Garage Days Revisited: The Origin Story of Modovolo

The humble garage is the birthplace of many storied American companies: Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Metallica.  

And Modovolo is just like those storied American companies. Well, we’re still in a garage (albeit a much nicer and bigger one than where we started) and, well, we’re not storied yet. But one of our engineers is in a metal band called Sons of Aurelius, which is so bad ass that it makes Metallica sound like an Irish folk band. 

Anyway, getting back to garages. And drones. And the origin story of Modovolo. 

Ironically this all started in 2019 at a business plan competition in the sunny warm snow-free expanse of territory known as Upstate New York (specifically Rome, NY). But the business had nothing to do with drones. At the time our co-founder, Justin Call, was leading a construction technology start-up called Go Figure and his pitch won the grand prize of $200k. And our other co-founder, Arion Mangio, was in the audience. 

“So the business plan competition is over,” Justin Call recollects. “I had just finished talking with dozens of people congratulating us and the Go Figure team and we were packing up our booth that we had set up in the foyer - our table, banners and demonstration units. And this guy comes up to me and says: ‘I’ve got an idea for a business. Could we talk?’” 

“I don’t know why I took him seriously but somehow I knew this guy was legitimate,” continues Justin. 

They had an initial meeting where Arion and Justin talked about how current commercial drones suck — they were too expensive and had barely any flight time - and they talked about how most companies suck.

“I had left the Air Force and joined a commercial drone company. It was one of those experiences that was both great and awful at the same time. I got to see and fly dozens of drones. And this made me realize that current drone design just doesn’t work. But it was also an awful experience because the executives of the company were micromanagers and engaged in many, many bad management practices. I felt completely demotivated. I never understood why they hired smart people but they refused to let them think.” 

And this is also when Justin learned about Arion’s insane background. 

“Arion is like a modern day high techn Renaissance-man - and if he were inclined to brag, he might even be annoying” jokes Justin. “He’s an aerospace engineer. Former Air Force captain. Former C-130 pilot. Cyber security expert. Commercial drone pilot. And just all around tech nerd.”  

And then after that initial meeting nothing happened for a few years. 

Well, not exactly nothing. Arion had his first child. Justin was busy paying for college tuitions for 3 of his 4 kids. And Arion and Justin became good friends, mostly because they realized that they were both technology and business nerds with dreams of creating a great and enduring company. 

“We actually didn’t talk much about drones for a long time,” explains Justin. “We talked about what made smart people happy and companies great. We read many books and shared notes. We talked about an idea that we call ‘distributed ownership’ in how to rethink what a company is and what a partner is.” 

“We also talked a lot about where I was working at the time,” continued Arion. “And how our company had to be different. We knew we were going to hire smart people and we needed to get out their way. This is also when we thought through and drafted the Modovolo Operating Principles create a product category that didn’t exist (endless modularity) and solve the pain of literally hundreds of thousands of Commercial Drone Pilot operators worldwide (short flight times and battery swaps)

“Even though we didn’t have an actual product, we came up with the name, Modovolo. Well, Arion did. I loved the name so much but I thought that there was no way it was available as a domain name. But for $19.99 on Go Daddy, it was ours. It was definitely meant to be.”  

Neither of them recall the catalyst that finally motivated them to get serious about iterating and testing on new drone designs, but it finally started to happen by the end of 2021. 

“The initial concepts were nothing like what the Modovolo Lift looks like today. Weweren’t even thinking about modularity at all. We started doing what most every engineer does - optimizing the current fixed center hub and arm design that everyone else uses.” 

“It became apparent after a few months that the fixed center hub and arm design wasn’t going to work. In order to make that design light, you need to use exotic materials. But exotic materials are expensive and hard to manufacture. We had to find a different way to get to long flight time but at a radically reduced price.” 

This is when the bicycle wheel design started to take shape. “It’s not exactly a bicycle wheel but the Lift Pod definitely looks like one and utilizes a lot of its efficiencies - like the spokes,” explains Arion.  

The design itself was an evolution of an evolution of an evolution with dozens and dozens of failures. The problem was: building something light for long flight time but also keeping cost down. 

“The bicycle-wheel design made so much sense but the materials were the biggest challenge. Nothing worked. It’s why everyone designs drones the same way and uses aluminum, ABS, and carbon fiber. It’s relatively easy to work with those materials. But they were too expensive and didn’t hit our weight targets. It took over a year to find a solution. I honestly began to doubt we’d solve it.” 

But problem solve it they did. While they had done many, many bench tests, it took two years before the first real test flight. It was then that they knew they had something special. 

“On our first test flight we flew 2 hours. It was just unreal.” 

“And by 2023 we also realized - finally - that the Lift Pod design liberated us from thinking about drones as a fixed design. The Lift Pod is just a unit in building a modular drone. And the funny thing is: our name “Modovolo” has the root of “modularity” right in it. It was more than a bit ironic.” 

It was clear that they then needed to go public with the design to see what drone operators thought of it. “We needed to get critical feedback from other drone operators. We thought that we were on to something but you don’t know until you show the experts.” 

Starting in late Summer of 2023 and for another long 4 months they worked with a patent attorney to cover everything about the design.  “We weren’t going to go public unless we had insanely great patents filed. ”

Then finally in March 2024 they launched the website and nearly instantly saw both positive and negative feedback. 

“People are excited about the design and the flight time capabilities for such a low amount but we hear a lot that people think we are full of shit. We get it. We would be skeptical too so we just need to prove that we can do what we are saying.” 

Arion and I have assembled the right team of freaks and geeks who share our mission and vision: air mobility for everyone and the democratization of flight. Our B.H.A.G. (Big Hair Audacious Goal inspired by Jim Collins): Modovolo will be the dominant air mobility platform of the 21st century. And if heavy metal bands ruled the world, we are convinced it would be a better place.