How a drone taxi startup found a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity - Business Insider

A prototype of the Volocopter air taxi performs a test flight over Singapore's Marina Bay in October.When Florian Reuter joined German drone taxi startup Volocopter in 2015 as CEO, co-founders Stephan Wolf and Alexander Zosel had impressive tech, but no clear path to market.

Now, the team is focused on completing its certification with the European aviation authority to become the first commercial air taxi company.If disruption is the path to a billion-dollar startup, then inventing a new industry could be the path to a trillion-dollar company. "We weren't even capable of handling all of the ideas on what they wanted to use the Volocopter for, so we were confronted with this abundance of different options," Reuter said.

Typical aviation manufacturers build one aircraft at a time, but in order to reach the scale Reuter has in mind, they needed a commercial partner with the capacity to produce fleets numbering in the tens and hundreds of thousands.After considering several automakers, Volocopter reached a deal with German auto giant Daimler for their Series B, and have gone on to partner with several other international car manufacturers for financing and production.

Reuter said he hears from more experienced aviation industry experts who tell him, "it took outsiders to take on that dragon."

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