Sunflower Labs CEO Alex Pachikov’s drone security startup was poised for takeoff when it was abruptly grounded.
A startup veteran who had spent nearly a decade at Evernote as a founding team member (his dad, Stepan, was its original creator), Pachikov had earned some early buzz for Sunflower.
Read More – Archy Raises $20M in Series B Funding
Launching from a proprietary charging station (the ‘Hive’), Sunflowers drone (the ‘Bee’) promised an autonomous system that could monitor a high-end home’s property at a cheaper cost than a security guard, and better than fixed cameras.
CES, the consumer electronics trade show, was supposed to be their coming out party in January 2020. Instead, Sunflower found itself struggling to make payroll, and fighting for survival.
But the team of seven that remained – mostly based in Zurich, where Pachikov’s cofounders Christian Eheim and Nicolas de Palézieux live – refused to call it quits. “All of us agreed to keep going until there was no other chance, until we were dead,” Pachikov tells Upstarts. “Maybe even a little bit after that.”
Over 3am phone calls with a translator, they secured and kept a client in Japan, using a prototype Sunflower drone to secure a facility. With free demos and trials, they signed on a couple of Swiss companies; three clients became five.
Read More – TranscendAP Raises Venture Funding
