Great companies are built by strong teams. Like at AirMap.

Bilal Zuberi

October 20, 2016

min read

Great companies are built by strong teams. Like at AirMap.

Teams, teams, teams…VCs sing this mantra all the time. We want to invest in strong teams, and we want entrepreneurs we back to hire even stronger people. As the old saying in this industry goes “A quality people hire A+ people. B people hire C people”.

That is why I am excited to see Ben and Greg at AirMap take this to heart and bring on another really high quality team member on board as CTO. Daniel Rubio is joining AirMap as CTO, joining the team from HERE where he was the CTO, focused on high definition mapping for self-driving cars. At HERE he did many things that carry over well into his role at AirMap. He helped build and led the team behind company’s cloud platform for autonomous vehicles, a system that utilized high definition maps, location services, and data exchange platforms.

I first met Daniel nearly a year ago now when Ben first introduced us. We had a long dinner together and chatted about the future of drones, autonomous vehicles in general, IoT, high volume online transactions, big data management in such situations, and digital privacy/security. I was extremely impressed by his command of the tech space, but also that he understood how business objectives related to technology imperatives. He had some good advice for me regarding AirMap’s future direction. Post dinner I encouraged Ben to find a way to work with Daniel, and voila — here we are now!

AirMap is building the airspace data platform to handle millions of drones doing billions of flights across the globe. They are already providing airspace data and communications platform to major drone manufacturers, and key stake holders in airspace safety and management — like airports, etc. AirMap has ambitious plans, and it is their team which includes people like Daniel, Jared, Matt and others that keep executing without fail. Daniel will be critical in helping build a technology platform that is secure, scalable, and flexible. He will be leading AirMap’s global engineering team and helping accelerate widespread adoption of their partners’ advanced drone capabilities. Exciting times ahead!

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written by

Bilal Zuberi

General Partner

For nearly two decades, Bilal has been investing in founders that want to solve big, important problems with technically ambitious solutions, across industries (enterprise software, deeptech, healthcare, national security, climate) and stages (from seed to growth). He wants to partner with good human beings who are driven to build responsible, ethical companies, and believes technology can not only help address some of the world’s largest problems, but also make humans lives significantly better. Bilal brings 20 years of experience to Board roles.

Bilal led Lux’s investments in Applied Intuition, Ironclad, OpenSpace, Nozomi Networks, Commure, Tendo Health, DesktopMetal ($DM), Evolv ($EVLV), Aurora Solar, Kyra Health, Saildrone, Cloaked, Happiest Baby, Zededa, Fiddler, Copia Automation, Kinetic, Nominal, and others.

You don’t choose your passions, your passions choose you. –Jeff Bezos

Prior to joining Lux, Bilal was a VC at General Catalyst. Before that he was a technical founder/entrepreneur. Earlier in his career, Bilal was a strategy consultant at BCG. Bilal earned a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (under Prof. Mario Molina, Nobel laureate, 1995). He also serves on the Advisory Board of the Lemelson Foundation. He is an immigrant citizen in this country, and thankful every day for opportunities that he has been afforded here.

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