because I get how hard it is to raise money in the space but the setup was quite unique when looking at the EOL industry so you had zero on one hand was this company that was backed by Larry Page that had by far

the the most advanced technology the biggest and best team that was out there they were awesome company he had a company called Joby which was more secretive so you didn't know much about it he had a couple European competitors

liliam and volocopter which were doing different things but when I looked at all the Technologies nobody was building based on my mentality of survival which was how do we build a product that can actually get through the certification

the regulation and be manufacturable and that meant you had to be willing to not necessarily build the most advanced piece of technology out there because The Regulators don't necessarily understand it so if you bring a regulator a brand new flight control

computer that's state-of-the-art quad core Computing whatever they may say great we'll take a look at it and we'll work on it well sir when can that be certified I don't know we'll see if you bring the regulator a flight control

computer from saffron that's already been certified you say hey I'm going to use this flight control computer in my aircraft will you certify it yeah of course we've already certified it before it's a different game and so I went into

the mentality of how do we find the most efficient path to get to Market because survival is like what will win and so it was very differentiated that story resonated with Wall Street a lot of the E talk companies had pitched every VC

out there had pitched up and down but most of the E talk companies pitch the way Silicon Valley pitches which is the biggest Tams you've ever seen and we're the smartest people out there and we're not going to talk a lot about the the

economics and Wall Street does not like that my background just where I came from and the community that I know very well I'm very deep in the New York Community appreciates my style of transparency and focus on building a

good operating business and not just building tech for tech and I think that was the benefit I had from being a New Yorker and that still today hurts me with VC's I do not do the VC game the

way that the BCS typically are used to seeing and so Archer had to find a different way to finance it so the way the route we went was I was going to go talk to the traditional VC see what we can do and

build a prototype aircraft show them what was possible and then ultimately go build the long-term Journey so of course sounds easy I'm a second time founder I could do that I could convince these vs so of course it's March of 2020 and I go

out to Silicon Valley and I talk to all these guys and covid happens and everyone like basically shuts down nobody's willing to invest anything in March of 2020 April 2020 was stupid and so I had to figure out how to pull

together at least $50 million to get everything going the first real round of capital $50 million was one of the hardest rounds that I've ever raced because it was we had limited stuff at that point and it was the worst Market but at that time

it already brought on about 40 people so I was gonna say where where was the team at I was burning money so I'll take one step back even further yeah so to bring on the 40 people how did I convinced

these original Engineers to come to me that was actually a big challenge too on its own so in order to convince the engineers to come to me you had the categories of the companies you had Zer you had Joby you had lilam V all these

great compan why would anybody come join Archer like what's that who cares like you guys built some little thing in Florida it's stupid well when I had the conversation with Tom munes who was the head of engineering at zero I said Tom

come to Archer and come build this I have the same philosophy that you have and Tom said I am in total agreement that the best way to do this is to find the most efficient path buil something that's certifiable the buil

manufacturable but you don't have a billion dollars and so I'm not going to come and so I said I don't have a billion dollars but I do have a billionaire friend who has backed theany company and and has said they would back

stop the company the intention is not to fully fund it but would back stop the company that was Mark Lori so Mark Lori was a pilot he was a prolific entrepreneur and he was willing to back stop the company so that gave Tom enough

uh conviction that he should be willing to to come on and so it gave other Engineers conviction too now when the engineers started coming on they were they were still betting they believed in the Direction More than their companies

that they had been working at before and so it gave them the confidence to do it even though there's a lot more risk we then go and I get back to my series a problem hustle through that round brutal

round so then we start building the first prototype that's what's called our maker aircraft so we start building the first prototype maker and it's going really well and the world starts to get really crazy the spa Market starts Virgin Galactic

Nika you start to see so I am very plugged into that world I call my friend who is the head of capital markets at one of the banks and I'm like what is going on with this product these spacks

tell me about it that's walking me through it okay well when do you think it could possibly come is it could it come to us could we do that he's like no you're way too early okay when do you

think it would come to us well you got to do a lot of stuff you'd need a bunch of deals done okay what kind of deals you would need manufacturing deals and you need big sales deals and so the

first thing we did then was went and signed up at the time Fiat Chrysler which now Stant is they merged with PUO so signed up a big manufacturing partner who would invest some money not enough okay well what if United Airlines got

involved and they put a big purchase order okay that's now we're talking but the challenge around the spa Market wasn't the actual spack itself it's the timing of everything so in order to spack you had to do two things one was

you had to um do a pcaob audit which was a public company accounting audit which was very expensive and the second thing you had to do is do all the legal work which was very expensive you had spend

millions of dollars up front with the risk that it may H may not happen that was something I was willing to do because if the market came to us it would be something we could go raise at a time $250 $350 million like a lot of

money I did the work early so then luckily the market started to come to us I got to this point where I started having the conversation with Ken moles who ended up doing our spa so they were running Atlas Crest at the time and I

had this amazing conversation where they were like look we see this as the future of Aviation we think this is a really big play it's right in a path of progress we're willing to do it but we have to do it like right now because the

market is very tight and so we were very fortunate in doing that and so we ended up doing the IPO we raised almost $60 million at the time with about 50 people our first airplane had not flown yet at

that time and so it was an incredible deal very lucky but at the same time a lot of prep work went in to making sure we could actually get that done so having the foresight to to take risk on

some of those things I don't think I would have been able to take that risk as a first-time founder it would have been too much of my money as a percentage of the $50 million that we had raised to risk to go do that that

was again a benefit of being a second time doctor so and to confirm where did the 50 million end up coming from like what typ people so I called every friend I ever had and said I need this now I'm

calling in my favor and so called that in grey Croft came in a bunch of other groups came in grcraft actually was really helpful so they came in and met decent size amount of money on that so that was the second time they they had

come in and size and bet on me and then we pulled together a bunch of other groups just to string it all together man that was a tough tough round so from I guess the 50 million and getting this

thing going through the IPO was that just a couple of years yes it was a relatively short period of time wow the secret of Archer though and so a lot of people would ask me they would say God

you guys are just killing it thing after thing is working like how are you doing that that's not a product of the things we're necessarily doing now that's a product of the work we did years ago to set up for this it's just all playing

out now and what I mean by that is when you build an airplane you pick a design and you live with that design or you die with that design there is no really changing of that design it's a start

over Tom the CTO is very experienced and Jeff Bower the chief engineer very experienced the airplane we're building now is the eighth generation of airplanes that they have worked on they are extremely experienced a phrase I always like to use is if you're digging

a hole to try to find some treasure if you're digging in the wrong place it doesn't matter how many people are digging or how big your shovel is or how fast you dig none of it matters you're going to lose and that's what's happened

to a lot of the competitors they just built bad products that wouldn't actually commercialize or had some kind of challenge they went way too far on the technology side built something wasn't certifiable they couldn't raise more money and they were cooked we just

picked a strategy from the very beginning that was actually very buildable it was a well- understood thing from the very beginning so what you're seeing now is just the strategy play out that we had put in place back

in 2020 and so it's been a relatively quick Journey we started in 2018 but we got going on the new platform call it in 2020 so relatively short journey in Airplane terms but it's all a function of the strategy that was put in place

from the very beginning if you don't have a good strategy you'll never make it an aviation yeah that's super interesting so it sounds like on paper everything's amazing but tell me so you go public and then there's a lawsuit

what happened as a new company disrupting an industry if you're not being sued you're probably not doing something right so I wasn't really bothered from the fact that we were getting sued we were very disruptive in the aviation

industry but we went up against the big the big guys and so we ended up in a horrible lawsuit with Boeing and so Boeing had sued us for all different types of things and they did it calculated at a time right before the

closing of our SPC so it was done what you could say looked like intended to try to kill us to prevent the close the you know the finance from financing from closing um so brutal absolutely brutal there's lots of stories of Boeing being

extremely aggressive with companies Aron supersonic credits their demise from Boeing pulling the funding at the last second from one of their rounds there's many companies zunum there's lots of horror stories of going to battle with them so Bo was not a company I wanted to

go to battle with Bo was a company I wanted to partner with not fight they're a big scary company we went kind of head-to-head with them now again as a second time founder to be able to put in

place the defense strategy and be willing to go the distance because this is going to cost you tens of Millions ions of dollars to defend so imagine we had raised 55 million we're about to close 850 million but I've got a lawsuit

ahead of me that's tens of millions and could kill us at any moment so the first thing they did was file what was called a preliminary injunction which was effectively an emergency court case that had to be held where if we lost it would

shut us down that what we did was so bad that if we lost they would shut us down so think if someone's going to build a train track through your neighborhood you can't wait two years for the tracks

be done your house will be gone so you do an a preliminary injunction which says this is an emergency it has to be done right now and that's the only way to prevent the train tracks from being built through the house so they do that

they lose the judge says nope I don't see it sorry you lose that gave us enough conviction from the investors to allow us to actually close the deal it was one of they call them like a bet the

company lawsuit where it is you hire the best lawyers in the world it it it is an absolutely fascinating journey to be a part of I never want to be part of it again but it's absolutely fascinating to

watch U the best lawyers in the world work they are so smart and what is so clear to me is when you go through things like a deposition the best lawyers in the world can twist you up so

bad that they can make anybody believe anything so it is a very scary thing to go through because end up being secondary to the talent of the lawyers and so the lawyers can spend anything and make any inocent person look guilty

and any guilty person look innocent I felt like I went through law school I learned so much about it I spent tens of millions of dollars on it I actually made some great friends with some of the lawyers too they're really good people

we used a firm called Gibson dun this guy Josh kit I still today think he is the smartest lawyer Maybe person I've ever met if anyone ever has to go through a bet the house lawsuit that is the guy to hire I was gonna say what's

your advice to Founders here maybe it's just to use your lawyer you spend whatever it takes to fight and defend and you never lay down yeah and so we ended up getting through that and man that was challenging that was a very

hard that was a very hard time and and you did and then here you are just charging full steam ahead last question for you we're obviously heading into a new world a new Administration how does this impact you and then all the AI

stuff any impacts for you or things you're looking forward to headwinds tailwins yes so two two aspects one the new Administration is very focused on deregulation that is a very big benefit for us um because because it is such a

heavily regulated industry so I think America will benefit from that I think Aviation will benefit from that I think Archer will benefit from that there's a lot of optimism in the stock market around Archer because of that and the

whole industry because of that and so I think that's a really interesting thing to watch the second thing I think is really important here is the defense side of things so if if if you look back at andril story so andril is a defense

startup that's based in Southern California started by Palmer lucky the Oculus founder great guy amazing entrepreneur somebody we just partnered with to to launch Archer defense so if I if I can retell his story though for a second it's quite fascinating how it it

plays into what I think will play out and how Archer will benefit in the defense business so Palmer started building andal and nobody really took much of a notice until it became very clear when the Russia Ukraine war

started that a lot of the systems that we had built were designed for a different war and so all of sudden you found yourself in what they call asymmetric Warfare where thousand drones were blowing up 1020 million do systems

like tanks and that was like very problematic and the big primes which kind of control the military-industrial complex the lockets the boeings the Rons they don't necessarily have like big drone businesses and so they called on androll to start developing products and

using some of their products and so they have some great products Road Runner and ghost and Altius and a bunch of these products that were used to help um really weigh a lot of L of people looked at it like kind of defend America or its

allies same thing in Israel and Gaza and so you had this obvious need where the rules had changed and we needed to rely on new companies so then you fast forward to the new Administration and you look at what elon's been tweeting

and what Trump's been tweeting why are we building these expensive f-35s f-22s they're very very expensive and I don't think there's a lot of even political will to risk these aircraft and to risk the pilots that fly them meaning

are we really willing to put a fleet of make up a number 100 aircraft across Enemy Lines and lose 100 of our best Pilots with our most expensive $1 million plus machines each questionable so what if we could build new what they

call autonomous and ATT trable Solutions now they don't necessarily have to be even War Fighting Machines just new solutions that can um help um the defense industry solve some of the new needs so instead of spending $50 million

on a very Advanced helicopter what if you could build one for five and it was autonomous right those are the type of capabilities that Archer is building to allow us to go do this the new Administration is fully on board with

that concept you could publicly tweet about it all the time and so that is where Archer will benefit where we can go build new systems for the new modern-day challenges and it's not that the awards won't just go to all the

Legacy companies because that's the way it's always gone There's an opportunity now for new companies to to get in there and build new stuff so I think that is hugely beneficial and important and there's new crops of companies whether

it's andrs or the Palante teers or The Archers that can be part of this new generation of companies that are born to go do that y I love it no I think this is all great wonderful thank you so much

Adam this was truly fantastic I really appreciate you joining us awesome good to be here