Matthias Meiner, Lilium

Welcome to SPEED. This episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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“We wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters.” -- Peter Thiel, 2013

Fast forward a decade and you’re in luck Peter! We chatted with Matthias Meiner, Co-Founder and Head of Avionics at Lilium, a company that makes flying cars! More specifically they make EVTOL planes, similar in capability to flying vehicles you see Anakin or Obi-Wan driving in Star Wars.

"I Hate It When He Does That."

Matthias Meiner, Daniel Wiegand, Sebastian Born, and Patrick Nathen co-founded Lilium Aerospace in 2015 to transform transportation. Since then, they've grown to 800 people, raised almost a billion dollars, and shipped over 10 flying prototypes, iterating far faster than a traditional aerospace program.

Matthias, cofounder of Lilium

Lilium shipped >10 flying prototypes on the way to their latest, Phoenix, iterating far faster than a traditional aerospace company.

Here’s how:

1. Scrappiness

Prototyping hardware can cost a fortune. Before raising 500k, the team built a 20ft ‘Falcon’ prototype. It had a carbon fuselage, parts from hobby shops, and machined parts they convinced suppliers to make for free, with the promise of future orders.

The Falcon.

The team’s hustle and this prototype convinced Frank Thelen to invest $500k even before seeing Falcon fly. It also helped test some of the key architectural choices: the 30+ ducted fans and the 30+ electric motors.

2. Finding the fastest test

In the early years of Lilium, it was faster to build small models than create a realistic simulator. Matthias built ⅕-scale 3D-printed planes called “Dragons” to test control systems and ended up destroying 5 of them while testing.

A Lilium ‘Dragon’ prototype

Dragons’ low cost let the team use them as a staging setup before pushing code to the 1:1 Eagle prototype. The Eagle was legally a drone, not a plane, so Matthias could test new software without safety-critical certification. This approach is unheard of in traditional aerospace.

The Lilium ‘Eagle’ prototype.

3. Hire hackers

For <50 engineers the team focused on hiring people who were talented individual contributors, not pure managers. To screen for this, they’d ask about side projects (one eng built rally cars in his garage) and the details of projects. Hackers sweat the details.

One of the early Lilium engineers built cars like this for fun.

If you or a friend are starting a company in climate, health, education, or another important problem, reach out! We’d love to help you realize your vision for improving the world. Consider this a warm intro.