Brinc CEO and founder Blake Resnick was heads-down in a board meeting Wednesday when he heard a commotion in another part of the drone startup’s Seattle headquarters.
The spontaneous celebration was in response to the first flight of the production version of the Lemur 2, the company’s new drone for police and other public safety agencies. Announced in March, the Lemur 2 is set to ship later this year.
“It happened while we were in the board meeting,” Resnick said later that afternoon, as he was showing us around the company’s two-level space in a nondescript building on the east side of the Fremont neighborhood. “We heard cheers erupt from this general area when it happened, so that was a fun moment.”
It was another milestone for Brinc, and another day in the life of a 23-year-old startup CEO who oversees a team of nearly 100 people, with more than 400 customers.
Brinc has raised more than $80 million from major players in technology and venture capital, including OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Index Ventures, Tusk Venture Partners, and former LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner’s Next Play Ventures.
Resnick, who grew up in Las Vegas, built a fusion reactor in his garage at age 14, and interned at McLaren Automotive, Tesla, and DJI, before dropping out of Northwestern University’s mechanical engineering program in 2017 to start Brinc in response to the deadly mass shooting on Oct. 1 of that year at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in his hometown.
On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, Resnick sits down at the end of a very eventful day to talk about the company’s origins, its decision to move from Las Vegas to Seattle, the development and upcoming release of the Lemur 2, his recent visit to the White House, and the geopolitical forces impacting Brinc’s products.
He also explains the mind-blowing series of events that led Altman to become Brinc’s first investor. Be sure to listen to the end for that story.
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