SXSW Startups: Fluidity
The Forrest Four-Cast: February 26, 2019
Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. Winners in 10 categories will be announced at the Pitch Award Ceremony at 6:30 pm Sunday, March 10, at the Hilton Austin.
A finalist in Hyper-Connected Communities, which will pitch at 5 pm Saturday, March 9, Fluidity Technologies is redefining movement through 3-dimensional space. Founded by former NASA astronaut, pilot and physician Scott Parazynski, the company’s mission is to simplify and improve motion by reducing the cognitive load for working with UAVs, simulators, surgical robotics and much more. Its first product, FT Aviator, is a drone controller that simplifies drone flight and its barrier to entry, putting single-handed intuitive flight control in one hand, and easy-to-access camera control in the other.
Parazynski, Fluidity Technologies CEO, answered some questions about the company.
What do you enjoy most and least about the startup experience?
Growing a tech startup is probably the hardest thing I have ever done — harder than walking in space, and harder than summiting Mt. Everest, because those things can be predictable if you plan and train for them. Entrepreneurship, and overseeing a startup, is anything but predictable. Resilience and dealing with uncertainty are essential virtues for any entrepreneur. That said, our team loves and has thrived through these challenges.
Tell us more about how your background drives your company.
I am a knowledge and experience seeker. I’ve been on five Space Shuttle flights, I’m a physician who has worked with medical robotics, and I’ve summited Mt. Everest. All these experiences have been an incredible catalyst for innovation, and have led me to want to solve for problems in moving through physical and virtual space.
How and when did your team come together and fill us in on any relevant startup experience?
I’ve been a part of numerous startups and served on several boards and advisory panels to med-tech companies. I founded Fluidity Technologies in Jan. 2016, and our second team member, George Guerrero, joined in Feb. 2017. We worked closely with a faculty member at the Rice University Executive MBA program and found talent that were actively looking for an exciting startup to join. Since then, we’ve also brought on interns from the university to help build our company.
If your team members weren’t involved in building the FT Aviator, what would they be doing?
Saving the world in some other way (or at least trying our best!).
What are your goals for the FT Aviator in 2019?
We want to make an impact on the market and change how drone flight is controlled. Based on feedback from government bodies, drone organizations, leading manufacturers and others, we know we’ve solved for something that was a significant problem but that was never addressed. Drones are vitally important in public safety, disaster recovery and security, and we believe the FT Aviator will allow for greater adoption in these use cases.
Design plays a key role in the FT Aviator, which emphasizes usability and user experience in controlling drones. Just how intuitive is it for inexperienced users?
When it comes to drone flight, controllers have stagnated, while drones have advanced. The two-thumbed gaming-style controllers aren’t designed for flight, with camera controls buried into layers of app. It was time for two-handed controllers to be a thing of the past and catch up with true flight control. The FT Aviator intuitively unlocks our fullest human potential in flying a drone. Even new users can zoom through the sky with more precision and control, with essentially no prior training, than previously possible. We have seen it time and time again in testing.
How does the FT Aviator reduce the cognitive workload of drone pilots?
The FT Aviator reduces the cognitive workload for drone pilots with its single-handed flight control and natural and cognitive translation of hand-to-device movement, allowing pilots to focus on what they’re filming, and not the mechanics of how they’re getting there.
A lot of human factors engineering went into the FT Aviator. Due to its overall simplicity and intuitive feel, Fluidity pilots will require substantially less initial and proficiency training to fly safely and acquire the imagery they desire across a wide range of drone verticals.
Can you give us a sneak peek into what other projects Fluidity Technologies has planned?
We’re focused on rolling out the FT Aviator to the drone market, which is expected to grow from $2 billion to $100 billion in just a few short years. There is a lot of opportunity and need.
From there, we’ll look to expand the technology into other applicable markets, such as gaming, CAD, VR/AR, ROVs, fly-by-wire helicopters and surgical robotics.
Has Fluidity been involved with other tech conferences?
We attended CES 2019 and were overwhelmed by the accolades we received. We were an official CES Innovations Award Honoree, received a Top Tech of CES award from Digital Trends, and a Best Drones of CES award from Rotor Drone. We had a small booth at the back of the South Hall in the Las Vegas Convention Center and were so honored that our innovation broke through the noise of the show.
Tell us about the startup ecosystem in Houston, where Fluidity is based.
Houston is ripe with innovation — it’s an epicenter of established companies innovating in aerospace, medicine and energy, but the startup community is now really starting to heat up here. We are based out of a WeWork in the center of Houston, and have been able to take full advantage of the entrepreneurial spirit this city has to offer.
Looking at the entire tech industry, what trend is your team most excited about?
The evolution from a 2D to a 3D world in many facets of technology — from entertainment to gaming to exploration to surgical robotics.
Name three people, in any field, alive or dead, you’d like to meet and tell us why.
Yuri Gagarin — he was the first human to journey into outer space. I’m interested in his approach to risk and his thoughts on the historic significance of the new field he unlocked.
Thomas Edison — he was an extraordinarily creative inventor, and I’d love to understand his approach to innovation.
Whoever replaces Trump in the White House.
What’s one piece of advice you wish you’d had that you’d give to others wanting to join the startup journey?
Building a startup is not for the faint of heart — you need to have some innate risk tolerance and capacity for dealing with the unknown.
Also, build a complimentary, multi-disciplinary team comprised of people who don’t think like you, look like you, or come from the same background. If you have talented, driven and diverse teammates, with a shared vision, you can accomplish great things.
Look for more interviews with other SXSW Pitch finalists in this space between now and March.
Click here to see all 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2019, along with the links to their interviews on Medium.
Also, if you are an entrepreneur, check out all the cool panels and presentations in the Entrepreneurship and Startups Track, which runs March 8–12 at SXSW.
Hugh Forrest serves as Chief Programming Officer at SXSW, the world’s most unique gathering of creative professionals. He also tries to write at least four paragraphs per day on Medium. These posts often cover tech-related trends; other times they focus on books, pop culture, sports and other current events.
