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Tom Edwards
In April, Monocle hosts the Entrepreneurs Live
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
in Shanghai, a one day conference bringing
Tom Edwards
together founders, investors and innovators shaping businesses across China and the wider region. Join us there and visit monocle.com conference for more. Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio. The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's episode, we're taking to the skies. First we'll meet one of the world's most influential travelers to hear about her exclusive new club for aviation professionals and the state of the industry in a time of war.
Maggie Draycott
We now realize how much of a significant area the Middle east is for everybody. How it's so big in global travel.
Tom Edwards
And later, the blimp is back in a way. We'll hear about a Finnish autonomous airship maker that's attracted attention from NATO and from conspiracy theorists.
Jiri Jormacha
It's super silent and it moves differently compared to multicopter drones or fixed wing assets. People don't know what is happening. And yeah, we are in the UFO scene.
Tom Edwards
This is the Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards, You're listening to the Entrepreneurs. Maggie Draycott is a globally respected authority on luxury travel, aviation and hospitality. When not traveling the world, Maggie divides her time between her consultancy Maggie Draycott Associates, running a private concierge for her ultra families and her philanthropic work. Widely regarded as one of the architects of modern luxury travel experiences, Maggie also helped design British Airways most exclusive loyalty initiative, the invitation only premier club. She recently stopped by Midori House to talk about her latest venture, Club Aviator, a new app designed as a one stop hub for aviation professionals. I began by asking Maggie, as a seasoned traveller with deep insight into the aviation industry, how she sees the state of the sector today given the challenges caused by the conflict in the Middle East.
Maggie Draycott
I guess we now realize how much of a significant area the Middle east is for everybody, right? How it's so big in global travel. The second thing of course is for every passenger that might go on holiday a couple of times a year, we should also remember the crews. I think no one's mentioning them at the moment. There's a lot of crews stuck out there traveling on their airline networks and we need to check how they're coping as well. That's the second thing. And obviously look at Russia. You know, when all that started with Russia, we've been coping with that for a few years. We can't fly over Russia, all the flights have to divert. I went to Japan personally and it took 16 hours to get there, whereas normally it'd take 12 hours. So it's interesting how these things can have a huge impact long term as well, while this is going on. But there's ways, you know, at the end of the day, airlines are very. They're very used to different things happening constantly. So eventually they seem to get their act together.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
So they're maybe more adaptable, actually, than sometimes perhaps, they get given credit for, because these things are often treated like inescapable, inflexible things. But you're confident that, to generalise slightly, the industry, actually, it's more adroit at pivoting under these pressure points.
Maggie Draycott
Very much so. They're used to different incidents happening constantly, but saying that it's not the greatest thing, obviously, what's going on. So we just need to be hopeful that it'll finish quickly.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Well, and it's interesting what you say about thinking about pilots, crew, other staff, and we'll come back to that in a minute because obviously that's kind of part of the story of one of your businesses, which we'll come to. I mentioned your own, I guess, Maggie, reputation as an intrepid and very frequent flyer and traveler. Again, it would be remiss of me not to ask you where you've just been. I gather you've been somewhere, I don't know, which has. Which definitely has a reputation. I'm thinking about Bhutan here.
Maggie Draycott
Yes.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
It's something we've mentioned, obviously. Monocle. We're obsessed about quality of life and benchmarks of excellence, and Bhutan is always in the mix as supposedly the happiest country in the world. Tell me about your trip.
Maggie Draycott
Seriously. I went to Bhutan with a really open mind. I've wanted to go there all my life and when I got there, I thought, oh, wow, this is paradise. First of all, there's only 50 pilots in the world that can fly there, because you're flying through Mount Everest, basically, you can literally. You feel like you're going to touch the mountains, it's that close. So if you're not a very good flyer, I wouldn't go there. But actually, it wasn't bad. I'm not a very good flyer, believe it or not. When you get there, you realize it's so peaceful, there's so much space, you know, it just seems so big. It's the size of Switzerland, but there's only half a million people that live there, so you can imagine what it's like. It's mountains, every corner, you can see the Himalayas. It's spectacular. But in terms of being the happiest place in the World. The people there, they are genuinely the happiest people in the world. I have never met people like that. We had a driver, we had a guide. Always, when I go to a new country, I want to spend time with the local people. So my brief was very clear. I want to spend as much time to get to know the country, whatever you can in two weeks. And so we met some fascinating people, met the guy who does all the prayer flags for the country. There's prayer flags everywhere. We went to a place where they do these beautiful Mandela drawings on the tables with sand. You spend hours doing this, and then they just get a little brush and they break it down. And I was like, why would you do that? And what they're trying to say is, nothing in life is permanent. It's all about impermanence, the belief there. Basically, what I took out was, you need to literally believe that this life is not important. Everything is about your next life. It's really, really fascinating. I absolutely adored it.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
I didn't think we were gonna go down this almost philosophical attack. That's fascinating, Maggie. Listen, I'm sure our listeners will be saying, well, hang on. All right, Tom, roll the clock back a little bit. Not to a former life, quite, Maggie.
Maggie Draycott
No, no, no, no, no.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
But listen, you've spent decades within travel, hospitality, aviation, really the luxury travel world, including, of course, British Airways, perhaps what you're sort of most well, well known for, in a way, working on Concorde, of course, amongst other. Other programs. And this idea of really driving innovation in. In loyalty programs, really being at the. At the forefront of that. How did that journey, Maggie? How did that all begin for you?
Maggie Draycott
I still don't know how it happened, because I had this idea in my head. I happened to be at an event with the chairman of the company at that time, and I mentioned it to him, and he said, why don't you write something up and bring it up to me? I think it's a great idea. And I was. My idea was basically, we need to somehow segment and look at the top 5%. The top 5% of any company, any client. They were flying five times as much as your regular card holder, right? A top card holder. So he said, write it down.
Jiri Jormacha
Come.
Maggie Draycott
Come and see me. So off I went, very nervously, I said, fine, it sounds amazing. You can go and do it, but I'll give you 90 days, fix it all. And it's a very complex project. So there was a great team, and we set it up and delivered in 90 days. And then he said, can you Run it. I said, well, I'll try.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
And the rest is history.
Maggie Draycott
Fifteen years later. Yeah, the rest is history.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Incredible, really. And actually that was this period of extraordinary sort of consolidation actually for many of these leading brands in terms of how they safeguarded and looked after that top kind of client base. And I guess it follows on you've then spent much of your career advising not just airlines, but lots of luxury private clients.
Maggie Draycott
Yeah, since I left I've done quite a lot. So I work with aviation, private aviation. I work on an investment club, something I knew nothing about. It's just given me that freedom because at the end of the day you're still working with the same group of people. If you think about it, private aviation is ultra high net worth, you know, investment club. It's going to be investors who are very high net. So it's very similar path within that group. I also work in hospitality. I work with sometimes some of the top hotels and because of my passion, passion for travel, I love working with different travel groups, little places that no one hears about. I love doing that sort of thing as well.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Tell me, Maggie, Club Aviator. Yes, your one, your sort of more recent initiative. You were obviously doing very well. A trusted authority advising lots of key clients. No two days are the same. You get to indulge in lots of the things that professionally and personally you love. Travel, the undiscovered offering. Great advice, almost like being that friendly voice and authority. Tell me about the moment when you were like, something else needs to happen here and Club Aviator is the answer. How did that idea about what that
Tom Edwards
is, tell us what it is, but
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
how did the idea coalesce?
Maggie Draycott
So basically it's an idea that came to me during COVID I woke up one morning and it suddenly came to me, said, this seems like a no brainer. Why has nobody ever done it? And then I thought, well, I better check. So I did a year's research on it.
Jiri Jormacha
Oh no.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
90 days here.
Maggie Draycott
No, no, no, no. 90 days a year. Whole year, Tom. And literally there was nothing like it. There is nothing in the world that gives airline staff the opportunity to engage with each other. So now when I look at the hospitality industry, everybody knows everybody. Every hotel manager knows the other hotel, but within aviation, they don't know each other. No one actually engages. So say I work for BA or someone works for Iberia or American Airlines. It'll either be, unless you're working on a project, you don't actually become friends with people. So I just thought it would be so nice if I was Say, stuck in Hong Kong in some five star hotel. I know it sounds really glamorous, but actually when you're going out there to work, it's not that glamorous. You could be someone who's 20 years old, right. And you're in this foreign country and you don't want to be with the people you've flown with necessarily. This is all about creating a community of your own friends. On any given night, there's 2000 crew in New York every night and none of them know each other. The app actually helps you do that by connecting people. We've already got 42 airlines signed up.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Wow, that's a pretty impressive.
Maggie Draycott
And it's been like four months, right?
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
That's pretty impressive. And I guess to talk about numbers, we're talking about what, 10, 11 million people working in the United States.
Maggie Draycott
There's 11 million people working.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
That's a big demography.
Maggie Draycott
So we've got 42 different airline staff already signed up. Just by word of mouth, all of it.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
And tell me, I've seen some sort of, I don't know what you make of these comments, some sort of fairly kind of glib or trite remarks about it. You know, it's TripAdvisor for pilots, whatever it might be. But I guess what is your, what's the kind of elevator pitch when you're talking, I don't know, to potential investors or to people to actually join the program.
Maggie Draycott
I think it's about the loneliness that for me, you know, the whole mental health thing, it's really important. The rest of it will come, right? You've got the perks, you've got the wonderful. You know, you can make your own recommendation on what to do and sightseeing and restaurants and bars. We've got over a thousand recommendations that have been put in by them so they know what they like. But actually for me, it's all about building that friendship. If I go in a country and I open up my app, if I've got my location on, it'll tell you exactly who your friendship group, who's there in that town. And it gives you the ability to create invites through the app. It's evolving. But there's every week we're looking at what can we give them more.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
And it's funny because we kicked off this conversation talking about the current challenges. People with extended stays in, whether it's in Abu Dhabi or in Dubai or wherever it might be because of circumstance, and then all the more valuable a resource. One thing I find interesting, Maggie, is obviously Going way back to the sort of the original aviation loyalty programs, right through to Aviator, but via these other projects, you've done this thread of joining the club, building a community, being part
Tom Edwards
of something so important.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
But what is it about that that's always drawn you? Is it something that was in your foundational values when you were big, when you were growing up, that you enjoyed? Tell me a little bit more about that, because that's the red flag.
Maggie Draycott
I've always been part of a club. When I was growing up, I was actually born in the northeast of India, and we lived in a town that was actually a British town. It was like a little bubble. So we were all members of the club there, the social club from when we were kids. And we used to go like. We used to have swimming galas. And ever since I was a child, I was always part of some group, like some club. So for me, it feels like everyone should be doing that, you know, in different ways. It doesn't matter if it's your church or your school or club Aviator, you know, whatever you do, I think it's nice way to stop people. And there's a big problem with loneliness. I think there's a huge problem. And anxiety and all sorts of things.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Well, I was going to ask you about this, and it speaks a little bit to your experience in Bhutan as well. Look, in a sort of. We've got the whole digital realm. It's very fragmentary. And actually people saying that the offer of everything constantly in perpetuity is actually quite exhausting. And people are getting this ennui, aren't they, with too much news, too many options, too much and information overload.
Tom Edwards
And actually, these are the kinds of
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
programs that can encourage people to recalibrate what they're valuing. And the value should be in who can you meet. Maybe just a final thought, Maggie. This is the kind of, if we get the lens back on Club Aviator look, it's for aviation professionals, as you said, which is a large demography. I can imagine this is the kind of initiative, though, that any frequent flyer, not aviation professionals per se, will say, oh, look, that's my world. I'd like to be part of this cruise, too. How do you see this thing going? I mean, is that something further down the track? How do you balance that? Because. Or is it, in a way, putting up a little bit of a fence around it?
Tom Edwards
Tell me how you make it.
Maggie Draycott
For me, the reason we did it is I'm really conscious that we need to be safe and secure. There's a lot of very young people. So we want to make sure they're verified that they actually work for an airline. I'll tell you what, there was a couple of articles and a couple of papers when I first launched. Every single day we get hundreds of people who don't work for airlines who are trying to join. And sadly, I'd love to have everybody in the club, but you can't. You either make up your mind you want a closed user group or you just open it up to the whole world and it just doesn't work like that for us. Anyway, at the moment, I want to make sure until we get big numbers that we focus on airline stuff.
Tom Edwards
That was Maggie Draycott, the founder of Club Aviator and the eponymous Maggie Dracott Associates. And you can find out more about the new app by head to ClubAviator co.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
You're listening to the entrepreneurs.
Tom Edwards
Jiri Jormacha is the co founder and head of sales at Kello, a Finnish company developing autonomous airships capable of flying long distances while collecting and transmitting live data from the air. Because of the company's proximity to the Russian border, its aircraft regularly encounter signal jamming and spoofing, effectively turning the region into a somewhat unexpected testing ground for its technology. The result is a fleet designed to operate in even the most challenging conditions. Jiri stopped by Midori House en route to an event at the Finnish residence to discuss Kelo's mission and why technology, once associated with the early days of aviation, may be poised for a modern comeback. I began by asking how this new generation of airships differs from the zeppelins of old.
Jiri Jormacha
Technically, the term is lighter than air unmanned. So they are like drones, but they use lighter than air tech to stay up on the air. And they are 12 meters long. So if you take like fixed multicopter drone, it's big. Yes. But if you take like airship that was used like 100 years ago, it's small.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
And tell me a bit about what powers them. So they're hydrogen powered, as you said, lighter than air. What does that mean in terms of range reliability, because this is part of the usp, is that I guess you can be much more accurate than say a satellite or an ultra orbit observational instrument. But you've got huge advantages compared to drones, I guess in terms of how long these things can stay in the air. To be blunt. Just tell us a bit about how it fits into that.
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah, exactly. Because of the lifting gas, we are not using any energy when we are staying up. So we only use energy if we move or stay in one location when there's wind. So it gives us extreme long operational flight hours. So that is one. And we use hydrogen as a lifting gas but as a power source as well. So we are not using batteries as a main power source. We use hydrogen fuel cells. We are from Finland, we have four seasons and a quite rough winter so we need to be capable of performing every season of the year. So with the hydrogen fuel cells we can do missions in extreme cold weather conditions. For example, I was two weeks ago in Lapland, Finland and it was minus 30 degrees centigrade and we were doing missions over there.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Wow, okay. We don't get that cold here in the uk. I can imagine. Now tell me this must be immediately it springs to mind the incredible applications this would have from say a military or defence perspective. But I guess there's so many others. Infrastructure monitoring, environmental monitoring, including as you say in some hard to reach markets. Well, it's not a usp but it's another great SP which is that presumably it has these multifaceted applications. That must be one of the great selling points.
Jiri Jormacha
Yep, yep, exactly. And we are, we are a dual use company. We started as a civilian company and what our tech actually can do better than others, what it enables is super high accurate digital model of the world. We are basically doing aerial photographing like drones. So we are close to the object ground surface so we get really high quality data. But drones doesn't scale. If you think nationwide, like England for example, you need quite many drones and operators and satellites, they can do large areas but the data quality is not there because they are super far away. We can stay up for extreme long time like satellites and provide super high quality data like drones. So we have the quality and scale that is the number one thing that the airships can provide actually is this
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
a thing where Kalu owns that whole process from going right back to tracing things through supply chains all the way through to delivery. Is it a kind of a full service operation? How does that work?
Jiri Jormacha
So we decided to build and operate the system, collect data and process the data as well on the civilian side. So it's a turnke solution for the customers and on the civilian side the customers, they don't want to buy anything that moves or is machine or they only want the information, the end result. Yeah, we are selling service on that side, on the defence side as well. But it's really common that on the defense side they want to buy actual thingies. So let's see where the future goes on.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
That's Interesting.
Tom Edwards
Well, I was going to ask you
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
a bit about that because obviously the narrative around certainly Arctic security, we know, well, you know, Finland has this very long border with Russia and all of that. This technology must be becoming increasingly valuable or its potential use given the challenges in monitoring. What kind of role are you currently playing if you could talk about it or hope to play in that space?
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah, I can say. Well, firstly we are a NATO Dayan Phase 2 company. We've been working with NATO and defence for a few years now. And the whole EU wide is also information what is happening across the border over there. I see it multi layered in a way that you need information from different layers. And I was seeing the layers space, high altitude like airplanes and so on. Lower altitude like drones, fixed wing and then ground layer. And where we are really good at is the low altitude below cloud level and Arctic conditions. And that is the niche where we are really good at.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Tell me about how you. Because you obviously marketing, you have a marketing hat as well. Do you have to do a lot of taking people back to square one and going back to basics when you're selling this product or are people able? Because you know, if you look, if you go on your website and you see the product, you can kind of get it right. It's pretty arresting. You can see what it is. But have you had to do a bit of Airship Fleet 101 as part of your sales?
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah, yeah, of course. And the best case scenario is that I can show not tell. So that is the number one thing. So we are deploying our capabilities across EU right now and even North America. It is helping people are seeing, witnessing what we can do and seeing our data feed and how it helps the end users in different nations. I hope this will be like lighter than air, will come back and will play its part in the big picture NATO.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
It's funny because when we talk about aviation often here at Monaco, we talk about, you know, the, the end of the supersonic era and will it ever come back and this kind of thing. And I wonder what about let's not put the cart before the horse.
Tom Edwards
I don't know if you have that
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
expression in Finland, but where could this go at a greater scale? I think the loads are relatively modest in terms of load bearing on these airships. But what about other potential civilian deployments? I mean could they be a mobility solution down the track or is that not on the agenda at the moment?
Jiri Jormacha
Well, yeah, these are mass manufacturable and we are building more and more all the time. This is emission free, a really cost efficient way to have assets on the air and collect data of our world like Earth. And the plan is that we will build rather hundreds of thousands of these than thousands. And it will help humankind to understand what direction our Earth is going. And so far this is the best way to collect super high quality data from large areas. Is emission free and cost efficient.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Just a question on a different logistical consideration. What about integration to broader civilian infrastructure, by which I mean civil aviation infrastructure. Because obviously there's big narratives around drone interference around say commercial aircraft operations, for example. How does kalu fit into and work with those existing frameworks? Because there's quite a lot of restrictions. But I guess maybe you've got more flexibility because of the lower altitudes. But tell me how that works.
Jiri Jormacha
Well, yeah, our headquarters and factories is located just next to Russian border in Finland. So we have 24, seven free GNSS jamming. So that's where we are doing all the R and D. And it's safe to say that we are Genesis resilient when we are operating. So I hope that we will be a part of nationwide aerial survey solutions that the unmanned aviation and manned aviation can cooperate to provide information of different things.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
So it's fairly seamless in terms and there's not problems in terms of crossover with civil passenger aircraft.
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah, correct. And we need to obey the rules like EASA unmanned aviation regulatory processes. And it's moving super fast forward like everything shows now that the regulatory will not be the bottleneck on scaling up globally doing like hundreds of thousands of these.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
So just on that point about Genesis or these like jammed environments, is your expectation that basically all militaries will probably need to think about adding if they don't already have it or expanding if they do their airship fleets because of its resilience in the face of that kind of countermeasure?
Jiri Jormacha
Well, yeah, of course I see it like that.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
That's what you were doing.
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah. There's all kinds of systems that have been used globally on different side. And I think something that is long duration, provides information or uses different kind of payload, works in harsh conditions, extreme conditions and works in gnss resilient areas and is cost efficient. It's is something that should be interesting.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
Exactly. So people need to pick up the phone and talk to you. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny because I mentioned earlier that I'd had a look on your website and obviously they're quite striking. They are airship zeppelin shape. But the ones certainly on the, on the film are very metallic, very shiny and they have a UFO vibe about them. Is that already something that happens? I, I can imagine people wanting to get in touch or I don't know what, how does that work? Because people love a, a surprise floating through the clouds, don't they?
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah. And yeah, it floats so it's super silent and it moves differently compared to multicopter drones or fixed wing assets. So yes, we have some UFO action happening and actually recently, last week in Nordic countries you can go and Google Galo UFOs or Airship UFOs I'm sure you'll, you will find some action. There's like all kinds of video footage, rumors in X and in Reddit. People don't know what is happening. And yeah, we are in the UFO
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
scene and that's quite good. Right? From a sort of marketing perspective, is it? Because people love sharing those.
Jiri Jormacha
Yeah, there's lots of sharings and I'm sure that we are the most famous UFO company from Finland. I'm pretty sure on that one.
Interviewer (possibly a Monocle Radio host)
I love that. Brilliant. Just finally set me some ambitions. Where, what just at the start? Well near the start of 20, the business has moved very quickly or in a relatively short lifespan. Calibrate your expectations and ambitions over the next, I don't know, year or so. What kind of markers do you set YETI in terms of ambition, growth, new markets, what does that journey look like for the next few months?
Jiri Jormacha
Firstly I recommend maybe following news in the near future. We are still a startup company but now turning to be a scale up company and of course I was like watching some startup economical numbers between England and Finland and I think the number of unicorns in Finland is bit too small compared to uk. So I think that is a good next big milestone for Kelo to become a unicorn company.
Tom Edwards
That was Jerry Jormacher, the co founder and head of sales at Kello. You can find out more by heading over to kello.com. And that's all for this episode of the Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time next week. The program's produced by Laura Kramer with audio editing by Jack Jewers. You can listen again and find out more about the show@monocle.com that's where you can subscribe to Monocle magazine and ensure you're reading more about better businesses every month. You can always follow us and catch up with the archive wherever you get your audio. If you'd like to reach out and get in touch with the team, email Laura on lrkonical.com I'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye, and thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs.
Episode Title: How Kelluu’s UFO-like airships caught the eye of Nato and conspiracy theorists
Host: Tom Edwards, Monocle Radio
Date: March 11, 2026
This episode of "The Entrepreneurs" explores two aviation innovators: Maggie Draycott, a respected authority in luxury travel and founder of Club Aviator, and Jiri Jormacha, co-founder of Finnish autonomous airship maker Kelluu. The episode traverses how global instability affects the aviation industry, innovative approaches to building professional communities, and the revolutionary dual-use technology behind modern airships—catching the attention of both military organizations and internet conspiracy theorists.
Starts: 01:00
Middle East conflicts and restricted airspace: Draycott discusses how turmoil, especially in the Middle East and Russia, has significantly affected flight routing and travel times.
"We now realize how much of a significant area the Middle East is for everybody… Look at Russia. We can’t fly over Russia; all the flights have to divert. I went to Japan... it took 16 hours, whereas normally it'd take 12."
— Maggie Draycott (02:36)
Flight Crew Realities: Strong emphasis on the overlooked challenges flight crews face amid travel disruptions.
"There's a lot of crews stuck out there... traveling on their airline networks and we need to check how they're coping."
— Maggie Draycott (02:36)
"They're used to different incidents happening constantly, but saying that, it's not the greatest thing, obviously, what's going on."
— Maggie Draycott (03:57)
"You spend hours doing this [Mandala drawings], and then they just get a little brush and they break it down. What they're trying to say is, nothing in life is permanent... Everything is about your next life."
— Maggie Draycott (05:23)
"My idea was basically, we need to... look at the top 5%... They were flying five times as much as your regular card holder."
— Maggie Draycott (07:14)
Community for Aviation Professionals: Identified a gap: airline staff had no platform to connect globally, unlike their hospitality counterparts.
"There is nothing in the world that gives airline staff the opportunity to engage with each other... Every hotel manager knows the other hotel, but within aviation, they don't know each other."
— Maggie Draycott (10:04)
Club Aviator became the solution, enabling crew to meet, share recommendations, and counter loneliness.
"It's all about building that friendship... On any given night, there's 2000 crew in New York, and none of them know each other."
— Maggie Draycott (11:53)
Over 42 airlines' staff signed up within four months, driven by word of mouth.
"We've got 42 airlines signed up... and it's been like four months, right?"
— Maggie Draycott (11:20)
Strong emphasis on verified, closed-group safety for young crew members:
"Every single day, we get hundreds of people who don't work for airlines who are trying to join... You either make up your mind you want a closed user group or you just open it up to the whole world, and it just doesn't work like that for us."
— Maggie Draycott (14:53)
"I've always been part of a club... there's a big problem with loneliness. I think there's a huge problem. And anxiety and all sorts of things."
— Maggie Draycott (13:13)
Starts: 16:02
"Technically, the term is lighter than air, unmanned... they are 12 meters long."
— Jiri Jormacha (16:50)
"Because of the lifting gas, we are not using any energy when we are staying up... We use hydrogen as a lifting gas but as a power source as well."
— Jiri Jormacha (17:42) "For example, I was two weeks ago in Lapland, Finland, and it was minus 30°C, and we were doing missions over there."
— Jiri Jormacha (18:23)
Civil and Military Markets: Kelluu started as a civilian company, now also serves defense (including NATO).
"We are a dual use company. We started as a civilian company... what our tech actually can do better... is super high accurate digital model of the world."
— Jiri Jormacha (19:01)
Outperforms satellites (higher data quality) and drones (greater range, endurance).
"We can stay up for extreme long time like satellites and provide super high quality data like drones. So we have the quality and scale..."
— Jiri Jormacha (19:35)
Developed in Adversarial Environments: Kelluu’s HQ is near the Russian border, providing constant GNSS jamming for robust R&D.
"Our headquarters and factories [are] located just next to Russian border in Finland. So we have 24/7 free GNSS jamming. So that's where we are doing all the R and D."
— Jiri Jormacha (24:15)
Kelluu’s airships are “GNSS resilient,” designed for environments with jamming and spoofing.
"Everything shows now that the regulatory will not be the bottleneck on scaling up globally doing like hundreds of thousands of these."
— Jiri Jormacha (24:58)
The airships’ silvery, floating, silent presence has led to UFO sightings and social media attention.
"Yes, we have some UFO action happening... in Nordic countries you can go and Google Kelluu UFOs or Airship UFOs... there's like all kinds of video footage, rumors in X and in Reddit. People don't know what is happening. And yeah, we are in the UFO scene."
— Jiri Jormacha (26:34)
Jormacha wryly notes Kelluu may be the "most famous UFO company from Finland."
"I'm sure that we are the most famous UFO company from Finland. I'm pretty sure on that one."
— Jiri Jormacha (27:14)
Aims to Become a “Unicorn”: Scaling from startup to scale-up, hoping to reach unicorn status in Finland.
"Now turning to be a scale up company... I think the number of unicorns in Finland is bit too small compared to UK. So I think that is a good next big milestone for Kelluu—to become a unicorn company."
— Jiri Jormacha (27:46)
Vision: Mass production of hundreds of thousands of emission-free, data-collecting airships.
"The plan is that we will build rather hundreds of thousands of these than thousands. And it will help humankind to understand what direction our Earth is going."
— Jiri Jormacha (23:12)
"Nothing in life is permanent. It's all about impermanence, the belief there."
— Maggie Draycott (05:23)
"On any given night, there's 2000 crew in New York every night and none of them know each other."
— Maggie Draycott (11:17)
"We are not using any energy when we are staying up. So we only use energy if we move or stay in one location when there's wind."
— Jiri Jormacha (17:42)
"We are in the UFO scene."
— Jiri Jormacha (26:34)
"I’m sure that we are the most famous UFO company from Finland."
— Jiri Jormacha (27:14)