The Next Century of Aviation is Autonomous with Cole Rosentreter

The Next Century of Aviation is Autonomous with Cole Rosentreter

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 58 of the Business Development Podcast. And on today's episode, we are interviewing one of the leaders in Canadian UAV technology, Cole Rosentreter, with Pegasus Imagery. Stay tuned.

Intro: The Great Mark Cuban once said, Business happens over years and years. Value is measured in the total upside of a business relationship, not by how much you squeezed out in any one deal. And we couldn't agree more. This is the business development podcast based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and broadcasting to the world.

You'll get expert business development advice, tips, and experiences. And you'll hear interviews with business owners, CEOs. And business development reps. You'll get actionable advice on how to grow business brought to you by capital business development, capitalbd.ca.

Let's do it. Welcome to the business development podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 58 of the Business Development Podcast. And on today's episode, we have an absolutely amazing founder and CEO story for you. After dedicating 15 years to the Canadian Army as a paratrooper, Cole chartered a new course by founding Pegasus in 2018. His vision? To revolutionize wildfire management by seemingly bridging first responders with real time data all made possible through cutting edge autonomous aircraft technology.

From its modest beginnings, Pegasus has rapidly evolved into a powerhouse with a dynamic team of 25 full time experts. Notable entities such as the Government of Alberta, Boeing, Thales, and Canadian Pacific Railway have all joined forces with Pegasus as customers and valued partners. The year 2020 marked a remarkable achievement as Pegasus secured a place as a NASA Technology Semi Finalist.

The journey continued in 2022, when the company clinched the top spot in Boeing's prestigious Global AI and Autonomy Accelerator held in London. Most recently in May, Pegasus garnered the esteemed Prince's Trust Global Sustainability Award, an accolade presented by His Majesty King Charles himself. Cole and his brainchild Pegasus stand at the forefront of innovation, weaving together technology, vision, and impact in unprecedented ways.

Tune into our podcast as we delve into their extraordinary story, exploring intersections of courage, innovation, and sustainable progress. Cole, welcome to the show. It's great to have you. Yeah, great to be here, Kelly. Thanks. Okay, my listeners don't know this, but I'm, I'm a bit of a nerd. And when it comes to aviation, I have had a love of aviation since I was old enough to mumble.

My dad always used to say we went, he took me to an air show when I was about like one and a half. And the one of the first words that ever came out of my mouth was, what noise does a jet make? Because I absolutely love them. And So like, as a kid, I've always loved airplanes. I've always loved aviation.

I got into RC aircraft when I was 16. I actually got one as a birthday present and that ignited a total passion that still carries on to today. I always have an RC kicking around somewhere in the house that if it's a nice day and there's a field available, I love to go and fly. And yeah, it's, it's one of those things that UAVs have always held.

An interesting place where I wasn't sure what to make of them or what the future might be for them because when you know when I started seeing them in the recreational market, obviously, in the mid 2010s, obviously, back then the technology wasn't super fancy. They were kind of hard to fly in the beginning, took like took advancement and stuff to get them to where they're at today.

But you know, To found a technology company based in UAV aerospace now to see what that really means now, it's amazing. Cool. And I'm super, super excited to chat with you today about what that's going to mean for the future, not just here in Canada, but around the world.

Cole Rosentreter: Nerd is my, my highest term of endearment to, to people.

So when you call yourself a nerd, it's you know, you're striking a chord with me as well. Yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. So take me back to the beginning. You know, you can go back as far as you like, obviously, you spent a very long time in the military. And I want to touch on that, obviously, before we start the show, you were the very first veteran, I've had grace my stage.

And I truly mean that grace my stage, I hold veterans in the utmost esteem. I recognize very much so that without you going out there with with the fellow veterans and the fellow army to protect to protect not just Canada, But, but Western nations as a whole we owe it all to you. We really do. Freedom isn't free.

And I just want to start out by saying thank you so much for your service and thank you for for essentially doing what you did so that I was able and, and the listeners of this podcast are able to live in a free world.

Cole Rosentreter: I appreciate that. I never really actually have still figured out how to actually respond to it.

I mean, the best way I could put it is, you know, it is a team sport and it, Service is a, is service, but it's also a privilege. I mean, you get a chance to volunteer as opposed to being conscripted, like some other countries do you know, you select what you're going to do. You make a choice, you commit to it, and then you have an opportunity to make the most out of it, where you can get just incredibly, honestly, unique experiences.

So yeah, I was, I was exceptionally lucky to serve and I was. I would say I had an extraordinarily average military career which which is definitely not trying to undersell it. There are people out there that friends of mine or co workers from the military are still serving. And have done truly amazing things.

So yeah, it's a team sport for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely. And 15 years is no small amount of time in any, in any career.

 So, so tell me, how does one go from the military? Take us back to the beginning, Cole. Take us, take us back. How, tell us your journey.

How does one end up? Going from the military and ending up the CEO of, of essentially a next level aviation robotics company.

Cole Rosentreter: Well, you basically have to, throughout the whole process, you're basically spending nine out of ten days chewing glass and staring into the abyss trying to figure out what you don't know as quickly as you can before you die as a company.

No, I mean, so I, I grew up for the most part in Edmonton, so I was, you know, I have a, an older sister two amazing parents and then when I was graduating high school my sister, who was a year older, obviously went forward and she knew what she wanted to do, go pursue an education degree at the University of Alberta.

My parents asked me what I wanted to do. And I said, I don't know. And I know what I do know is I'm not going to go to university and spend a bunch of money on a starting a degree if I'm not actually sure of what I want to do. So moved out of the house, got a job working in construction, started looking at an apprenticeship, and then spent the next 12 months working out in Fort Saskatchewan, actually.

Learning a trade. So during that process that's actually where the first kind of big post, post high school, post graduation moment kind of happened. So he's working out of Fort Saskatchewan on September 11th in 2001 and, you know, radio in the forman shack started talking about a plane flying to one of the, one of these twin towers.

The World Trade Center in New York and the rest of the rest of that, you know, is a pretty well known store, obviously, but for myself, it just seemed like, Hey, something has just happened like this is this is one of these things that nobody knows what's going to happen next. And I was young, healthy. And it seems like the call to action really resonated.

And to be honest, it's one of the 20 decisions in my life that I actually really don't remember making. It just was so straightforward. Yeah. The next day, go down to Canada Place and go sign up. So after that the process is, is long. Actually, in Canada, it's not as fast as people think. So I actually didn't get into the military and be in my form of my training pipeline until basically January 2003.

So between, between 9 11 and January 2003, I ended up basically just working out a ton, trying to save up as much money as possible and getting ready for that.

Kelly Kennedy: What so, you know, I mean, for those that aren't familiar with what that process is like, which is probably 99% of us, what does that even look like?

Like, obviously you were young, you were willing to go, and they made you wait two years and is that just even before you made it to basic training?

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, it's it's, it's a very slow process because the Canadian forces through the 80s and 90s really had, you know, this quote unquote, decade of darkness.

And one of the easy ways to kind of look at reducing spending is obviously starting with the payroll. So looking at kind of the overall size of the force, which meant recruiting recruitment. And then induction and training pipelines really just kind of dragged out. So there's a really old, like, archaic process.

It's, it's not like going on Google. It's like finding the librarian who, you know, has a beard like Gandalf. They have to walk into a vault or a warehouse to go find you the one book, and that takes two hours. It's probably somewhere I don't so I started my basic training and I was actually very lucky.

Normally between different phases, you can get rolled back for injury or for something else, but all of mine was actually seamless. I think I had about 48 hours between all three. So it started in January and I got to my regiment to my first battalion actually stationed back here in Edmonton in September of 2003.

So basically nine months straight.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, wow. And how soon after you'd essentially finished your training was your group sent, sent overseas?

Cole Rosentreter: So the, the first time my first appointment to Southern Afghanistan in Kandahar was in 2005. And this was you know, an extremely good learning experience. You know, I joined a light infantry battalion with the Princess Patricia Canadian Light Infantry, and then from there after the first kind of year and a half, I ended up going to a weapons platoon.

So basically all the heavy weapons, all, all the, all the things that make the biggest bangs which is, which was an awesome place to be as a young, young guy. Also material, the heaviest stuff, which is,

Kelly Kennedy: so you were very fit,

Cole Rosentreter: You got strong fast, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So no, I did my first deployment in 2005 and that was only for, you know a few months down and down.

So basically helping set up. A new a new theater of operations before a provincial reconstruction team would actually follow on behind us. And then it was a great, great opportunity, honestly we got embedded with, with American task force as a parent unit, and then really got to see what, what the outside world looks like.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I can't even imagine. Like, I really, like, you know what I mean? It's very hard. I think. If you've never been in a war zone, you know, I mean, I can, I can feel how stressed out I would be being in that situation. And, and I just can't imagine, like, what is it like to adapt to come from it's your first deployment.

You've never been probably anywhere for the most part. And the next thing you know, you're literally around the world and there's people on the other side of the fence that want to kill you. What, what is that even like? What is that like mentally?

Cole Rosentreter: It's extremely interesting looking back at it. I mean, at the time.

You know, hindsight hindsight being 2020 right now, but at the time, you know, all you want to do is do what you've been training. Nonstop to go and do, and that's not fire weapons or kill bad guys, all that kind of stuff. It's like you sign up for a mission, and it's, it is actually exercising all the different muscles physically, mentally, intellectually, that even for a 21 year old, you put a 20, an 18 or a 21 year old in the turret of a vehicle and give them a belt fed machine gun.

They're the only people really that can actually protect the other. For people inside that vehicle, you're putting a huge amount of responsibility on somebody's shoulders at a very young age. And at that point, you know, you're, you're really exercising critical decision making situational awareness, these small things.

Absolutely. So these are 1 of these examples, I think of, you know, getting put into a position where everybody can make a call. And in a lot of cases. You know, your boss who might have 10, 10 years of experience ahead of you, he's sitting inside he can't, he can't look over your shoulder, you're right, you're two feet away, but he may as well be 100.

So that was a really good, really interesting first deployment around that. It just comes down to, I think most people want to go and actually gain the experience and if, and when it comes up, you know, prove that you can actually follow through on all the training, you can actually play in the game.

Kelly Kennedy: Yep. Yep. Well, I think like, you know, you were just talking about essentially the critical decision making, being able to make your own choices, make them quickly. I imagine those have contributed heavily to what has made you very successful in business.

Cole Rosentreter: I'd say it definitely contributes to the survival.

Success is a weird thing because it's, I think it's incredibly fickle. To try and measure so fast forwarding a little bit. So I did my, I ended up doing 3 deployments in Canada, 2005, 2007, and then over 2009 into early 2010. And then following that is a lot, a lot to go through. Yeah, so put on some other different training courses and things like that.

Did another deployment as part of the. That's part of it. I made a reaction to Russia invading Crimea in 2014. So I ended up going and spending several months in basically the north of Poland. So it was a, that was also a phenomenal experience to basically get as close to, you know, as close to going back into the field for going back to full speed, but also having an amazing amount of opportunities to continue to train.

It was also one of the you know, last, last major leadership positions that I held. So it was a phenomenal experience. The military is amazing. I mean, I can't, I can't recommend it enough. Even if you do four years or if you want to do a full 20, 25, 30, whatever it is you walk away with, I think now looking in hindsight, you get the most important skills that you really need.

You get all the soft skills. I, I, I truly believe that I've probably met. Everybody that I've met in business several times before, just because you're exposed to a whole wide range of personalities and you know, unlike a lot of things, there's a, there's both a formal leadership development program in the military, but the vast majority of it comes through informal, like actually just being exposed to leaders at different levels, seeing bad leaders frankly and then, you know, you find, you see every so often you find the rare gems,

that are just inspire you or terrify you, but also make you want to work harder for them and whatever the case is. So, I mean, yeah, I was extremely lucky. I was prepared to stay in the military forever, Kelly. But the things that I did is you know, you do something right in the military and they, they let you get away with it.

You do it right again and again, then they end up sending you on a course to go on and teach it. So I ended up teaching parachuting and became a parachute instructor. And so that's actually how. The real story of watching the company really kind of started was, I was actually teaching on a nighttime course for new, new paratroopers.

So it was our night jump, we're flying in a Hercules, so big multi engine transport plane. Everybody went to go jump out essentially at night, so the plane lights inside are all dim. And somebody just made a mistake. One of the Air Force guys in the back accidentally dropped a, basically, you know, the equivalent of like an extension cord, kind of in my feet.

So as I went to go jump out. I kind of got lasso'd, hit the side of the plane, got towed behind it for three or four seconds, a long three or four seconds, but.

Yeah, no kidding. Cable broke. And then I ended up falling and a parachute ended up deploying. And so one of the interesting things is, you know, I landed, realized I'm pretty beat up, like, obviously. Yeah. And then, you know, with the help of some of the other instructors who are obviously were, you know, close friends of mine.

You know, they helped me walk off the drop zone, went back and talked about it. And you know, three hours later, got back in a plane and went and jumped again. Because even though I was pretty hurt the important thing here was like, I was still, still fit enough, probably going to get another jump in, and I would definitely, I was not going to let that actually be like the last defining moment.

Cause if you have something like that happen and you don't get back on the salad right away looking back probably should have gone to the hospital right away instead, but went back, jumped again. And that was actually by far the, the very worst part of it is actually going back and doing it again.

But you know, right up to the hospital and begin the process of trying to figure out just how just a long list of all the things that were wrong. So that's actually led me to actually leave the military. So it took him a couple years to put me back together. And then in June of 2018, ended up medically retiring from the military and, starting the company.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. Wow. I don't even know where to start with that, Cole. That is just, that's crazy. That's like Mission Impossible level, level of, crazy.

Cole Rosentreter: You know, it sounds when I explain to people that I'm never, I'm always happy to talk about this because I think it's extremely important.

It's obviously a very personal thing when you get banged along the side of the plane and by the way, you know, your life, my life did not flash before my eyes. I don't, that wasn't your moment. I don't think anything in my DNA was pre programmed to ever have that experience. So it's like.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I did the drill that I would, you know, practice, practice what I preached and, you know, got a chance to kind of get away with it, you know, but after that, I mean, I ended up getting married and now we've got 3 kids and I kind of look back at this, like. You know, as big of a moment as it was, I mean, it's probably the nudge that I, I mean, it was a big nudge, but it's probably the nudge I needed.

Kelly Kennedy: It changed the whole trajectory. It changed the whole trajectory.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, I, I look at that as well too. You know, it's, I, I, I see a lot of people complain about the hardships in their life and I've been one of them. I've had some plenty of hardships in my life where I. Complained about them.

But the reality is, is that every single hardship led me to the place I am today. Right? Like this show wouldn't exist without hardship. The business development podcast wouldn't exist. You know, like it's, it took, it took adversity and overcoming adversity to take us here. And I don't think that we can.

I think every choice we have has repercussions, but, you know, if you're in a good place today, or if you have something that you value, you know, you have to take it with everything that got you there, not just the great thing it is today.

Cole Rosentreter: Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's my story. And you know, some days, some days I wish it turned out maybe slightly different, but not.

Not, not in like a large way. I mean, I'm, I've had an amazing wife, three kids two big Bernese Mountain Dogs I've still got amazing friends, and I've been able to, in the last five years, throw my entire heart and soul. Into a mission not just a company that I truly believe in. So, yeah,

Kelly Kennedy: I do have a question for you, Cole, just being my first veteran.

You know, I don't know how true this is. Just because I, I, unfortunately I don't know enough veterans in my life, but I, I do understand that reintegrating into society can be very challenging. For a lot of veterans, like you said, it's a completely different world. Before we, before we, before we started the show today, we had a quick chat regarding it.

And Cole was just mentioning how it's, there's nothing really, it's hard to, it, it, they're so different, right? Like if you're in a war zone or you've been in multiple war zones, or in your case, you've been on three deployments over the period of 10 years. And then you just come back into a regular life where people don't know, like, they're not even paying attention to that war.

They got so many other things going on, you know, life's just moving on. It feels to me and you know, like, obviously I have no idea because I've never met you personally. We've never sat down for coffee and I'd love to be by the way at any time. But but it appears to me like you've done something that so many veterans struggle with, but not only reintegrating with society, but creating a very successful business.

and going to what feels like a real normal life. Do you have any advice for, for veterans listening? Maybe, you know, you might be, you might be talking to, to future, to future people coming out of the army or people that are just in that business course, like you were talking about, that are coming out and they have nobody.

There's no, they have nobody because nobody's had that experience. Do you have anything that you would say to them? How did you do it? What, what kind of advice would you give them?

Cole Rosentreter: The the thing with the military, I think is a lot of people look at this and they would see a face value. Oh, we have a chain of command and it's very vertical.

It's not a flat organization by any stretch. Except you know, that's, that's the chain of command, like the different layers of responsibility that all pile, that all add up in a pyramid. The other side though, I mean, and it's different, different experiences, but where I was from, the decisions were, you know, mundane or life critical.

It was bottom up planning. I mean, you had, you know, a lot of cases you would have like a 23 year old brand new platoon commander come in. And then, you know, platoon the senior enlisted in that platoon, the sergeant, senior sergeant, or a warrant officer. I mean, they've got 15 years, 20 years sometimes, and they have all the experience.

So it's it's about combining the two young, young, young kind of supercomputer thinking is the idea and the leadership side to that. And then also about developing a, a good relationship. It's gotta be bottom up planning. Bringing those skills into the business world, either the private or the public sector.

I think this is the one thing that people in the military have to, we have to do a better job of. Prior to, prior to getting medically retired, most people thought I was completely nuts. They're like, drones, what's that? I'm like, it's not really drones. It's a different idea, but you know, it involves them and they're like, I don't really know what that means.

Okay, the, the default is, you know, from the infantry, especially like, well, what are you going to do? Get out and either dig ditches or be a cop or maybe go work in a prison. And it's like, yeah, those are all jobs that are at face value, five feet on the other side of the fence. And I think a lot of people leave the military and they don't really know what their, what their intrinsic value or a real kind of unique value proposition or superpower is.

I mean, the, the 1 thing that the military gives you on a bell curve, but on the media, you have all the soft skills that people spent like companies or government organizations spend billions of dollars every year trying to develop in people, which is leadership, or at the very least, the ability to lead yourself in the military has a very formalized plan around how to deliver and receive orders.

And 1 of the, 1 of the top pieces that always starts everything is, you know, what is the commander's intent? And the reason why it starts there is. The mission will change. The plan will change how we're playing and executing will not go according, according to how we wrote it up or how we rehearsed it.

Conditions will change. But if you understand the intent, then you can go out and you can actually tackle a lot of these implied tasks and actually achieve what you're supposed to do. Maybe not to the letter of the mission because conditions change and that flexibility. I cannot tell you how valuable it is, man.

Like, especially looking on, especially as a startup, having the culture of flexibility. And also, yeah, like, not not quitting on things. Kelly. That is that is something that is absolutely underrated grid or whatever you want to call it. But the ability to just get it out and, like, get it through 5 minutes.

Yep, that's when most people quit and then normally the finish line would have been around the corner.

Kelly Kennedy: No, I agree. I agree. You know, it's even with capital, right? Like I look back at when I started capital business development and it, you know, I mean, it, I didn't, I didn't necessarily know what I was doing.

I knew what I wanted to accomplish. Like you said, I didn't necessarily know all the steps and pathways to get there. They developed as I continue to try to strive for my end goal, which, which was to create the best business development program around. And I figured I could just I could figure it out as I went, and it really did work that way, Cole.

It's so funny, because I actually have an employee named Cole, so I, Me and him chat as well, and we chat sometimes, and I just let him know, I'm like, you know, when I started this business, I couldn't have seen it go this way. This was never on the game plan. However, it's still, it's still, It still goes towards the goal that I was moving towards, right?

It still meets the end criteria. But yes, I agree. It's like most companies will never get to that end criteria the exact way they planned it or the exact way they put it down on paper. Sometimes you have to be able to, like you said, flex and adapt to get there. But like you said, if you keep a picture in your mind as to where you want to go and you're always on that path, you know, you might have to take an extra turn, but you're going to get there.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, absolutely. The And there's, there's no shortage of turns. I'm not a big fan when people are like, Oh, you know, the ups and downs of being an entrepreneur. I'm like, I really don't, I try as much as possible not to, not to think about it like that. Like if you write the ups and downs, Oh my God. Like that's, that's too hard.

Like, I just think about it, like just compression and expansion. You're going to go through periods where this week is nothing seems like it's going right. Okay, how can you just like, hold on and then get through this period because it'll break. It'll break wide open again if you, if you just hold on to it.

But I mean, for people leaving the military, it's, it's really straightforward. If you have a set of skill sets and that you can go out anywhere in the world. And Excel, like people especially in tech startups, I think are really starting a lot of it in the United States, really, but a lot of the tech startups are really looking at pulling in veterans from different branches or different service service occupations to bring you could call it management, but really it's leadership and understanding that the human terrain.

Which is the core of what technology companies actually really are.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes. And, you know, obviously people are the hardest thing to work with because we're all different. We all have different motivations. We all have different obligations. And it, yeah, you know, I mean, managing people, if you can get good at that, you can pretty much get good at anything.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah. It's, it's a lot easier than writing code. Yeah,

Kelly Kennedy: absolutely. Absolutely. I can definitely see the the aim to automate as much as possible. There's definitely people trying to think like, how in the world do we remove the human element? But no, you're right. It's, it's not about removing the human element.

It's about leading it better. It's about learning how to work with people better. And you're absolutely right. I think that's something that in the, in the military You guys are definitely doing better with many, many, many, many, many centuries of learning how to do it, right?

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, and it consistently and constantly adapts, which also makes it interesting as well as terrain relevant to, you know, the population that you're working with.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. So, so tell me about like aviation, right? Like where did your love of aviation come from, Cole? You know, you don't just start a drone company if you don't if you don't have a passion for it. How did how did that come about?

Cole Rosentreter: So my, my father actually went and put himself through the the air cadet program here in Canada.

And so he went through and got his gliders, glider pilot's license, and then his his private pilot's license through the cadet program. So when I, when I was growing up you know, my father worked in, you know, heavy construction. He started out as a, as a, as a plumber right after high school. And then, you know, now he's.

As bad of a term as it is, you know, basically bootstrapped himself all the way. Now he works on, you know, major international projects and things like that. And you know, he went through and this was 1 of the big defining points, I think, for our formational. Parts of his life was going through the discipline and around the cadet program and getting the pile side.

So I've always had a love of aviation. My eyesight wasn't actually 2020. so, and, you know, 99, 2000. They want to accept people who had laser eye surgery for the pilot. Not for the air force. So the infantry wasn't really on the, on the road map until after nine 11. So I've always had a passion. I think everybody really like loves to look up and see an air show, or just when you hear a plane or a helicopter, if people don't turn their head and tilt it upwards to look and try and see it.

I think there's probably something wrong with them. You know, they might be broken. There's something else going on inside right now. Like something about machines that fly in the air and people that are inside of them. It's amazing. Yeah. The idea for the company was actually. You know, overseas there's extremely expensive, exquisite, but a very limited number of these military drones and it's not.

And the number 1 thing that they deliver for you on the ground is situational awareness. And it is truly when you have that kind of a platform even if not directly in your control or in your working directly for you, you just, you have a level of safety that that information can give you that is.

Impossible sometimes to really understand. It's like having a flashlight in the dark, right? Yeah, contrasting that here at home, though, like, in the military, and we see this all the time. Now, again, our forces, especially the army gets called out. Help support it really in Western Canada right now with flooding or different situations and wildfire in particular and seeing how these.

Major events like are actually coordinated just insane. Like, we have thousands of people sometimes or hundreds of troops and all this heavy equipment that would show up to aircraft transports, helicopters, and the whole thing is being coordinated basically real time by a guy or people in plane or helicopter with a radio and paper map on their new board.

And they're trying to basically do is a word picture to explain what the situation looks like when you're dealing with fires that are the size of a city. And we're, by the way, when the sun goes down, we're not going to do anything. We're going to pull back and it's not safe enough. It's not everything.

And every morning, I restart the cycle, trying to regain situation where it just seemed completely insane. So the idea was really simple. In the military, we saw what really expensive drones could do. Those military drones are not following what normally happens with, you know, high end bleeding edge technology, like GPS or satellites or the microwave, you know, government invention that translates to commercial or enterprise and then eventually down to consumer, right?

We all have probably have a GPS currently on us somewhere from a watch to a cell phone, right? Yeah, technology, there's a gap. And so that gap means that. This information availability is not there on the front lines here at home. So that's the actual kind of core mission of the company is to bridge this capability gap between Boeing and Best Buy when it comes to what drones can do on the front lines of disasters.

Kelly Kennedy: That's, that's amazing. And an amazing mission and purpose. I love it. You know, especially we're having the worst wildfire season that I could, I can remember. I can't remember in my entire life there being as many wildfires as we have had now in the 2023 summer season here in Western Canada and Eastern Canada.

Take your pick. The whole country is on fire. How do you... It just blows my mind, Cole. How, how, why? Why is it that, that nobody's been doing this? Why don't we have drones flying 24 7 above these fires, reporting back information, GPS mapping the area? You know, like, the technology exists. Why are we so far behind?

Cole Rosentreter: There's a, there's a, there's a lot of different overlaps to the question, Kelly. So, if you think about it like this, you have... We've essentially been fighting fires one way for the last hundred years, which is if you see a fire on the landscape, you immediately attack it and put it out. Fire is natural.

So, and a good example is we all, we all know pine cones. Pine cones are actually evolved to be the seeds. So after a fire goes through, it actually takes like the heat and intensity from a wildfire to actually activate a new seed from a pine cone to regenerate the forest. So it's entirely natural. And you know the First Nations groups have been doing essentially controlled burns on the landscape, you know, hundreds, hundreds of years.

We've been fighting fires in a way that we wanted to immediately suppress them. The challenge here in Canada, specifically, is that... Just here in Alberta, the forest north of Edmonton is the size of Sweden, and it has a very small population base, so now you have fires that you know, are not next, are not normally near critical infrastructure, a town, a major, you know a major type of critical infrastructure, like a pipeline or a railway or something like that, or utilities.

So you want to let that forest burn. Problem is, it's, we're actually getting, on the average, less wildfires per year. But really, overall conditions have really changed that allow these fires down what might have been a small fire that goes from a campfire size to now they're growing to be the size of small towns or cities in a matter of days, sometimes almost overnight is what it seems like because with rising global temperatures, like climate change is a real factor in this whole thing.

It's not, I would say that the overriding factor. We've, we've allowed the forest to basically be on not, not be managed correctly. So you have a lot of channel load that's built up over 70 years, 100 years. And that all that is just sitting there, like for lack of a better word, it's a giant bomb. So we're trying to pick apart a bomb.

And at this point, we're just trying to hold it back. So these fires are growing faster wildfire, the actual fire behavior itself has changed. So fires aren't laying down at night. So those things are not they're now growing sometimes and moving faster at night than during the daytime. There's a bunch of these factors and the whole process of basically taking six to eight hours in a 24 hour cycle to take your eye off the ball that is, it's, it's, you can just almost feel how we immediately lose momentum at dusk.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, is it? Is it even controllable?

Cole Rosentreter: Well, there, there has to be an equilibrium. So this is the moonshot really. And how I kind of look at, at this whole opportunity, the real opportunity here is that there is a huge amount of fire fires that are going, going to continue to happen. But there we're just dealing with these mega fires.

So a mega fire is a, a relatively new term in like the last 10 years where it's a fire that's over a hundred thousand hectares. Now you're talking about fires that are basically generating their own wind wind and weather cycles. So we're seeing all this, you know, crazy wildfire behavior because these small fires are now rapidly getting the fast track to becoming mega fires, and we don't have the resources.

To actually fight mega fires, the best we can do is radically change, radically transform how fast and effective we can be at the initial attack, early, immediate, early detection and attack of like by ground or by air. But really getting on top of them because when they, if we don't if you don't do that in the first 12 hours, if a fire's not basically contained or suppressed in the next 24 hours, it's probably going to grow to be completely out of control.

And then at that point, Then you're going to spend millions and millions of dollars just on the response for that one fire and we don't have anywhere near the resources to do it. We don't have. A thousand air tankers or scoopers or water bombers to go out and try and tackle all these problems.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you kind of hit on the fact, you know, that, like you said, just north of our city, there's a forest the size of Sweden, right? Like, like there are completely unpopulated areas. And if you get a lightning strike there, you may not even know you have a forest fire until it's too late.

Cole Rosentreter: So it comes, you know, an interesting thing with the lightning is, you know, about 20 to 25% of fires are caused by lightning.

The other majority of the fires are human caused, unintentional from utility lines and vegetation overgrowth, or somebody throwing a cigarette butt as crazy as that is out the window and starting a fire in their highway. Off road vehicles, there's a bunch of different reasons behind it, but about 70 to 75% of fires, at least in Western Canada, are human caused or human driven.

The lightning strike is a good one because we can actually have all these sensors now that can not just tell us when lightning strikes happen or the rough location for them. We can actually tell when there's been a positive strike or there's been a lightning strike to the ground that is likely high enough in energy to create a fire.

So we can actually narrow that down. Wow. But then, we have to get out there and actually verify.

Kelly Kennedy: How, how do they tell that?

Cole Rosentreter: In some, in some cases you have a series of look up, like Alberta is actually really interesting because we have a series of lookout towers. Some of these are being automated now with, you know, static cameras to detect smoke on the horizon.

Yeah. A lot of them though are still you know, one crazy university co op student. All summer sitting on a tower with a pair of binoculars looking for smoke on the horizon. That, by the way, is definitely not a good summer job. You know, I don't care what people say.

Kelly Kennedy: You would not recommend.

Cole Rosentreter: I would not encourage.

Kelly Kennedy: I mean... Oh boy, no, that's amazing. So, okay, so then tell me... What do you see? What is the future look like? Are we going to have drones that just fly like at like, I don't know, 50, 000 feet? And all they do is look for fires? Is that even possible? Because like, to me, that seems like a solution.

Why don't we just have drones flying 24 seven at certain heights to see if they can find them ahead of time.

Cole Rosentreter: So the, yeah, I mean, well, this will sound like what it sounds like. I mean, the only way that this works is if we automate things. So currently we use lookout towers. We also spend a A lot, a lot of money securing and retaining either fixed wing or often cases helicopters to go out and do what's called aerial patrol during the daytime.

Helicopters will get under contract. They'll go out and they'll fly around and look at their flight hours, but they're, you know, they're looking for smoke on the landscape. Visually, so you might get an iPhone photo for a helicopter pilot that gives you a rough idea on what they saw. This is not effective because you can't actually tell if a fire is small.

The helicopter flew by, you're looking for smoke. So, in some cases, they, maybe they sneeze, maybe they missed it. But the only way to really get around this is, you have to have some type of intelligence driven prevention and preparedness side to it. So, drones flying around and looking at it. Absolutely.

If you had. In the lightning, the lightning strike example, you have an early warning network. Okay, why not send a drone that can then fly out there and then have drones that can do it autonomously as in they don't require a direct human operator to remotely pilot them. That allows you then to scale up.

So you might have, you know, 20 or you might have 2000 lightning strikes in in an overnight period. In a region. It's too much for, for somebody to fly around and, and look at. So having the ability to send out drones autonomously to go out and actually do the investigation and then provide a real time feedback and what they found, that is how you can really shorten the decision making cycle or the response time and you know, at a really 50,000 foot view.

We have to get, we have to radically improve the effectiveness of how we can put fires out. And the only way to do that, and as I see it, is not building drones that are the size of a water bomber. It's connecting everybody involved, industry and government, that work hand in hand, with the information that they need.

Give them, you know, in the military it's called a common operating picture. But really, what is the, what's the real time status of the situation? Then how can you get that information to people, and then use it, and then they can use that to coordinate things. If we can get, if we can get really good at, at actually attacking and, and putting out fires, then Kelly eventually we can build a confidence to actually start our own fires and do these prescribed burns or control burns and actually control them.

Yeah. Right now we're not very good at it, to be honest. And that's why we do very little of 'em. And that is probably the only get back to like an equilibrium.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. I get you're absolutely right. Like there has to be. I get what you're saying about there being too much fuel about when these fires spark up and suddenly it's like they get out of control because a fire that should have happened naturally wasn't allowed to.

It's an interesting conundrum, isn't it? Because on the one hand, we're trying to put out fires, but if we would just do more controlled burns or find a way to, to do this naturally, we would actually have less fires.

Cole Rosentreter: And it's unfortunately, it's not even that clear cut. So you look at where some some places like towns, obviously, they want to attract people to come and move and live.

And say Kelowna because it's beautiful. I mean, it's one country. It's the Okanagan and at the same time, you also have massive crushing wildfires and you have you know, the expansion of the, you know, these communities all around the world, really into areas that are really pushing this wildland urban interface further and further into the, into the forest.

So now you don't have a standoff between, you know, beautiful. Beautiful Kelowna and the surrounding areas or, you know different ski resorts or summer, summer resorts and things like that. So yeah.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Where at one time there would have somewhat been a natural barrier, we've we've built some homes.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah. And now you start looking at the you know, what, what does actually turns into and if you follow the data, a really good example. So this is, you know, you know, the tail end of August in June, State Farm, which is about 20% of the U S insurance market. Has now basically notified everybody that they are no longer going to insure residential and commercial properties for fire in the state of California.

That is like the world's, I think, 7th or largest economy taken in isolation. And state farmers saying that they're no longer going to ensure it because they're modeling as an insurance company says, we're, we're going to continue to take bigger and bigger losses as we look forward, like, we're pulling out of the market.

So the only other wow, this challenge really kind of gets funded is through the government. Right, so the insured losses and then the uninsured losses side. So if you're a business owner, or you're a resident. Now, you're looking at the government being responsible both for the wildfire management and response and also recovery side.

And that cost is, is only going to keep going exponentially up almost every year.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, that's it. It makes you wonder, because, you know, like in our case here in Canada and Alberta, right, we've had some pretty major fires over the last five years, you know, like Fort McMurray's burned down at this point.

Kelowna's basically burned down. We've had nothing but horrible wildfires. Even right here in our backyard, like me and Cole both live just outside of, well, I live in Edmonton and Cole lives just outside of Edmonton, I believe. Is that, is that right, Cole? And like Villeneuve is halfway between Edmonton and and Spruce Grove, which is where we kind of started the show and I come from.

But, you know, Literally, Entwistle was on fire at the beginning of this summer, and it's 45 minutes from us, right? Like, it's, these are happening in our backyard, and they're getting bad, and a lot of people are being evacuated, and there's, there's not really a good plan for what to do, like, nobody's really prepared for this.

I know I don't go into spring thinking, what happens if I have to evacuate my home, and I, I doubt many people do, and it's, It's an interesting problem, but it is becoming more of a problem, and it, it does start to make you wonder, like, if the insurance companies, because our, like, obviously our insurance is going up and up and up and up and up, because they're having to consistently build a new city every year, right?

Like, it's, it's getting crazy. What do you, what do you even do? Like, whose fault is it? What, how do you even, how do you even handle that, you know?

Cole Rosentreter: Well, I'm, I'm not a big, big believer in, in the fault side. I'm a big believer in the fact that, This is going to have to be something that, or we can't just solely rely on you know, a provincial or a federal organization to just do it by themselves and a really clear example of this.

So you know, obviously it's been a crazy year. So, last week I was up by Rainbow Lake, so about a 10 hour drive, north northwest of Edmonton, and there's a fire up there that was about 180, 000 hectares. So just a pretty big ripper. And then there was also another fire from British Columbia crossing the border.

We went up there under contract to go and help support. So I was backfilling one of our teams and going up there. You see, you know, it's not just a forest out there. There's a major oil and gas field out there as well. And it was, it was very interesting because the volunteer fire chief also works at that energy company, and he's also working hand in glove with what the energy company's resources are to try and make sure that he can court.

The focal point, the coordinator for what this, you know, multinational company can bring to the province and their responses. And, you know, there's a, there's teams from Australia, the United States also all help working this fire complex. And at the same time, there has to be a, there has to be a closer coordination between industry and government, because.

As much as government has the lead on this, it's very much preventative, right? We all know how this works in the industry when with emergency management is that it's very hard to get something into the budget. Like Alberta's normally, I think it's somewhere between 700 to $850 million a year is the budget for forestry parks and tourism current ministry.

Some years though, they might have real, they might have a real, a real cost of dollars spent. That might be a billion dollars. It might be like 2016, where it's 14 billion. Like 2019, there's a big Chuckegg fire up by high level as well. That fire is several billion dollars in real costs, not insurance and claims like real costs of.

You know, what does it cost to put 58 helicopters and a 1000 people and a couple 100 heavy equipment bulldozers on on that fire line for 4 or 5 months. These fires have a real cost and it's getting a closer fusion between the 2, both government and industry.

Kelly Kennedy: So tell me about some of the solutions that you were working on to help address these fires, Cole.

Like, what is some of the technology that's that's going on inside of these drones you guys are building? And by the way, they're, they're amazing. If you're listening to this show right now, you have to check out Cole's website. You'll be able to find it on the links to this show. I'll make sure that it's up there, but you need to check out the Pegasus website.

His website is beautiful. It's one of the nicest websites I think I've ever seen, Cole. And I've been doing marketing a long time. Your website is awesome. And he has like, he has video of the UAVs and they are, they are next level. Like tell me about some of the technology you got running inside of these things, Cole.

What, what can they do?

Cole Rosentreter: So first and foremost they're designed to carry sensors and the focus here is being able to hit and stick, so to speak, over top of a problem. To do that it's important to probably talk about airspace. So when there is smoke on the landscape, so there's a fire on the landscape, that wildfire actually becomes restricted airspace.

So basically about three nautical miles around the edge of that fire, there's a box up to, you know, 3, 000 feet above ground level. So this box can actually expand as the fire gets bigger, but it's restricted because there's so much traffic that's being flown in and out of it. Right. You had helicopters flying low level or air tankers, and they don't want proper pilots you know, out there sightseeing, and you definitely don't want drones.

The reason why people are really, really nervous around drones is because you can't see them. You're talking about it's already low visibility. You're flying low to the ground. And now you're going to try and pick out, you know, a DJI Phantom or something like that. That's. You know, the size of a coffee, a coffee pot this is gonna be, it's impossible.

So everybody's really nervous around drones. So the airspace is restricted. So we've had approvals to fly in this airspace for almost the last 4 years already. So that's actually not the challenge. The challenge here is how do you actually safely have drones and manned aircraft? In the same aerospace at, at the same time.

So if you, if you, your listeners can't, can't obviously see this, but I mean, there's a smile on both of our faces because to solve such a massive challenge like wildfire, we have to actually as a company, develop a technology that's required for drones to actually commercialize and be able to connect people with this data.

So we have to small solve a slightly smaller problem, which is what is the next century of aviation actually gonna look like? And spoiler will be autonomous. Yeah, so we developed the last most valuable technology sets that are required for drones to detect and then avoid safely. Other potential hazards in the air helicopters.

Birds, other drones, and to do this reliably, this is why drones have had 20 years to really underwhelm everybody, except for the military. Because even the military can't fly drones over wildfires. Right? Unless you're talking. Basically, having a chase plane flying or an escort blocking out a big chunk of airspace at 30, 000 feet.

The challenge here for us as a company is we develop drones, but we've really written just as a technology demonstrators to show that we see the ability to connect people to data side 1st and foremost, and then we need a platform. So the drones are really the tool and we use several different types of drones right now.

Some are, you know, a four to five hour multi rotor that can stay relatively low and slow. And then, you know, the core of what we do though is these vertical takeoff and landing fixed wing drones we take off and land like a helicopter, and then we fly like a, like a regular fixed wing plan right after, right after launching.

From there. So the aircraft actually have the ability to use a, a number of different sensors on them from air-to-air radar to other sensors like, like cameras and computer vision. To what manned aircraft or some are equipped to do, which is broadcasting their position. We can actually receive that transponder information as well.

The core of it, though, is we have to build drones that are safe enough to not just fly in the same airspace as manned aircraft around a wildfire. That's how we go from working at night when nobody else is flying to now working into the daytime and continuing that 24 hour coverage. That's the next big stake in the ground for us, but also not having to actually send a team on by ground to drive and vehicles to go and launch inside of that.

Restricted airspace bubble. So the Holy Grail for us really is beyond visual line of sight. And so it's beyond the line of sight of the person who's actually operating the drone. The reason why it's so hard is you don't know what else is out there. So the existing standards have always kind of been have a visual observer or some, some human standing out there looking at the sky skyline for an aircraft or helicopters flying nearby where that drone is that doesn't scale.

So we're building aircraft that not just have this sensor suite on board, but also can then by themselves, make the smartest, safest decision every single time. So, without requiring us to send a signal back to an operator, have them make a decision, send it back up to the aircraft to then make a maneuver.

You know, when you're talking about a closure rate, sometimes, you know, a couple of 100 kilometers an hour, run out of time really quick. So, building drones that can actually. We're focusing on the safety side of the aircraft and that's really you know, building the drones as the tool to unlock this large opportunity.

Kelly Kennedy: How are sorry, Cole. I didn't mean to cut you off. How far away are we from this from this being possible, like for us being able to send up an autonomous drone at night over a fire and hopefully not conflict. I guess you were saying at night they don't conflict because there's not planes in the sky flying at night over a fire.

But let's assume that you have multiple aircraft in the area. How far are we from you being able to send up a drone, give it a mission and just turn around and walk away and let it let it perform its mission and it'll avoid all obstacles. Other other aircraft. Are we there? Yeah. Is it just as it just formalities at this point, or is the technology still being developed?

Cole Rosentreter: So this is this is where it gets hard. All of this is actually hard, by the way. It comes down to regulatory risk, so. Most people would probably recoil or, or, or tune out at this point. So drones have, you know, really had a huge inflection point as far as interest. You know, there's several billion dollars of venture capital investment in drones in 2015 to 2018.

Everybody thought that drones were going to be the next, the next big thing. But the regulators, the FAA, Transport Canada, yes, in Europe they were not going to move. They didn't budge. So now the timing and, you know, the why now kind of moment is. Transport Canada here you know, nationally is just released a series of draft rules that will come into force starting late next year, probably mid next year.

These rules outline low risk beyond vigilance site for drones. The regulators are moving because they have a ton of downward pressure from both industry and government to. Basically, okay, we can't, we can't just keep saying no, and we can't have a two tier system when it comes to things that fly, you can't have rules just for drones.

You can't have rules just for things that fly with people on board. You have to have a fusion. And so this advanced air mobility is kind of a coin kind of the term that's kind of coined for it. But, 5 to 10 in the next 5 to 10 years, you'll see there's just one set of rules now for everything that flies.

And to do that is extremely hard because you're competing with an industry that's 120 years old, almost now they're having to force change on them. So the, the interesting thing is how does this whole thing happen? It's going to happen a lot faster than people think. Can, can drones right now fly over and map fires?

Yes, that's, that's, that's a table stakes, so to speak. That's pretty, that's, it's not commonplace, but it is, it's already the you know, that state of the art today. The ability to have drones autonomously fly, say 100 kilometers or 200 cars from one location out through uncontrolled airspace like the wild west.

You don't know who's actually out there flying because they're not being tracked by air traffic controller. That type of encounter that that level of unknown. That's what really makes people nervous on the regulatory side is. Once you set a standard, everybody else will then work to hit that standard.

Then the whole thing takes off literally. Where you're going to have where you're forecasting. Probably 50 to 60, 000 light aircraft in North America, helicopters assessments. What happens when 7, 000, 000 drones join them. Yeah. Okay.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay. No kidding. Holy cow. Is that really the scope? You think that we're heading towards?

Cole Rosentreter: Yes, it is.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. That's unreal.

Cole Rosentreter: So the most basically you won't be able to look up, you won't be able to look up and not see a drone. They're going to be everywhere. I think it will depend on where you live. I know there's a lot of, and this isn't our wheelhouse, but there's a lot of talk right now about like drone delivery and having drones being able to deliver different packages.

I just think, you know, from a really bottom up practical aspect. It's not dropping off a, a box of hamburger helper from Walmart for you that you probably really want. It's probably something closer to looking at industry. Like, here in Alberta, we have, you know, with, with the oil and gas sector, there's a, an industry, there's a whole subset called hot shotting.

So if you have a diesel generator that breaks down. And you have a 1 component that has to get repaired. You generally have somebody to pick up truck that has to then grab that part from the supply depot and then take every speeding ticket possible all the way up to get that. Because you're probably losing 200 to 500, 000 dollars an hour for that diesel turbo generator to be down.

For that oil right to be pumping so. That hotshotting would be 1 of these, like, you know, extremely high value, very clear pain point things for for drone delivery. So you would probably look at seeing drones really started not downtown Edmonton or downtown Toronto. You should really look at where it will emerge, which it will be on the frontier with industry.

So, big enterprise operations, that's where 1st, and then eventually it'll work its way. Closer and closer into the more higher risk areas like where cities and populations really are.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, you're absolutely right. And, and to me, that makes, that makes a ton of sense. Like I, I'm honestly surprised that we don't have this already because it's like, you see every week, you know, all you have to do is open your YouTube and there's videos of, of manned drones at this point where you can, where people are making ones that people can get in and fly around.

And it, it just blows my mind that we have essentially bottlenecked this industry. And and to me, it's the future. It really is. It's the future of delivery. It's the future in your case of being able to control fires and and all sorts of commercial applications. It's the future of any type of of like hot shotting.

You're absolutely right. Like and companies like you said, they'll pay the money like they'll pay the money to have something flown out to them in one hour if it takes their equipment up, especially in the oil and gas sector in Alberta. Okay. Thank you. It just blows. Like you said, if it's crazy, if that's the problem, it's if it's regulation yeah, they need to get that fixed because it's the future and it's coming whether you like it or not.

Cole Rosentreter: It is. But at the same time, once you open Pandora's box on this And we actually have worked with Transport Canada for the last almost over two years now through an official partnership. We're not at the white paper stage, Kelly. Last year we did over 254 flights. The, the scale of the data that we're actually experiencing real time and, and doing this live, so to speak.

This is again, one of these things about going fast, iterating, you know, we've crashed a ton of drones by the way. Safely always, but or in safe locations, but the, the important thing is, you know, we're learning as fast as we can and you look at where the regulator is. We can't make them move faster, but we can really help provide industry feedback, so to speak, in real world use cases.

And I think one of the interesting things about what we do specifically is that if you're going to get unique approvals, and we have several it comes down to the use case. So, hamburger helper or dropping off a new pair of Nikes to somebody, that they're probably not is that is that really a high enough use case for them to to really look at maybe potentially trialing new rules.

What about trying to save the city? Okay, that changes that changes the dynamic. And so, again, it comes to actually down to less about the technology really about building both a track record, a reputation and the relationships that are required. I mean, We're made a really generous comment about the website.

We don't pay for SEO or marketing. All of our traffic is organic. And the reason why is we want to know if we're actually doing well. And a lot of that comes comes down to being authentic as a startup.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it is, it is well done. I wouldn't congratulate you if it wasn't well done, regardless, it's, it's beautiful.

It's, it's exactly the way that I like to recommend websites. I like visual appeal. You got to think about it's, it's clean. It only gives you the information you need to know. It's, it's very well done. So I don't know who built it, but yeah, you should, you should congratulate them. Yeah. But yeah, no, I want to talk, you know, Cole, when we talked about this, when I, when we had kind of our pre chat, you know, when I first invited you to the show, one of the things that I wanted to get into with you was, I think there's a lot of commercial application for drones that companies are not thinking about.

And I was hoping that potentially we could address some of the commercial solutions alot of the solutions tend to be, I imagine more on the government, government side, or where, you know, they're publicly funded initiatives, right? But let's talk about commercial applications. Drones are becoming a huge thing. What are some of the commercial applications that you guys support at Pegasus?

What are some of the you know, if you were selling some of your drones to business, what are some of the applications that might want to think about? Because I think there's a lot of applications. And they just need that little kick in the butt to say, Oh shit, I never thought about that.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, this is, in a lot of ways, it's like inventing the plane and the smartphone at the same time.

You're talking about a whole, completely different way of... Not revolutionizing existing industry, but creating a whole, whole series of new ones. So a really, a couple of really good examples. So we obviously, you know, we've talked about this, but we focus on solving wildfire through actual information and connecting people with data.

That's the mission of the company. That's our North star. And, you know, it's physically from a physics standpoint, it's, it's possible, but it's, it's a lifetime. It'll take a lifetime of effort, you know, cumulatively to do that. You also look at what else is out there, though, on the frontier, so to speak, where wildfires are.

Now you look at all the industries that have a federal requirement to inspect and monitor their assets. So the Railway Act, the Pipeline Act, Utilities Act are all good examples. You look at you know, in particular, we have we pulled together a consortium two years ago both government at the federal and provincial level, as well as industry partners.

And one of them, which is Canadian Pacific Rail. So we're now working with them on trialing long range track inspection. So the state of the art right now is either they have a helicopter, in most cases, fly into a visual inspection of their line, and obviously that's difficult because you're flying a helicopter while trying to also look out the window.

And then, at the same time, then you also have a different layer to that track inspection, where they shut down a division of track and they put those trucks with the rollers on the actual wheels. And then that, that that high car, will that go down the line and do a visual or basically almost like a physical check and seeing, like, if there's bumps in the track, how does it look from the ground level?

When that track is shut down for that high car, though no, no commercial phrase obviously can move. So now you have a safety issue that is stopping a commercial issue. So, drones have the ability to now fly and collect that data. This has been proven through a bunch of different early use cases with small drones, but doing it at scale, not doing, you know, 5 kilometers of track inspection, let's say doing 500 kilometers.

Now, you totally change that industry. And one of the interesting parts for us is. This consortium of partnerships that we pull together this is helping support our development of our aircraft and our technology towards full commercialization in the next 18 months. That's our, that's our current track to be able to fly beyond visual on site and uncontrolled airspace.

Wow. But we also equally as importantly have to actually do the education piece. We have to work with these groups, and if you're used to sending 2 people or 1 person in a truck riding a rail line. To do your inspection. What type of data do you need to, you know, replace that, that, that, that current process?

Is it LIDAR? Is it full motion video? Is it photogrammetry? So an aerial map point densities accuracies, all these different factors, and most of them are kind of starting, not from zero, but with a, from a place of, we don't know, and if we're talking about major industries that are billions of dollars a year in, in safety and management costs, They're going to try and find a way to reduce those costs while still maintaining or ideally improving that level of safety.

These use cases that we're doing this is where we can actually start working with groups like CP rail, and now we're giving them different types of data sets. And we're finding that it's actually not what we originally thought either. So we spend a, we definitely don't spend enough because I don't think you ever can, but we spend a lot of time actually trying to talk to industry partners and understanding what they're looking at.

And from the wildfire standpoint, this is actually phenomenal because we're now able to some of these use cases last year, Kelly, are amazing. We've got some, some of the video published, I think, already online, but we talked previously, we don't fight fires at night. If you're if you're a ground team, like you probably want to try and fight fires at night because it's cooler obviously, and then sometimes the fire behavior is, is, you know, less active at nighttime.

But you can't go out at night because helicopters can't fly, so you don't have a casualty evacuation or a safety plan, and you don't have that situational awareness. One of the use cases we did last year with the government of Alberta is we put, we went out there and put a drone over top of a ground crew moving around the woods at night.

And originally it was actually supposed to be just about like a walk through, talk through kind of practice. And then we started seeing hotspots, and they couldn't. Then we started using the drone, you know, to actually walk and talk them on to these hotspots. And even at night they still couldn't see it until they were like 1 foot away on top of it.

And then it's like, Hey, reach out dig right in front of you. And so we've got video from the drones and from the ground sides, you know, GoPro and stuff like that of these guys in the woods and now we're finding hotspots and they're like, well, this, these last few hours of doing this probably saved us a week of work walking around the woods to try and do the same thing.

So these use cases are really going to help set the conditions, obviously for us, but for the wider industry about what does adoption look like and really de risking it for, for enterprise and government.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, what's your lot like? So right now, are you guys essentially flying these drones providing the service like essentially providing services to come out?

Or are you actually selling individual drones and training people how to use them and saying here, this is your drone now figure it out? Where? Where are you guys at right now?

Cole Rosentreter: So a little bit of both. So the core of what we're doing right now is delivering Delivering the using our technology in these tools as a service.

We're doing this through a couple of different ways. 1 will send a team out to go and deliver and collect that data and then deliver it. And then at the same time, this is again about really commercialization and also use case development. So we're really understanding the market. We're helping to transition or transform.

We also hold a Transport Canada recognized ground school. So everybody in the company is a drone pilot. At least that's, that's the mandate. At least get your basic license. And the reason why is everybody in our company needs to understand what, at a basic level, what we're doing. So we've also been, you know, getting a lot of experience running basically ground schools for Individuals, businesses and even government organizations.

And part of this comes down to, it's not just about the tool, Kelly, like it's you can have, it comes down to, there's a series of different overlapping requirements. You have to have somebody who's qualified. To actually operate the equipment, you have to have the equipment to, you have to have an aircraft, for example, to, you know, right now, there isn't, there isn't very much of a standard at all.

It's really like an, I promise about manufacturers assurances. Is this drone actually built and tested to be safe enough to fly near or over people? That's a, that's a big question right now. And some of these new rules are going to actually look at taking the first big steps towards standardizing the industry for that, which is overall a very good thing, even for manufacturers.

We have to do it anyways, if we're going to have products, then you have safety systems quality. There's a whole bunch of different things. So delivering it as a service right now makes the most sense for this use case development. How we look at this, I guess, in the next 5 to 10 years is through a series of partnerships.

Obviously we're building these aircraft right now we've got some phenomenal partners over the next year that we're going to work with when we begin entering commercialization and going into low rate production of our aircraft, and then through partnerships and joint ventures with different groups and different geographies, we would look at a regional hub.

So if you have, say, for example, regional hub in Kelowna. You don't just have the wildfire use case. Now you have, they get a partner in us who supplies the aircraft. All the training, and then that full life cycle management for that. You know, for lack of a better word, a franchise. Is how we're looking at it right now, and then, okay, and you also have the ability to then have a network effect.

If you have original, yeah, then how many drones you need to go out and fly. Track inspection, railways, utilities, inspections, or ready for when wildfires do happen.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, yeah, no. And especially if you can get them to a level where they are operating autonomously, where you can pre program the mission and say, here, here's the mission we want.

And you know, you take the human element out of it. To me at that point, you know, everyone's your customer, everyone's going to need one for one thing or another, right? Like, and the cool thing about robotics, and I love working with robotics companies is that your, the applications, they can change. You aren't roped into just one application because the ecosystem is so big, you can add different attachments.

As long as you have a great platform to work from, the applications of use is almost endless.

Cole Rosentreter: Absolutely. I mean, the number of different sensors that are out there, it's not, it's not limitless, but it continues to expand and the people who are specialized in making LiDAR or different sensor gimbals. You know, we're not going to get into that.

Those are the, those are the partners and suppliers that we want to work with. And as they evolve and adapt, we make sure that we're building aircraft that can not just have our proprietary detection avoid system and some of the other sensors on, on board, but also be able to, you know, have that open mission architecture where they can continually evolve as well.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, and that's it. It's like you have an amazing platform. And I imagine that the list of accessories that is going to eventually be on all of your all of your drones is going to be just next level. The applications list is just going to be huge and growing every year. And I imagine as there's new applications, there'll be new platforms like it's It's a really great time to be, to be in drones and to be in robotics in general.

And I'm a little bit in envy of all of you Robotics CEOs. You guys are doing some pretty amazing things. And I find it very impressive.

Cole Rosentreter: Well, it's, I appreciate you saying it. You know, there's a, there's a very common saying in Silicon Valley, which is hardware is hard. And there's a reason why, because the software, you know, it's very low, very low overhead, but hardware built in physical products.

Generally a lot of people are, are really nervous about investing. Or we're starting hardware based companies, even if it's in our case, hardware and software combined, the degree of difficulty is obviously a lot much higher. But at the same time, some of the most valuable technologies that we have that.

Influence society at every level, the smartphone, even the power drill, look at better technology for cordless drills. How is that totally revolutionized construction and the housing industry or home repairs? Totally all these different things. Hardware is hardware is, you know, it's hard, but it's some of the most valuable technology that you can build.

So it's, it's definitely still an interesting company, but a lot of challenges too.

Kelly Kennedy: Well, and you know what, I've had enough I've had enough technology founders on this show to know that Edmonton is a tech hub. It is the fastest growing tech sector or tech sector in the world. In the world. Like these are not low level, Cole, or just tell us a little bit.

You've, you guys have placed pretty high in some pretty sweet competitions. Tell us, tell us about Boeing and tell us about NASA.

Cole Rosentreter: Well, the the NASA thing was. What is one of these things that just comes back to being a person and talking to people and trying to build a network and relationships. I mean, I, I call them our our, our Silicon Valley fairy godparents.

Cause every so often they show up and they're like, Hey, you should, you should apply for this, or you should think about that. And then the one thing that they asked us to apply for, we applied for, and they're like, has NASA heard of you? We're just trying to figure out how we're going to get through this year, like the next six months.

And they're like, you should apply for NASA. So we applied, didn't think anything of it, you know, four months later, congratulations. You're a NASA semi finalist in this global technology competition, and everybody else was all space based or on over technologies, and we're like, well, the first day in NASA is aeronautics, so I guess it's kind of back to the roots for them, I guess, but ironically, NASA is one of the groups about seven, eight years ago that was tapped by the U. S. Federal Aviation Administration to try How are drones and manned aircraft can integrate. So it's not, it's not a problem. It's a NASA problem, like putting people on the moon. So it was extremely humbling. The the Boeing thing. So we actually got our 1st contract with Boeing prior to this. And then they obviously asked us about this global AI and autonomy accelerator.

And this was definitely not the traditional, here's how you make a pitch deck and here's how you think about pitch coaching or here's, you know, basically, you know, kind of normal kind of, you know, baseline accelerator stuff. It was all business development. You know, and there was, there was a lot of professional, there's a lot of, you know, founder and team professional development in it, but it was based out of London and Boeing brought, gave us access to the entirety of Boeing.

I mean, like the entirety of Boeing. So. I'll, it's a bit of a, I mean, tongue in cheek, but I call them the Boeing mafia. So we've got multiple contracts with Boeing and internally, we have a series of these internal champions that I call the Boeing mafia, because, you know, last year, Boeing made a minority investment in the company.

And so now we're a Boeing portfolio company, and this makes it extremely interesting on how I can get introduced just once, even sometimes, but I can basically get introduced to pretty much anybody we need to in Boeing and these internal champions. These are the change makers that really help us cut through.

The world's biggest aerospace companies, red tape. So wow. Really holding those relationships are huge, but it's, you know, you're kind of asking like the whole, the whole thing about these programs. They're all about developing and continuing to learn. Like some people might say, Oh, well, I don't need to, I don't need to, because we've already gone through an accelerated program where I'm a second time founder.

I'm a multi multi exit founder. I've, I've done this before, or our team, we don't have time to spend on it. You have to make a conscious decision. We learned a huge amount from going through that program and coming first is always great. But regardless of where we actually placed, I mean, we built incredible, incredible relationships with Boeing with groups all over the world, actually, that they brought to this program.

So, yeah, just trying to make the most out of these opportunities.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, and you hit on something that I talk about a lot on my show. And you know, it's like I've been doing business development and sales for over 15 years. But the way that I see it, I was only an expert until yesterday. Like technology, everything is changing so quickly that if you aren't, if you aren't keeping ahead of it, if you aren't staying humble, if you aren't looking for that next thing to help you out, You were going to fall behind.

So we can never just sit on our thrones and say, yep, we're experts. We don't need to learn anything more. I, I love that. I love that you're, you're open to learning. And you know what I mean? I agree. We're, we're only experts until yesterday. Today, we got to keep learning.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah. And you know, being Canadian, the Blackberry story is, is a great example of that, right?

I mean, they, they built a great product and they, they're extremely tuned in with who their, their buyers were, which were. I t people and really on that side, so they didn't really think that the iPhone was going to be that big of a deal. They didn't have that. They didn't have that situational awareness at the time for looking for looking or for company culture.

I think to really question at a really deep level is this is an existential change to the industry and obviously it turns out it was, but you have to look at it constantly and evaluate.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well, I think when you're at the top, you know, in the case of BlackBerry was at that time, yeah, it becomes a silo.

Like you said, it's like, there's not that external. It's like, of course, we're the best. We don't need to change anything. And I think that all companies are at risk of that. All companies are at risk of that. If they're not, if they're not staying humble and realizing that things can flip on their heads in in an instant.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, it's, it's, it's interesting, especially for a startup, right? Because you're trying to find the right balance between like picking one specific thing. And then obviously every talk about startups and the ability to pivot. There's times where it's just don't flinch, don't blink, hold, hold the line, continue doing what you're doing.

And you might see something over here that makes sense, but you know, sometimes you do have to pivot and you have to drill in and we're going left. Like today we're, we're planning on this for the next six months. Today we're going left. We're changing the direction. We're going left. And so it's, it's hard and you never have enough information to make the decision then I think that's the one thing that a lot of people don't really catch on to is that you, you just make a series of the best decisions possible and normally like.

Risks, the company or catastrophic scenarios for me, it's like, I never get the fun ones, you know, it's like, this will kill us if we don't do something, this might kill us less or there's, there might be a better chance, but you know, those are the, those are the things that really, I think you, you really have to spend the majority of your time on, which is the actual coding or development or things like that.

It's, you know, especially trying to run a team that's not, that's growing. Making sure that we're making the right decisions with the best possible information we can.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, well, I think, I think you're in the right time, you're in the right place, and you have the right product, Cole. It's, it's only going up, man.

It's amazing. What you guys are doing is so cool, and I'm so thankful to have you on the show, and I know I came across you, actually, because you popped up on my LinkedIn, and we both kind of commented, you had some airshow pictures up, and you know I love aviation, so I had to comment, and I was like, you know what, I would love to meet you, I I didn't know you were making this in my backyard, but we need to chat because this is so cool.

And so it's it's been a total pleasure having this conversation. So I just wanted to thank you for coming on.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, at this point, I'm pretty sure we'll be a part of that air show and Villeneuve come next year as well.

Kelly Kennedy: That's awesome. That's awesome. I think, I think that's a great idea because I think we need to show more people what drone technology is capable of.

Cole Rosentreter: Yeah, absolutely. It's it is the next century of aviation and it is going to be a wild ride. Yes,

Kelly Kennedy: yes. Cole, if you could give one piece of advice to the entrepreneurs listening to this show today about just getting started, give them a little bit of motivation, what might that be?

Cole Rosentreter: Humility. I have met people and it sounds weird.

We know a lot of weird people from NASA to now the king of England. We've met a lot of weird people and it's humility. I mean, the people that I've met that are the smartest are always, without a doubt, always the most humble and because they're always wondering. What? What am I doing wrong? Or what is going wrong?

Or what is the better way to do things? Or how can I? How can I help better? So the humility to be able to consistently challenge to ask questions of assumptions it would be humility. That's the only way to look. I could really. Frame it into one word.

Kelly Kennedy: Humility. That's a great one. I absolutely love it.

Well, that concludes our show today, Cole, this has been episode 58. I have not thought of a title, but I got one on the top of my mind. And we have been graced with the president's founder and CEO, Cole Rosentreter of Pegasus Imagery. It was absolutely amazing having you on the show. Cole.

Looking forward to seeing what's coming next from you guys. Until next time. We will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development. Your business development specialists for more, we invite you to the website at www.capitalbd.ca, See you next time on the business development podcast.