Ben Marcus

Managing Partner, UP.Partners · 1 appearance on the record.

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Ben Marcus is the co-founder and former CEO of AirMap, an airspace management platform for drones. He currently serves as Co-Founder and Managing Partner at venture firm UP.Partners.

14statements → 12claims → 9claims resolved → 56%fully supported → 3.64/5average certainty → 2.43/5average debate potential → ≈4.5/5argument clarity, estimated → 1said about them ↓

5 supported 1 partly supported 3 contradicted 3 not checkable as stated how the 12 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

7 predictions · 5 assertions · 1 opinion · 1 insight · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 12 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 9 are resolved, and 3 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Ben argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
The US Army banned DJI drones over cybersecurity concerns
“There was a report earlier this year that the U.S. Army stopped using DJI products because they were concerned about cybersecurity and things like that.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 17:17 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap

Their most notable contradicted claim

Assertion Contradicted
DJI is the only commercial drone company generating meaningful revenue
“There's not a lot of money being made yet in drones, you know, with the exception of the military market. The only company really making any revenues is, is DJI. And even that is quite small.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 6:41 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
75% certainty 3
50% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

251 words/min while actually speaking · 4.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Ben Marcus: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews. Their coarse estimate from 14 exchanges on the produced feed is ≈4.5/5, shown at half point precision because the sample is small and produced tape scores higher.

Measured by listening to 3,146 words across 1 episode, but every recording we have of Ben Marcus is the aired feed, and an editor cleaned that audio before release. Some of the hesitation was cut before we ever heard it, so read these as floors: the true rates are at least this high. These are measurements of speaking style, not scores. How it's measured →

Everything Ben Marcus said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Assertion Contradicted
DJI is the only commercial drone company generating meaningful revenue
“There's not a lot of money being made yet in drones, you know, with the exception of the military market. The only company really making any revenues is, is DJI. And even that is quite small.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 6:41 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Not checkable as stated
B2C drone services represent the largest long-term market growth opportunity
“Where this becomes really exciting is really where it goes B to C, which is, you know, I take delivery of a package or I fly to work on a flying car. And that's where drones are really going to touch hundreds of millions or billions of people. And I think that…”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 12:58 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Assertion Supported
The US Army banned DJI drones over cybersecurity concerns
“There was a report earlier this year that the U.S. Army stopped using DJI products because they were concerned about cybersecurity and things like that.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 17:17 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Held up
Mega drone businesses will not emerge from narrow enterprise vertical software
“And that's a great way to start building a decent business, but I don't think it's where the mega businesses are going to be created.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 8:26 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Held up
Intel and Qualcomm investments will reduce drone hardware consolidation around DJI
“I think that's going to change over time. You know, we're seeing more and more investment from chipset makers like Intel and Qualcomm trying to make it easier for more OEMs to bring drones to market. We're seeing significant contributions to open source flight…”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 10:29 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Partly held up
US regulations will soon permit beyond visual line-of-sight drone flights
“Pretty soon we're going to see regulations that allow for flights over people here in the United States and beyond visual line-of-sight flights.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 15:32 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Didn’t hold up
AirMap will facilitate millions of daily autonomous drone flights by 2023
“Well, I think five years from now, we're going to be helping millions of drones flying every single day, flying autonomous routes, bringing value to people in their daily lives, and this entails serving not only the market that exists today, but really working…”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 20:10 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Held up
Early-stage drone startups will face significant market consolidation
“I think there's going to be some significant consolidation.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 8:12 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Assertion Supported
Google and Amazon drone efforts focus primarily on internal package delivery
“Thus far, Google and Amazon have mostly been focused on how do we deliver packages with drones?”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 9:16 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Assertion Contradicted
DJI and 3D Robotics captured the majority of early drone VC funding
“Well, I think a lot of the money to date has poured into hardware. So, you know, the biggest companies that have been funded to date have been DJI, Three D robotics. They've really taken the majority of the investment and thus far it's been really hard to buil…”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 9:56 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Opinion
DJI remains untouchable in consumer drone hardware despite commoditization expectations
“So I think that conventional wisdom to date has been that drones were going to quickly go to commodity. And yet what we found is that DJI has remained pretty much untouchable in delivering this sort of complete hardware package for an end user.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 10:17 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Prediction Not checkable as stated
The drone market will shift from full-stack to specialized component providers
“Over time, that's going to have to change in order for the business to scale. Different organizations, different individuals, entrepreneurs, companies, et cetera, are going to have to focus on delivering something, a component, and doing it really, really well…”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 11:43 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Insight
Enterprise drone users care about actionable answers, not technology implementation
“Enterprises want answers, right? They don't want complexity. They want to be able to know, you know, exactly how much rock is in this pile of rock or where is vegetation encroaching on my power lines? Those are the results that they want. They don't really car…”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 14:02 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Only 3,000 people worldwide can own and fly their own private jet
“There's only about 3000 people in the world who can own and fly their own jet.”
Ben Marcus Jan 5, 2018 ▶ 5:15 20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 100s of Millions & Will Amazon and Google Win The War of The Airspace with Ben Marcus, Founder & CEO @ Airmap

The other half of the tape: Ben Marcus's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 1

Every mention by year

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Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
20VC: What Is The Right Drone Investing Strategy, The Catalyst That Will Take Drones to 10 Jan 5, 2018 13m
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