On February 24, 2017, “Shark Tank” premiered the 18th episode of Season 8 to an audience of 5.86 million viewers. The third of four pitches that week was for DARTdrones, a company offering drone pilot training courses. The sharks had fun playing around with the flying robots and watching a video of mishaps, but they soon got down to business. Before long, CEO and founder Abby Speicher shook on a deal with one of the sharks. The agreement came so quickly, in fact, that CNBC — the cable home of “Shark Tank” reruns in the U.S. — featured it in a YouTube video of “10 Super Fast Shark Tank Deals,” and a fan video highlighting how it went down sans negotiation has 6.7 million views.
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By all appearances, though, it seems as if the deal most likely didn’t close after the formal talks that begin after the episode was filmed. Despite this, DARTdrones has carved out a pretty solid spot in the drone training space, both as a moneymaking endeavor and by generating goodwill with free training for certain police and fire departments. Company founder and CEO Kelly Speicher has received positive attention on the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, as well, and the business looks like it’s on pretty solid footing going forward, with plenty of classes scheduled several months ahead of time as of this writing. Let’s look at what happened on “Shark Tank” and what’s gone down since.
What happened to DARTdrones on Shark Tank?
Abby Speicher entered the titular tank seeking $300,000 for a 10 percent equity stake in DARTdrones. She opened with a video compiling some particularly egregious drone-piloting mishaps, usually involving the robot crashing into a wall or even a person. (Though not clearly explained in the episode, it was shot right on the heels of regulatory changes for drones, where the FAA started requiring a Remote Pilot Certificate for flying the machines commercially.)
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Asked for sales figures, Speicher said that in 18 months, DARTdrones had grossed $520,000 in sales and was on track to sell $900,000 to $1.2 million worth of classes in the next year. As for profits, she didn’t provide numbers but said the company would be profitable if it wasn’t constantly reinvesting in creating new curricula. Sure enough, that was a big part of why she wanted an investment from one of the sharks — to accelerate growth while continuing to develop courses.
Daymond John seemed bullish on the business because the year before, drones had a 60 percent return rate, so a partnership with a retailer could be mutually beneficial. He didn’t make an offer, though. Kevin O’Leary didn’t see the $3 million valuation, but his estimate wasn’t far off — he offered the $300,000 for 15 percent. Mark Cuban immediately undercut him by agreeing to the 10 percent that Speicher wanted to give up, and she quickly agreed to the offer.
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What happened after Shark Tank?
Of all the sharks, Mark Cuban’s deals are easiest to track because of the “Shark Tank” page on his website. In this case, DARTdrones is not listed, so it looks like the deal never actually closed. It doesn’t look like Abby Speicher has ever done any interviews explaining the situation, so why she doesn’t appear to have received the offer remains a mystery.
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A few months after the episode aired, though, the company announced a partnership with Project Lifesaver, a public safety nonprofit. According to a timeline on the “About Us” page of the company’s official website, DARTdrones also launched “Advanced Training curriculum” the same year. It includes new classes like Aerial Search and Rescue (Project Lifesaver’s specialty), Aerial Mapping and Modeling, and Aerial Inspections.
In February 2021, DARTdrones compiled a blog post outlining what the company had been able to accomplish since the “Shark Tank” episode in question premiered four years earlier. In that time, the business doubled its instructor count to 40, added 15 more courses to the curriculum, and started a consulting program with enterprise and government teams. As of that post, more than 14,000 students had taken the company’s classes, and it also offered free drone training to select police and fire departments.
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Is DARTdrones still in business?
By all appearances, DARTdrones is still a fully-functional company that offers drone pilot training in various different contexts. It has enterprise-level courses, instruction for government organizations, licenses curriculums for schools, and also provides the more traditional classes for consumers. The company’s website is still updated regularly, including a blog that is regularly updated on an ongoing — albeit not particularly frequent — basis as of November 2024. A post from the same month announced a partnership with DEPCO Enterprises, described as “a leader in bringing curriculum and unique training to schools.” Other 2024 blogs addressed the launch of an “Intro to Drones” course for high-school students and spotlighted the highs-school drone education program in general.
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The courses appear to be doing pretty well. For example, as of this writing, attempting to buy a spot in DARTdrones’ “Basic Flight Training” option two weeks out in New Jersey revealed that it was already sold out. (The next nearby iteration, seven weeks later, still had spots available, as did others further out on the calendar in other markets.) DARTdrones also offers remote training for certain courses — Virtual Basic Flight Training, Virtual Part 107 Test Prep, Virtual Mapping & Modeling Workshop, and Virtual Aerial Inspections — for those who can’t attend in-person instruction. Some “Shark Tank” blogs peg the company’s annual revenue at $5 million, but that figure is best taken with some salt since they don’t cite any sources.
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What’s next for DARTdrones and its founder?
By all appearances, DARTdrones is just going to keep chugging along and doing its thing. Abby Speicher’s LinkedIn page says she’s still the company’s CEO while also touting that she made it onto the “Forbes 30 Under 30” list for enterprise technology executives in 2019. As for the company itself, there are courses in cities throughout the United States scheduled several months in advance. It doesn’t look like DARTdrones has scaled to massive proportions, but it does seem to be a successful business. As noted earlier, its website is still updated on a semi-regular basis, mainly via its blog.
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Though the company looks healthy overall, it looks like it has abandoned the majority of its social media accounts that it used to market its various courses. The DARTdrones account on X (formerly known as Twitter), hasn’t received any new posts since July 2022, and on Instagram, the account has been dormant even longer — it hasn’t posted since September 2020. However, the DARTdrones Facebook page is still very up-to-date and is easily the most frequently updated branch of the company’s internet presence. At the start of the 2024 holiday shopping season, it promoted significant discounts for Black Friday and Cyber Monday, with the latter being particularly generous at 30 percent off all courses. All told, DARTdrones looks poised to continue trucking along at its current level for the foreseeable future.
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