Leadership
Flying cars may sound like something straight out of science fi ction. But urban air mobility is poised to be a $1.5tn market by 2040 – and the future is looking up for start-ups like Archer Aviation, who are leading the race to the skies. Briana Pagano speaks with Archer co-founder Brett Adcock to trace the journey from idea to IPO – and uncover a few secrets to entrepreneurial success.
It’s electric I
n 2018, Elon Musk beat a world record for rocket launches. Meanwhile, two New York entrepreneurs were hard at work assembling their own aerospace
company. More than 2,800 miles away from SpaceX headquarters, Brett Adcock and Adam Goldstein sat in a Manhattan conference room called ‘Elon’. As co-founders of the successful HR technology start-up Vettery, they’d spent the past five years scaling their business and were on the brink of a $100m exit. Now, it was time to tackle a new challenge – and the sky was the limit.
“I’ve always been inspired by companies like SpaceX,” says Adcock, reflecting on this pivotal moment in his career. “People like Elon are making the world a better place to live in and making it really exciting to wake up every morning.” Today, he’s one of them.
When cars fly
Hailed as “Uber of the skies”, Adcock and Goldstein’s new flying taxi start-up Archer Aviation has a $1bn purchase order from United Airlines, backing from early
SpaceX investors and expert aerospace engineers on staff. But that’s only the beginning. Scheduled to take commercial flight from Los Angeles and Miami in 2024, Archer’s electric vertical take-off and landing aircrafts will define a new age of urban air mobility – racing to the skies against competitors like Joby and Wisk in an emerging market that Morgan Stanley estimates will be worth $1.5tn by 2040. On June 10, 2021, Adcock and Goldstein premiered their first model, called ‘Maker’, in a converted California hanger. “In nature, there are no straight lines,” boomed a video narration as a massive 3D LED screen lit up on stage. “That’s mankind’s doing: trapped by gravity, heads down, except for the rare few. But what of the rest of us? Can we also finally be untethered? Perfectly weightless at will, soaring from place to place, riding gentle curves in the sky? How would we live then? Would we appreciate this new perspective as an open invitation to create – to connect to a better future and all that is natural around us, and all that is better within us? To explore more and live our lives with greater purpose? We say yes.”
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Chief Executive Offi cer /
www.the-chiefexecutive.com
Archer Aviation
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