Lucid Drone Technologies Pivots to Help Businesses Get Back to Work

Mayans (r) with co-founders. drian Mayans ‘15 had been a baseball player for as long as he could remember. After winning a State A Championship with Westminster’s 2015 Baseball team, he continued his athletic career at Davidson College, one of the country’s top liberal arts schools. A serious back injury during his freshman year, however, ended his college career almost before it began. After nearly three years of

Mayans ’15 Innovates to Provide Solutions

wrestling with rehab and recovery, a new door opened that unknowingly set his life on an unexpected path.

“The timing was such that it felt like it was a message from God to start the next phase of my life,” said Mayans.

Driving down the highway, Mayans and friends saw a window washer suspended high on a building when one of them said, “That has got to be the worst job in the world.” They understood the danger faced by these workers and knew there had to be a better way. The friends began brainstorming and developed an idea with the goal of using drone technology to disrupt the window washing/building cleaning industry. Their idea turned window washers into operators on the ground who would use drones to wash facility exteriors. This idea was how Lucid Drone Technologies began.

College juniors at the time, they pitched their idea to the Davidson Venture Fund, a competition open only to startups run by Davidson College students and alumni. As one of five finalists, they were paired with four mentors who were successful business owners from the Charlotte, NC area.

“By working with those mentors, we were able to turn our idea into a business,” said Mayans ’15, Lucid COO and co-founder.

“We won the competition and received $25,000 which gave us the funding to purchase and begin working with a drone, provide cleaning services, and to help us learn and build the business. Three of our mentors are investors and still heavily involved in the business today.”

Early in the development of their business, they realized that the industrial drones existing in the market were not reliable or sufficient. This was the catalyst for what Lucid does today – manufacture purpose-built drones that can meet the needs and demands of customers. They were able to do this by building and servicing their own drones in-house, while also keeping the hardware and software development internal. They lease these drones to third parties and train them to operate the drones, giving them a plug and play solution.

The summer after graduating from Davidson, Lucid was one of 200 businesses selected from 25,000 applicants and 1,000 finalists to participate in the summer 2019 batch of Y Combinator, one of the top startup accelerators in the world. The selection meant that they would receive an investment of $150,000 and live in Silicon Valley for three months while they worked intensively with the Y Combinator community to refine their pitch and get them in the best possible shape before seeking additional investors.

“It was an amazing experience to continue to build the business and to be in the company of other businesses like AirBNB, Reddit and Dropbox that also went through Y Combinator in their early stages,” said Mayans. “Through the process we were able to raise a round of funding of a little more than $1 million which allowed us to return to Charlotte, open our office, make some hires and scale out the team, and prepare for an official launch in early 2020.”

Then COVID-19 turned the world upside down. As young entrepreneurs, they quickly realized that they had to adapt to be able to survive.

“Our business has always been about solving a problem,” said Mayans. “We saw a new problem that could also be solved using drone technology, and we were perfectly positioned to not only see the need, but to be able to provide a quality solution. So, we pivoted away from washing buildings and focused our efforts on sanitation applications. COVID-19 is the biggest problem the world is facing, and enhanced sanitation protocols are necessary.”

They began looking at how large athletic stadiums were tackling the need for sanitation. To sanitize a 100,000-person stadium would take two workers outfitted with backpack sprayers multiple days to cover the entire stadium. That same two–man crew can now disinfect the entire stadium in just hours with Lucid’s solution. The efficiency of this new application, the D1 Disinfecting Drone, was unbeatable. It’s not only efficient, but effective, as the D1 is equipped with electrostatic sprayers that positively charge each individual chemical particle to assure an even distribution across surfaces.

Once Lucid pivoted from providing a solution for washing building exteriors to using drone technology in sanitation applications, the demand and interest grew exponentially.

Lucid is currently focused on applying drone technology to make the sanitation of large spaces, such as athletic arenas, more efficient and cost-effective. In addition to a number of new clients, they recently leased their sanitation drone to Texas A&M to use in their facilities such as Kyle Field and Reed Arena. Lucid trained the university’s staff to operate the new technology.

Lucid also recently began working with Westminster and is training the facilities staff on how to employ the D1 Disinfecting Drone on campus.

“The ability to use drone technology on campus to sanitize our gym, the SAC and other large capacity spaces is a game changer,” said Rob Lundgren ’76, Westminster’s Chief Financial Officer. “It allows us to free up staff to focus on cleaning and sanitizing other areas of the school that require a human touch.”

Through drone technology, Lucid is making enhanced disinfection more feasible and affordable to businesses in need, allowing areas of the community to safely return to normal operations.

Mayans credits his degree in Philosophy from Davidson with helping him excel in developing Lucid.

“I love the way the study of philosophy makes you think, and how it trains you to look at a problem,” said Mayans. “Because there aren’t definitive answers, you’re essentially training your mind how to think deeply about open-ended problems. It is really applicable in so many areas, and certainly entrepreneurship.” Mayans believes that drones are an underutilized technology that can revolutionize a variety of industries.

“The general public is unaware of the many ways that drone technology can help. We started this business to help people, and that mission statement remains true as we aim to do our part to aid in the fight against this invisible enemy,” said Mayans. “The entire Lucid team is honored to be able to offer the D1 Disinfecting Drone - a purpose-built, end-to-end solution that allows nontechnical businesses and institutions to implement modern drone technology into their operations to enhance their disinfection protocols.”

To learn more about Lucid Drone Technologies, visit www.luciddronetech. com. You can also follow @luciddronetech on Instagram or Facebook.

Best friends since fourth grade when they met in Mrs. Koger’s class, Mayans reached out to Julian Infante ’15 during the development of the business. Infante immediately wanted to get involved and helped grow the business as time allowed as he finished his collegiate baseball career at Vanderbilt University. Now, as a professional baseball player in the Miami Marlins organization, he continues to support the growth of the business.