Mark Groden - The Future of Flying

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This episode is brought to you by Tegus, where we're changing the game in investment research. Step away from outdated, inefficient methods and into the future with our platform, proudly hosting over 100,000 transcripts with over 25,000 transcripts added just this year alone.
What sets Tegus apart? It's not just the sheer volume, it's the unmatched speed at which our library expands, consistently outstripping competitors. Our platform grows eight times faster and adds twice as much monthly content as our competitors, putting us at the forefront of the industry. Our collection is investor led, ensuring unparalleled quality and giving you access to questions and topics investors care most about. Plus with 75% of private market transcripts available exclusively on Tegus, we offer insights you can't find elsewhere. Forget the traditional way of doing things, with Tegus you have the most comprehensive, insightful and rapidly growing transcript library at your fingertips. See the difference that a vast, quality driven transcript library makes. Unlock your free trial at tegus.com/patrick.
You may have heard me reference the idea of maniacs on a mission and how much that idea excites me. Well, David Senra is my favorite maniac on one of my favorite missions with his weekly crafting of the Founders Podcast. Through studying the lives of legends, he weaves together insights across history to distill ideas that you can use in your work.
Founders reveals tried and true tactics, battle tested by the world's icons and has David's infectious energy to accompany them. With well over 300 episodes, your heroes are surely in the lineup and his recent episode on Oprah is particularly great. Founders is a movement that you don't want to miss. It's part of the Colossus Network and you can find your way to David's great podcast in the show notes.
Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. Invest Like the Best is part of the Colossus family of podcasts and you can access all our podcasts, including edited transcripts, show notes and other resources to keep learning at joincolossus.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:07)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of PositiveSum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of PositiveSum. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of PositiveSum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit PSUMVC.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:36)
My guest today is Mark Groden. Mark is the founder and CEO of Skyryse, a company on a mission to make general aviation as safe as commercial aviation and change the future of flying. If you're interested in flying in any way, I think you'll be engrossed in this one. Sometimes when learning about companies, it's hard for me to figure out their mission or what exactly they really want to accomplish. When I visited Skyryse in LA as part of an investment I made in the business, I'd never seen a mission so clearly stated and supported, in their case, to bring deaths in general aviation helicopters and planes to zero. As you'll hear, Mark was born to do this specific job, clearly a person doing their life's work. I'm blown away every time I talk with him by his command of the details and by his obsession with flying.
With the many scary recent helicopter crashes, I think understanding the past and future of these and other non-commercial jet aircraft is timely and important. I still can't believe how big the gap is in safety standards between general and commercial aviation. We also cover the general future of flying and the exciting but challenging pathways to more automated transportation of every kind made possible by technology from Skyryse and other great innovative firms.
Please enjoy my conversation with Mark Groden.
I want to ask you about your personal story. I know that this has been an area of passion for you for a really long time. You're still quite young, but you've been in and around aircraft for a long time. I'll let you tell the story. Go back as far as you want with a bias towards as early as possible and maybe just give us the background for how you came to this problem space, this world and your motivations, where they came from.

**Mark Groden** (4:14)
So there's an easy version to the question, and I'll take the slightly harder path.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (4:18)
Please go the hard path.

**Mark Groden** (4:20)
I may get a little emotional, so bear with me, but I grew up in the Midwest and spent a lot of time traveling between different Midwest states. So this is upstate New York, Buffalo, Metro Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, and there's almost always a five-hour car ride to get from one place to the next. And when I was a kid, I was so excited about anything that was a transportation vehicle. For whatever reason, cars, boats, planes, helicopters, I just wanted to build models, and I wanted to make these things work.