Dwight Neptune became interested in drones as a high school student studying electrical engineering. Now 22 years old, he turned his hobby into a startup that’s on track to reach $100,000 in sales this year, CNBC reports.
Neptune is the co-founder and CEO of Beagle Drones, which specializes in producing user-accessible first person view — FPV — drones. “Ever since I was a kid, I’ve always been messing around with tech and it just stuck with me,” he told CNBC. “I saw FPV as the entryway to building really cool tech products.”
The business has taken off. After three semesters in college, he left school to work on the company full time. During the first half of 2020, the company sold more than $37,000 worth of drones, according to CNBC. Neptune raised $20,000 in early round investments, and told the outlet that he’s currently in the process of raising $1 million at a $4 million valuation.
In today’s Plug In South LA Beat, our curation of must-read innovation and tech news, we’re taking a look at how the co-founders got started, what their first customer taught them, and why Beagle Drones could become a billion-dollar company:
How This 22-Year-Old College Dropout Started a Drone Company On Track for $100,000 in Sales
Photo: The Neo 2 from Beagle Drones. Credit: Beagle Drones on Facebook