Hello everybody. Welcome back to Joby Recon. I'm Ryan Bowdenheimer, better known as Max Afterburner on YouTube. If you caught part one of my conversation with Micah North, the co-founder and CEO of Resonant Sciences, you heard how it all started. Six people in a room in Dayton, Ohio, the birthplace of aviation, laser focused on moving faster and providing more capability to the American war fighter. You heard Micah call Resonant at its core a survivability company, and he said something that stuck with me that they couldn't have done this partnership with other groups and that there was something special about Joby itself and the culture that Joby's leadership has helped create. So for part two of this conversation we have Joby Aviation founder, CEO and a visionary behind the entire eVTOL industry, JoeBen Bevirt to share more with us about why Resonant Sciences and why now is the moment to accelerate Joby's defense business. JoeBen, I would love to start with you first. So before we get into any of the backstory, I just want to start with the moment. So the news is out about the partnership. You two have been living with us quietly for some time now and now the whole world knows. So how does it feel to get this news out there and what's the response been so far?
It's really a fantastic moment. We're so so grateful to have the opportunity to work with Micah and the incredible team. Micah and I met and began looking at the ways we could apply some of Joby's technologies and the expertise that Resonant has to solving really important national security issues.
Fantastic. I'm going to toss it to you, Micah. So, same question. You've told your team, your team's told your families, you had a little comment there about one of your business partners. Now, the whole industry knows. So, what's this week been like for you?
Yeah, I mean, it's just, it's a dream come true. It's incredible. You know, as a founder of a company, you always think about, you know, how the company grows and how to nurture your baby and make sure it goes up and do the right things. And you always think about how you're going to end up with what partners and things like that. And you know, there's just no one better than I could even imagine than the Joby team. You know, I think JoeBen was one of the original disruptors of aerospace and we always talk about disrupt convention and trying to be disruptive and showing, you know, pushing technology that's hard. You know, we're doing on the RF side, the UIR side, the sensor side and these guys are doing on the platform side and it's a special spirit to go do that and I think the cultures and the skill sets and everything are very very complimentary. Like almost to the point it's unbelievable how complimentary everything is.
Yes. Well, that's so cool to hear. JoeBen, I want to pass back to you for a second. You guys met in Ohio, right? So, can you take me back to that first meeting and what did you see in Micah?
Yeah. So, when Micah showed me a little bit about what Resonant was doing and I was just blown away. These guys are RF magicians and as we look to the future, really utilizing the RF spectrum fully is an incredible and important opportunity. I remember talking to JoeBen about what Joby was doing and Joby's plans and I remember just kind of being blown away by thinking man if I could put sensors on that platform what could we do and all the different things that were out there. And you know, we're a very war fighter focused company. I think we've done a really good job of pairing, you know, war fighters and pilots with PhDs in their field and so when we all get together and we look at, hey, what we were missing was platforms and the platforms to put it on and we look at the amazing capabilities that these platforms can do, it's a total game changer.
Well, I think a lot of the viewers out there, you know, they're going to be wondering this question. So, you both bootstrapped your companies. What do founders like you guys recognize in each other and how has this played into this partnership?
You don't get there without pressing pressing pressing pressing. So it's tenacity, it's drive, it's passion, it's building cultures. It's building surrounding yourself by people that are better than you and loving the people that work with you and taking care of them and building the culture that makes people want to run through walls and do things that they never previously do. And obviously, you can't build a company successfully if you don't have those things. It's one thing to talk to JoeBen about that sort of stuff, but I get it from all of the people at Joby. I mean, it's incredible, it just echoes through the organization and his spirit has permeated the organization and I think that's just critical to being successful.
And just a second that Micah talked about tenacity. I've always believed that perseverance is critical. I like endurance sports and you know, running the distance. Micah also talked about culture. For Joby, culture is so foundational and so critical to accomplishing, you know, really audacious and technically challenging topics. Pushing the envelope of what's possible, going places where people thought were impossible. And it's fun to be, you know, back here where the Wright brothers did exactly that in a bicycle shop not far away, more than 120 years ago and changed the way we move and live. And aviation has been such an inspiration to so many and it's exciting to be creating the future, the next generation of aviation right here back where it all began.
JoeBen, very curious. So Joby so far has been more of a commercial story, but you've worked with defense partners for over a decade. So when did you know defense had to be a bigger part of the Joby story?
So as you mentioned, we started working with DIU back in 2016 and that partnership was foundational in our early success. Gave us access to ranges and airspace so that we could really move fast. The support that we've received from the government has been a really important accelerant through our whole history. The work that we've been doing behind the scenes, it's become clear that it's vitally important. The work that we've been doing with Resonant has the potential to make a really big difference. And because of that and the relationship that I built with Micah, I knew that we had the same DNA, the same ethos, the same culture, that Micah was the right leader to take our work in the defense industry forward.
So excited for this partnership. Kind of along those lines, JoeBen, I'm going to just go back to you. Joby to me one of the things that stood out was the vertical integration and having everything, you know, under the same culture under the same roof. So kind of along those lines what is something that you think is different and stands out about Resonant that can't be replicated elsewhere?
