Part VI Of A LinkedIn Series By Mike Richards
Based on Drone America’s 16 years of real-world experience in the UAS industry

Your path to credibility isn’t shortcuts. It’s rigor.

When you’re developing a UAS, your credibility doesn’t come from how sleek your airframe looks or how fast you can get it airborne. It comes from how deeply you’ve thought through the hard questions the ones that define whether your platform will succeed in the real world or not.

Just designing a UAS that you believe has a future is not enough. You need to understand your market, your customers, and their ability not just to want your product, but to purchase it, operate it, and derive real value from it.
Even the most advanced system can fail if it doesn’t solve a real problem for someone who can use it.

Have you mapped your market? Defined your customers’ needs? Identified your competitive landscape?

Are you building in-house or relying on partners? Do you know your path to FAA compliance? And that’s just the beginning. At Drone America, we haven’t always gotten everything right and that’s the point. Every action, every win, every failure… is an iteration. There will be many more.

The goal is simple: learn, adapt, evolve…. succeed. It’s not about getting off the ground. It’s about staying airborne when the wind shifts. There’s so much more to consider, but this is where it starts.