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From Prototype to Global Scale: How This Founder Built a Tethered Drone Company by Breaking Convention

Most startup origin stories begin with a founder identifying a market need. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Guilhem de Marliave shared how his tethered drone company’s journey began with an unexpected insight during a Paris drone mission – when legal requirements forced them to attach a leash to their drone.

That constraint sparked an idea that would solve multiple industry challenges at once. “We had a mission where we had to put a leash on the drone for legal reason to be able to fly in Paris. And that’s kind of the way the ID came to build Tether drones, to solve the limitation on battery, but also to solve the communications and legal permissions,” Guilhem explains.

Breaking Convention in Go-to-Market Strategy

While most defense technology companies rely heavily on traditional sales channels and relationships, Guilhem’s team took an unconventional digital-first approach to market expansion. “We builded all the marketing, the go to market strategy through the web, through internet. Even if at first it sounded a bit counterintuitive, especially in the defense sector, but actually it worked well,” he shares.

This strategy emerged from a clear-eyed assessment of their market position. As Guilhem notes, “It’s kind of a long tail problem for us challenge because we are on a niche technology, so we had to export the system. We have a few targets per country, very precise.”

The results speak for themselves. The company achieved 50% growth last year and has deployed over 1,000 systems globally. Their digital-first approach helped them identify and convert key customers in both Europe and North America, leading to the establishment of a dedicated team in North Carolina.

Product Market Fit Through Focused Development

The journey to product-market fit wasn’t straightforward. “At first we tried a lot of things and the pricing weren’t right, the targets weren’t right, and so on. So it took, I don’t know, eight, nine months and we finally made the first sale,” Guilhem reveals.

This period of experimentation led to a crucial insight about the drone market’s evolution. “The maturity of the drone market is now at a stage where for each application it will have a specific aircraft with different capabilities. So we are going away from the time where everyone thought that one drone would solve everything,” he explains.

This realization shaped their entire go-to-market approach. Rather than trying to serve every possible use case, they focused intensely on specific applications in defense and public safety. This specialization allowed them to develop deeper expertise and build products precisely tailored to their target customers’ needs.

Scaling Through Real-World Validation

The company’s growth has been validated through high-profile deployments at major events. “We have systems on the Super Bowl, for instance, in Atlanta. And this year or so we have been engaged also in the Football World Cup in Qatar on the Rider cup,” Guilhem shares.

These deployments serve multiple purposes – providing valuable proof points for potential customers while allowing the team to refine their technology in demanding real-world conditions. The systems help security teams make “faster and better decisions when time is sensitive,” whether that’s monitoring restricted areas, tracking money transfers, or searching for lost individuals.

Future Vision: Automation and Remote Operations

Looking ahead, Guilhem’s team is focused on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with tethered drone technology. “Our goal is to foster adoption by making Tether Drone technology fully autonomous… and to build the right apps for the right missions,” he explains.

The vision extends beyond event security to “developing fully autonomous tele drone boxes that can be remotely deployed on sites borders and controlled through kind of a cloud system, which will really widen the market and the value can bring mostly in the private security sector.”

For founders building hardware companies or entering regulated markets, Guilhem’s journey offers valuable lessons in patience, focus, and the power of breaking conventional wisdom when it comes to go-to-market strategy. Sometimes, the path to category leadership starts with embracing constraints rather than fighting them.