Alpine Eagle builds air-to-air defence: Jan-Hendrik Boelens, Founder and CEO

0:00Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. I'm here with Jan, CEO of Alpine Eagle, a very cool startup. Can you talk a bit about what you're building?

0:11Jan-Hendrik Boelens:Absolutely. Yeah, good to be here. If you think about what we're building, try to think of it as like the drone equivalent of an AWACS, like the big radar planes that NATO puts in the air. So if you would design that today as a small drone, that's exactly what we've been building. And we're currently extending that with the drone equivalent of a fighter jet, essentially. So that is a very simple way of how you can think of our products. And most drones have always been sort of like in the air, but attacking ground targets. It feels like what Alpine Eagle is doing is like air to air. Is that right?

0:48Jan-Hendrik Boelens:Exactly. Our key realization is that the most effective way to combat drones is actually to use drones. both because you know you can build many of them and you can scale them economically essentially so if you can effectively use drones against drones that's a very effective way to defend against these things and that's what we're doing. And how did you get into building drones? I was actually working in aerospace at Airbus at Molocopter and then from there I went into drones to work for quantum systems, which you might be familiar with. From there, of course, quantum building a lot of drones, I came to realize that the next big thing would be the question, the solvable question of how do we actually defend ourselves against these drones once everybody is operating a lot of them.

1:37Jan-Hendrik Boelens:And my co-founder and I started brainstorming about what a solution could look like and why current solutions weren't very good. And yeah, that's how Well, Pone Eagle started about two years ago. And how's it going? So I know that you've raised$9 million from IQ Capital General Catalyst. Can you go a bit, you know, can you talk a bit about the journey and maybe what was it that unlocked that round and what have you been doing since then? Yeah, absolutely. So I think there couldn't have been a better time to start doing this because, well, I think we saw already two years ago that this was going to be a problem.

2:10Jan-Hendrik Boelens:And as we've all seen in the recent news, it is now a huge problem, both in the civilian as well as in the military domain. Our journey started with the pure recognitions that we had from quantum systems and other companies where we had worked. And we had the luck of actually the German customer, the German MOD, actually being pretty supportive of our idea and acting as our launch customer originally. And that really has allowed us to start with a good reference customer in Western European markets. After that, obviously, we've also started testing our system for real in Ukraine. And of course, that's catapulted us to a whole different level of maturity once again.

2:58And what have the results been in early testing?

3:00Jan-Hendrik Boelens:Very promising. So obviously, I mean, there's always hurdles in every development. I've never seen a development without hurdles. but no it's it's the original test with the german army were very very promising as also in ukraine it's been of course as with any company a steep transition going from testing something in peacetime to testing something in wartime but the results have been very promising there what about germany has made it such a hub for both drones but also defense and deep tech it seems like you know hardware deep tech for germany's having an amazing moment uh yeah and doing these really hard technical things and also some of the models with its black forest labs na10 uh quantum systems proxima fusion really hard things to crack that aren't just kind of at the application layer but you know real physical things what is it about germany that is enabling it to build these amazing businesses at the moment?

4:00Jan-Hendrik Boelens:I think it's a combination of both, I think, the deep tech heritage in Germany. I mean, they used to be all about building cars. And I think there's a lot of talent that has become available on the market from that particular business. So there is a heritage of building technological products there. On top of that, I think what does help is to have a, I would say, a very robust defense customer at home. So I think the German military is, you know, reinvesting in new technologies, in rebuilding their arsenal. Having a customer like that to work with, I think, does help. And to some extent, especially for early-stage companies, I think they've also found a way to work with early-stage startups.

4:52Jan-Hendrik Boelens:So it's, my perception is that it's easier to get started in working with the German MRD than it is in some other European countries. And you've recently expanded to the UK. Can you touch a bit about, you know, your experience doing that? And I guess, why the UK over other European markets? Yeah, sure. I think our hypothesis has been that, you know, we want to make sure we are not an SME in Germany. We want to be European. And after that, a global player. And so obviously we're looking at how to expand into the key markets. And the UK is one of the military customers that's, I would say, on the forefront of technology, very much experimenting with new technology, with new conscious operations, and also being, I would say, very close to having a very experienced military that's very close to a lot of the conflicts that have happened in the past decade.

5:50Interesting. Yeah, okay. And what's your vision for the UK market more generally? Do you see the UK government and our own defense ministries, do you see that as being a key customer? Is that someone you're breaking to win over? And what does that look like?

6:06Jan-Hendrik Boelens:Absolutely. As I said, we see ourselves as really a pan-European company working in multiple markets there. we've seen the UK definitely recognizing that on the one hand they need to really recapitalize their defense forces and I think we've seen that with a lot of startups who've essentially expanded to the UK and really committed to being in the UK we are doing the same we see that there is a military that's taking counter drone serious that's taking revamping defense resilience seriously so we want to be present on the ground there. We're currently exploring, setting up manufacturing and engineering capacity in the UK there.

6:49Amazing. And I want to talk on about, you know, broader defense resilience trends across Europe. You know, we're seeing, especially, who was, I think maybe in Lithuania or maybe in Finland, where, you know, they had to drive out of their country to get a flight because of the drone incursions from, you know, I think supposedly Russia had been so serious that they ended up having to drive, I think it was Lithuania, from Lithuania to Poland, because the airport was shut down, they couldn't get their flight, and they had to drive all the way to Poland, which is absolutely ridiculous. And we're seeing this happening more and more.

7:23What should, you know, countries like Lithuania, what should Europe more broadly be doing to defend itself against incursions like this?

7:31Jan-Hendrik Boelens:I really think the first step is to accept that this is a threat, that we should do something about it, because what tends to happen is that, you know, there is a lot of lip service, essentially, when these drone incursions happen, it's all over the news. Politicians comment on it. It sometimes feels like the minute the drone incursions disappear, people go back to sleep. Actions don't necessarily get taken. I think the core problem is that still the drone threat is perceived essentially as a military problem, something that is playing out in Ukraine and in other conflict zones, whereas the way I clearly view it is this is something that will accompany us more and more also in a civilian domain this is not just a military problem all of our critical infrastructure is at risk be it airports seaports power plants what have you we see these drone incursions happening everywhere in Europe essentially also apparently you know drones starting from ships in the North Sea.

8:35Jan-Hendrik Boelens:So it is something that will accompany us for a long time. We're seeing it in Mexico. We're seeing it in other conflict zones in the world that cartels are really catching up with technologies. They're using this type of technology. And I think really the first step here is to recognize that this is a problem and we need to start looking for solutions. And that requires significant investment in technology and in defensive mechanisms. And when you talk about it not just being a military problem, but also a civilian problem, when you look at solutions to that, do you see a world in which airports have their own fleet of counter drones?

9:13Or do we need a military presence at all of our critical infrastructure sites? Or does it become a tool that becomes accessible to other companies and critical sites to manage their own fleets of drones to try and counter the incursions?

9:27Jan-Hendrik Boelens:In my mind, this is something where we cannot become reactive. We don't need to wait for some bad things to happen before we start thinking about how to make sure it doesn't happen. Whether it's military law enforcement or otherwise, it's not necessarily that decisive. Personally, I think the scale of the problem dictates that it should be a commercial solution, or we should have commercial contractors that actually operate these things. I don't think law enforcement has the capacity to do this all over the country, and I don't think the military is supposed to be tasked with that kind of a task generally within the country's own borders.

10:11Jan-Hendrik Boelens:So in my mind, this is something where once the legislation is in place that allows us, you know, it could be performed by commercial contractors. Having said that, you were asking about whether each airport needs intercepted drones. There's always going to be this discussion of, you know, airports being in busy areas. There are people living there. There are cars moving on the ground. There are commercial airplanes flying there. So there's always going to be a risk assessment about, you know, what is an appropriate countermeasure. And I think interceptor drones are probably not the most promising tool to deploy around airports.

10:47Interesting. And across the, you know, you've been building Airbus. I think you were working on helicopters for a long time, you know, quantum systems. You've been working in this space, in this sector for, I think, all of, if not most of your career. So you've kind of seen it go through this change in this transition from almost being like taboo or unfashionable, especially in the VC world, to now it's the hot thing. You know, I read somewhere that I think Germany's on track to produce more drones this year than the US or something. And all of a sudden it's become something that everybody feels that we really need and that we need to invest in.

11:24What's it been like for you going through that journey and seeing it come all the way around?

11:29Jan-Hendrik Boelens:Super exciting because aerospace and defense used to be a space where nothing was moving. You know, development cycles were like 30 plus years and there was like three generations working on the same product. in aerospace, technology was never moving because of certification rules, or at least that was the theme. Now things are actually moving. I mean, the speed at which things are changing is fascinating. I mean, for all the wrong reasons, but it's really, it's fascinating to see that things are moving. And personally, I believe, you know, this could lead particularly to the unique positioning of European countries here.

12:09Jan-Hendrik Boelens:I believe this could be something where Europe could actually take a lead for once on a new and booming industry. And that would be amazing to see. And do you see other opportunities like that? We talked a bit about Germany and we talked about quantum systems. Are we going to see like a European tech renaissance? And are we primed for certain fields or verticals to kind of benefit the most from that? I think so. I think if we can seize this opportunity, not to have this be a short-lived spike, but actually a longer-term initiative, I do think that it can be exactly that. We're already seeing big companies emerging in this space.

12:55Jan-Hendrik Boelens:And I don't think this is something that's directly tied to the current conflict in Ukraine. I think this is a longer term trend where, you know, sustainable long term companies can be built. Yeah, I think it's interesting the point about Ukraine because, you know, it definitely looks like there's been progress being made to try and bring that war to an end. But at the same time as that war coming to an end, we're definitely seeing our relationship worsen with people like the US and the US and Russia get closer, maybe Russia and China get closer. And so even if this war does get resolved, it feels like geopolitically, we're still going to be a lot less safe than we've ever been before.

13:34Do you think, you know, when we talk about resilience, we talk about sort of like strategic independence. Do you think we need to be making a more conscious effort to be buying European? Ian?

13:45Jan-Hendrik Boelens:I would say that one thing we saw in the pandemic is that if we are dependent on foreign supply chains, then that means that as soon as those supply chains break down, that we simply don't have vaccines, masks, what have you. We are now in a situation where Europe, who used to be very strong in building cars, don't have a single battery manufacturer in Europe. So if China decides not export batteries tomorrow we're not building electric cars anymore um i think we are not yet at a point where europe can actually decide to buy european and you know an example i recently made is like show me a european made gpu show me an nvidia chip that's built in the eu we are not at that point but i do think that you know there should be serious considerations about how dependent we are on foreign supply chains and where we should be less dependent on those things and make every effort we can to make sure that we at least have the option of buying european yeah absolutely and um i mean i definitely think that's true i mean it's the same with like cloud providers you know we don't have a single european cloud provider people just they just decided to switch it off we you know i think we saw with the uh was it core weave or and there's another one where it was big disruption everything was down and all of a sudden we realized that actually wow we've got absolutely no no ability to stand on our own two feet from a strategic point of view it's not a great place to be in it's terrible it's absolutely terrible uh and i feel that i feel very strongly about the you know the integration of large language models into european governments you know the uk government recently announced like partnering with open ai and to me it just seems crazy like why are we deepening our reliance on us tech when we have we have mistral in france um and i'd rather have no lms in government than end up being incredibly dependent on on open ai uh but i'm cautious we've got a few minutes left and we'll talk about uh the future of alpine eagle you know so you know you've raised this round you've been active for a couple of years now you're launching into the uk what needs to happen over the next couple of years to get you to that next stage of success we're really seeing all these efforts in Europe to establish something like a drone wall.

16:06Jan-Hendrik Boelens:And I think it's going to be more a collection of drone walls than a single coherent drone wall. But we are positioning ourselves to be one of the dominant players in country US solutions because there is no silver bullet here. There's not just one product that's going to solve the whole problem. There's going to be a family of systems that are all connected and tied into each other as a layered defense system that is going to solve the drone threat problem. And that is a product that we are building. So we're not focusing on our MVP, which was Sentinel, but we're now building a family of systems of counter-drone products that's going to solve this problem at large.

16:45And are you more focused on building, like you said, products adjacent to Sentinel to try and build the full suite? Are you more focused on manufacturing the products itself? Are you more focused on commercialization, signing more contracts? What's the big priority for the next 18 months?

17:01Jan-Hendrik Boelens:I guess it's a combination of both capturing the momentum in the market, selling our current product and really expanding the market access there to other customers, as well as building a new portfolio and really building a coherent family of systems so that with the customer expressing a need, we can offer the building blocks and go into that specific solution for that specific customer. Amazing. Yeah, it's going to be exciting. I'd love to see that drone will come up. But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to chat. It's been great. Thank you, sir. It's been great being here. Thanks.

17:41Best of luck with it all.