We are in the hay day of an air mobility boom, great ideas, fantastic engineering awesome opportunities. Most of these companies will not survive the bust. Its a shame because some great tech will go by the weigh side. We need these companies to push the envelope and push the regulatory environment to a place where it is commercially viable to produce these things not to mention swaying public opinion to use them.
Like the snowmobile craze of the 70's, ultralight fad of the 80's, dot com boom of the nighties, etc. allot of money will be invested and lost and only a few will survive. There are big players in this space like Boeing, Airbus, Bell, Bombardier to name a few and they know what it will take to be successful in the long run. These companies are not seeking venture capital and creating buzz with photo shopped images and crow hops of prototypes. They don't need to.
Founded in 2009, Joby has raised $820 million in investment and employs more than 500 people. Joby has offices in Santa Cruz, San Carlos, and Marina, California, as well as Washington D.C. and Munich, Germany.
At an average salary of 100K for engineers, managers and executives over two thirds of their capital is servicing salaries, add infrastructure and other operating costs and how much is actually left for R&D?