The Drone Company Quietly Taking Over Delivery

This Week In Startups is made possible by: Render - render.com/twist Deel - deel.com/twist Northwest Registered Agent - northwestregisteredagent.com/twist Today's show: The "Ryanair of drone delivery" just raised $50 million and plans to bring its technology from Europe to the United States. Manna founder Bobby Healy explains to TWiST how his Dublin-based company completed 300,000 deliveries while some rivals are still publishing blog posts, and why low-cost airline economics will decide who wins the autonomous skies. Sticking to the drone theme, TWiST welcomed Theseus co-founder Ian Laffey, who called in from Kyiv to tell us about his company's drone guidance system. It runs off a simple camera and Google Maps. The technology could rewrite the modern, GPS-jammed battlefield, and bring more firepower to smaller nations fending off larger foes. Guest Links: Manna https://www.manna.aero Bobby Healy https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhealy/ Manna funding announcement https://www.manna.aero/blog/series-b Theseus https://www.theseus.us/ Ian Laffey https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilaffey2/ Most recent Theseus funding announcement https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/17/defense-tech-theseus-landed-y-combinator-the-us-special-forces-and-4-3m-from-a-tweet/ The tweet that kickstarted Theseus: https://x.com/ilaffey2/status/1759353732075294766 Timestamps: 0:00 Bobby Healy of Manna joins TWiST 1:41 How a Manna base works: drones migrate around the city like Waymos 7:18 Battle-hardened in Irish weather: 97% uptime in wind and rain 8:52 Margin-positive economics & the path to $0.20 per delivery 9:25 Northwest Registered Agent: Get more when you start your business with Northwest. In 10 clicks and 10 minutes, you can form your company and walk away with a real business identity — Learn more at https://northwestregisteredagent.com/twist 12:32 $50M Series B vs competitors raising $600–800M 19:51 Deel - Founders scale faster on Deel. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast, and get back to building. Visit https://deel.com/twist to learn more. 22:53 The peer-to-peer drone future and hyper-local commerce 25:46 Growing from 170 to 570 people and moving manufacturing to Oklahoma 28:43 Ian Laffey of Theseus joins TWIST 29:57 Render: Find out why 5 million developers are already using the all-in-one cloud platform, Render. Go to https://render.com/twist and apply for the Render Startup Program to get $500-$100,000 in free credits, depending on your stage and backers. 30:58 Inside Ukraine's drone industry: front-line iteration and free-market speed 33:55 How GPS gets jammed across the spectrum 35:10 Theseus's approach: cameras + satellite maps + ML 37:04 The product: Raspberry Pi, SD card, camera — pretending to be GPS 49:02 Ukraine: 6–8M drones a year. The US: 300K over two years. 51:17 Are US drone primes actually reconstituting the supply chain? 58:22 Y Combinator as a defense tech accelerator 59:40 "Pick an issue and start working as hard as you can towards it" Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com Check out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.com Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp Follow Lon: X: https://x.com/lons Follow Alex: X: https://x.com/alex LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis Check out all our partner offers: https://partners.launch.co/ Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com