How Drone Founders Can Avoid the FAA Hype and Build Real Businesses with Isaac Piche

21/10/2025 12 min

Listen "How Drone Founders Can Avoid the FAA Hype and Build Real Businesses with Isaac Piche"

Episode Synopsis

Unlock millions in ROI from your enterprise drone program.Our FREE Enterprise Drone Program Maturity Assessment benchmarks your program against best practices and reveals the strategic initiatives needed to scale.Get your free assessment now! 👉 https://bit.ly/droneprogram-maturity-assessment—————————————In this micro-podcast episode of the Do You Know Drones podcast, host Jason San Souci is live from the Commercial UAV Expo in fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada. He's joined by Isaac Piche, the US Standards and Operations Manager for Quanta Aviation Services. Isaac shares his perspective on the industry's challenges, focusing on the proposed Part 108 rule's potential impact on traditional aviation and the general struggle with integrating drone data into actionable insights rather than just collecting it. 🔑 Key Takeaways:Part 108 Concerns: The proposed rule's language, which alludes to drones having priority in the "highway in the sky" for critical infrastructure and right-of-way, raises "red flags" for organizations like Quanta Aviation Services, which operate traditional helicopters in those areas.The Need to Comment on NPRM: Both Jason and Isaac stress the critical importance of the drone industry providing specific, impact-focused, and solution-oriented comments to the FAA on the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for Part 108.Avoid "Vaporware" Mentality: Many companies, especially utilities, have struggled with initial drone programs because they focus on technology (like hardware, LiDAR, or AI) without a clear plan for what to do with the massive amounts of data collected.Focus on the Deliverable/Actionable Insights: New entrants to the drone industry should prioritize the end-point solution - the analytics and insights - over just data collection (the "tools").⌛ Timestamps:[00:00:00] - Introduction to the podcast and a mention of the free Enterprise Drone Program Maturity assessment.[00:02:16] - Isaac discusses concerns about the language in the proposed Part 108 rule regarding yielding to drones, which could impact Quanta's critical infrastructure helicopter operations.[00:05:53] - Discussion of "vaporware" in the industry and the need for new businesses to slow down, educate clients, and secure contracts before investing heavily in new hardware.[00:08:10] - The problem of collecting massive amounts of data (like LiDAR or 100,000 images) without a plan for the deliverable and actionable insights.[00:10:37] - The current ecosystem of software providers is making it easier to tie together actionable insights from various data types.Follow the Guest Isaac Piche:👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isaacaaronpiche/Follow the Host Jason San Souci:👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonsansouci/🔗 More from Do You Know Drones:👉 Website: https://www.droneopsusa.com 👉 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/afe-advisor-llc/ 👉 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dykdrones/# 👉 X(Twitter): https://x.com/DronesDyk 👉 Email: [email protected] the Podcast:👉 Apple Podcast:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/do-you-know-drones/id1479307112 👉 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DoYouKnowDrones#DroneIndustry #CommercialUAVExpo #Part108 #BeyondVLOS #UASSafety #EnterpriseDrones #DataAnalytics #CriticalInfrastructure

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