Anumá Aerospace had a very busy year. As an early-stage startup, we have a lot to do with very few resources, and our time is one of the most precious resources we have. So, what did we do with it?
- A lot of customer discovery and determination of product-market fit. Quite a lot of that was personal communications or online conferences, but in addition to that we attended quite a few convenings in person.
- DEFTECH coffee calls nearly every week plus two Defense Technology conferences in North Carolina, getting to know the defense technology players and understanding the needs of the warfighter. As aerostats are in fairly wide use in the defense industry, this is an important market to us, and ensuring security with low-energy, long-persistence aerostats for sensing and communications is a mission we believe can make a big difference.
- Decarb Connect conference in Houston, TX in March, connecting with heavy industrials and their difficult but critical pathways to lower emissions. Our solution for decarbonized long-haul, heavy-lift transportation was met with a lot of “WOW, that’s fantastic” and we’ve been invited back.
- Freightwaves Future of Supply Chain in Northwest Arkansas in May, where we started to understand how much weather impacts all types of transportation, and how a truly persistent weather aerostat could change the game, let alone a cargo airship.
- We started the First Flight Propeller Pre-Accelerator program shortly thereafter and started diving deeply into the market research and design for this use case of our low-pressure lifting cells.
- UAS Weather Technology Forum in August in Tulsa, OK, where we presented our design for a persistent weather aerostat. The attendees, which included atmospheric scientists, climatologists, and aerospace engineers offered us valuable insights into the major gaps in existing weather data collection, which our solution would be able to address.
- Aviation Innovations Conference, Toronto, ON in October. A conference all about airships, and how they could solve serious problems, especially in the northern regions of Canada, but by extension throughout the world. My favorite conversation was with the CEO of OceanSky Cruises, who told me that vacuum lift was the “golden ticket” for airship lift.
- Diana was on a panel at the 2022 IN BIA e.Builders Forum at First Flight Venture Center in RTP, talking about our experiences of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
- Three design/build/test iterations with our interns, Caelan and Dylan
- Followed by more design simulations, as we can iterate even faster digitally than physically
- We moved from our “garage” space (actually our dining room) to a co-warehousing space!
We’re excited about 2023! We’re working on several SBIR grant applications, and are looking for engineers to work with us on an equity basis until we can get outside funding. We’re planning to build the world-record-setting vacuum lift demonstrator, and from there the sky’s the limit!
