MSIV Invests in Petaluma’s Jump Aero
Q&A with Founder & President Carl Dietrich
Monday, December 4, 2023 from Petaluma, CA
In 2021, Marin Sonoma Impact Ventures launched the North Bay’s first regional venture capital fund and began deploying capital into Marin + Sonoma’s most promising startup companies.
Today, we are excited to share details around our investment earlier this year in Petaluma’s Jump Aero (JA), a company bringing to market the world’s fastest electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft built for first responders.
JA’s goal is to cut rural emergency response time in half, helping to save thousands of lives each year. With medical emergencies, every second of response matters, and JA will level the playing field for rural Americans who are subject to slower response times from ground ambulances.
MSIV is proud to be backing Jump Aero, a company first introduced to the local startup community at the 2023 North Bay NEXT startup conference held in April.
Why We Invested
Over the past fifteen years, the promise of the eVTOL sector has teased a future filled with air taxis, drone delivery, and flying cars.
Jump Aero is separating itself from the noise that exists in this space by building an aircraft for a singular purpose, which is transporting a human medic as fast as possible to the scene of a medical emergency. Within the emergency response vertical, the JA solution can offer superior outcomes in terms of lives saved and superior unit economics given the amount of territory a single high-speed aircraft can cover via the air.
This promise has been recognized by first-response leaders from around the world with Falck, a global first-response leader, pre-ordering JA aircraft for their operations. Moreover, the U.S. Air Force has been supporting JA’s efforts over the past few years, having awarded JA multiple contracts to continue the development of its technology.
North Bay native Carl Dietrich founded JA in 2019, building on his experience as an award-winning MIT-trained aerospace engineer who previously founded and ran flying-car startup company Terrafugia from 2006 through its acquisition by GEELY in 2017. Carl learned many important lessons on this initial startup journey which he’s been putting to good use in building JA very quietly in Petaluma until JA’s first public design-unveiling which occurred just this past September.
MSIV Founder & Managing Partner Zachary Kushel sat down with Jump Aero Founder & President Carl Dietrich to discuss his passion for JA’s mission and his fascination with aviation growing up in the North Bay.
Carl introduces Jump Aero to the local startup community at MSIV’s North Bay NEXT in April 2023
ZK: Tell us about the origins of Jump Aero and how you came to found the company here in the North Bay.
CD: My first startup was a company called Terrafugia and, while there, we set up a global R&D center here in the North Bay. I departed Terrafugia in 2019 and I began to think about what I would do next. I had spent my entire career in the advanced air mobility space, looking at the technology as well as the business opportunities, and I came to realize that eVTOL technology was extremely well-suited to a use case that nobody was looking at – first response.
So much about all electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft is well-known – it has the potential be green, quiet, and have low operating costs – but what is less talked about is there is this ability for these vehicles to go from zero to full power in a snap, which you cannot do with a traditional thermal engine. This was the impetus behind Jump Aero – to harness that rapid deployment capability to save lives via faster first response.
ZK: What type of reception did you get in the early days to this idea?
CD: We started talking to first responders out the gate, and I came to learn that the CEO of Falck, a leading global first-response company, had been looking at the advanced air mobility space to understand how it could be integrated into first response operations. We got introduced and I was able to validate that the technology had the potential to meet a true market need, so we started building.
There is a crisis in rural America right now with the lack of healthcare availability and tools are needed that allow fewer people to cover a greater geographic area. eVTOLs can drastically change the economics of covering rural geographies in a way that would be impossible to do with a traditional ambulance or helicopter. Building our aircraft specifically for this use case means that Jump Aero has clear differentiation from all other eVTOL companies – we know precisely who our customer is and the problem we are solving.
ZK: Can you share more about the potential of the JA aircraft in terms of the North Bay’s geography? How much territory could a local aircraft cover?
CD: If you parked one high-speed JA aircraft at Novato’s Gnoss Field, you could reach any location in Marin county, half of Sonoma county, and large portions of Napa County in less than eight minutes. Think about the tip of Point Reyes and Jump Aero offering eight-minute first response – that is a capability nobody has today and that really is the opportunity and the importance of our mission.
We dug specifically into Marin county data and concluded that having our aircraft on call could reduce response time on about 650 emergency calls per year in west Marin. So, even in Marin county, which already has a great tax basis and excellent first response, the Jump Aero solution could help. Think about what that means for the potential of this technology in areas that have even larger rural populations.
ZK: That is so compelling. Can you share more about your passion for aviation and where it came from growing up here in the North Bay?
CD: I was one of those kids that knew what I wanted to do as soon as I saw Top Gun, but I was always more intrigued by the design of the aircraft and knew from a young age I wanted to be an aerospace engineer. I knew I needed to learn how to fly to help me be a better designer, so I started saving for my pilot’s license when I was just eight years old. I wound up working as an assistant to a local airframe and powerplant mechanic at Gnoss Field in high school and finally got my pilot’s license my senior year.
ZK: You now live and are raising your family in Petaluma. What’s it like being a Sonoma county based entrepreneur and building Jump Aero here in our community?
CD: My wife and I moved to Petaluma in 2015 to raise our family and the community in general has been so supportive. Petaluma is a special place – when the fires came through a few years ago, Petaluma was the staging ground for so much aid and support. It’s the city that supports other cities when they’re in trouble, dating all the way back to Petaluma’s history as the food basket for San Francisco and much of the Bay Area. This makes it such a natural fit to be the home of Jump Aero.
I’m a big believer in the future of this community and I want the North Bay to get its due and be better known as a hub for entrepreneurship. When I first became acquainted with MSIV, I felt such a connection with your mission because I share that passion to build companies and create jobs here. For our industry, building in the North Bay is actually a competitive advantage because there’s a whole lot of open airspace here, whereas Silicon Valley is much more congested. I hope that our collaboration with MSIV will help inspire more local leaders to take the plunge and become entrepreneurs and build world-changing companies from here in our incredible community.
