Tyson Weihs: The Man Who Changed the Way We Fly (Season 2, Episode 10)

a number of companies over the years that were truly disrupted by ForeFlight and these platforms and went out of business. And I was asked once, you know, how do you feel about those companies going away? And my response is, if it wasn't us that had done it, it would have been somebody else, right? But the disruption is not something you can ultimately ignore or dismiss, and it will end up transforming your business.

Welcome to Take the Long View with Matt Hall. This is a podcast to reframe the way you think about your money, emotion, and time. The goal? Helping you put the odds of long-term success on your side. My guest today is Tyson Wise. Tyson is an entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of ForeFlight, the market-leading provider of critically acclaimed essential integrations integrated flight application software for aviation. He changed the game for pilots. Since its founding in the garages of the two founders in 2007, the company has grown into a multinational operation with offices in the US and Europe. ForeFlight serves personal, business, military, and commercial flight operations around the world and has been recognized for the impact it has made improving safety of flight. ForeFlight was acquired by Boeing in 2019. The company has been recognized with awards, and so have the founders. I'll mention a couple. In 2018, Tyson and his co-founder Jason Miller were presented the Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Living Legends of Aviation for their achievements. And in 2020, Tyson will be inducted into the Texas Aviation Hall of Fame. Tyson serves on a number of boards, including the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. Some people have said he's responsible for the best aviation software ever produced and that he's single-handedly dragged the aviation world forward. Tyson, welcome to Take the Long View.

Thanks, Matt. Good to be here.

Before we get to how you changed the aviation world, let's talk a little bit about some of your early influences. I've heard that your dad was a big-time chef or culinary person. Is that right? And did that have any influence on you early on?

Yeah, my dad was a— so first, he's an immigrant. He came to the United States in 1969, $600 in his pocket. And has a culinary background, grew up in a restaurant family in Germany, restaurant hospitality, and then immigrated to the US. And he had a 30-year career in the restaurant business. And, you know, very early on, some of my first memories are being in his restaurants. I learned how to walk in one of them. I grew up busing tables, waiting tables, and hosting in the restaurant. And that entrepreneurial influence has been important in my life. I think I remember, you know, early teens, you know, writing code for his business, using that as a way to make money. And even through college, always looking for opportunities to be entrepreneurial. So, you know, the restaurant business and my dad in particular were very influential in creating a work ethic. They were very influential in shaping thoughts and philosophies around customer experience because, you know, in a restaurant, you're reputation in your business is pretty much on the line every evening with every meal that comes out and the experience there. So that's had a big influence on how we take care of our customers and try to build the overall experience with our brand. And being a chef and a restaurateur requires an immense amount of creativity, right? I mean, you are constantly trying to invent new experiences and new things for customers to buy and taste. So that was a big one. The other one is my mother is an artist. She's a large format painter. And also as a calligrapher earlier on, and then as a painter, that's entrepreneurial also, right? I mean, going to art shows, selling artwork, and being exposed to all of those elements as well. So that created a good entrepreneurial foundation, and I think a work ethic, and then a creative foundation. And writing software and applications is a highly creative craft. And my co-founder, both have sort of creative backgrounds and support from, you know, family in those regards, and that really shaped the company.

Who spurred or encouraged your computer interest?

Uh, that, uh, school did. Um, I remember in, in the third grade getting exposed to Apple computers for the first time. We had a computer lab in the, in the early '80s when, you know, Apple computers were becoming pervasive in education. And I started with computer classes that my mom found at her high school alma mater in Charleston, South Carolina. You know, they were doing TurtleLogo programming classes. So I remember going to those as a kid. And then computers were always present in grade school, elementary, middle school. And so you get exposed to it. And it was something that I got attracted to early on. I don't think we actually owned a computer until I was in middle school, but that was the first exposure. I think being in that environment and getting exposed to it and having teachers that were excited about teaching us about those magical machines was foundational.

Do you remember playing Oregon Trail?

It's sort of a fuzzy memory, but I do. And I remember playing in the neighborhood Zork, kids and neighbors who had that, which is an early command line game where you type a command and then something would be spit back. No graphical user interface. It was just sort of like a choose your own adventure. Game. But some of those early games were also really influential. I can't remember all the names of them, but I got involved in that and got my first game console at age 10, which was, you know, young in those days. But yeah, those are all part of the experience.

Before ForeFlight, you started a company. You were at Trinity in San Antonio, I think.

I was.

Tell me about that.

Gosh, it was between 1997, '98. Visited with a friend in his dorm room, or a new friend there who had a business that he was running out of his dorm room. And I thought that was the coolest thing ever. He was a year ahead of me. I think it was a senior at Trinity at the time. And I wanted to do something similar, right? And so what happened eventually is he and another computer science classmate of mine, we teamed up in late senior year of 1998 and started an e-commerce consulting company. Back in the '90s, web pages were still novel, right? I mean, Netscape went public in 1996. That sort of started the, the ascent of the internet. And in the late '90s, building HTML and web pages was kind of black magic, right? And so we started a consulting company doing that. That led us into building e-commerce applications. Uh, we helped take catalog companies online and build all sorts of different custom software for different companies in and around, you know, Texas and abroad. And, uh, That led to an acquisition in '99 when companies were rolling up boutique consultancies and trying to build larger internet consultancies. And so that was our first entrepreneurial endeavor. And we started in '98 and sold it in '99. Wow.

How did that experience change your life or not? Was that just a fun thing to have done? Did it change your life financially? What lessons did you learn from that experience?

Yeah, one of the big lessons was how to not structure a deal. When we sold the company in September of '99, we did an all-stock deal. We were locked up for 18 months. And for those that got to witness the rise and fall of the dot-com era, we sold in September of '99, peak of the market in March of 2000. Our stock went from 6 to 96, and then it went to zero. Wow. So it wasn't a financial success for us. We probably all walked away from that with enough money to buy a used car. And that was formative, right? Because we learned a very expensive lesson. And I think one of the things we probably underestimated was what the potential of the business could be. The business at that time probably made just about $1 million a year, which was pretty significant for guys in their early 20s starting a business out of college. And it wasn't a from a, from a dollar perspective, I mean, looking back on it, it wasn't a life-changing, uh, liquidity event. We probably made, you know, in stock a few hundred thousand dollars and thought we had hung the moon, right? But I think we were sort of attracted by the notion of building a company and selling it and, uh, didn't realize sort of what you could do over the long term if you continue building the business and, and how much value you could really create.

So where did your interest in aviation come from?

After we sold that company in '99, I went to work for a software company in Charleston, South Carolina called Benefitfocus. And the founders of the company as well as the executive team, most of them were pilots. I think there might have been one non-pilot on the executive team. And so the first week after signing on with them, my boss at the time took me up for a flight in his airplane. And that was the first time I got to get my hands on the controls of a plane. I just thought it was amazing.

You weren't terrified at all about going up with this person you just started working with in his airplane? That was exciting?

That was exciting. It was not terrifying. It was something I very much looked forward to. And, you know, it was pretty transformative. I thought, you know, after getting that experience, I want to be able to do this too. And so I started taking flying lessons while I was in Charleston. Ultimately didn't get my pilot's license until the end of business school in 2006. It took me some time to get through that process and build up really enough money to afford flying lessons because flying is not an inexpensive hobby. But that's where aviation formed roots.

I'm imagining just because I know how the story ends or where the story is now, are you offended at this point as you're learning to fly? By the technology that is available to you?

Great question. I think at the time, some of the technology I thought was pretty neat. I mean, there were desktop applications that were telnetting into FAA systems and, and that to me at the time seemed pretty clever. It was later down the road when I was starting to work on different ratings that I realized the technology was fragmented and that's what led to wanting to improve upon, uh, the state of the art. And not only that, but it was disruptions that occurred along the way that caused the status quo to then look archaic, right? So the offense wasn't probably really immediate when interacting with those applications. It was once there was a technology shift and it became obvious that the existing technology would not survive long term. There was a drive to create new applications and software for those emerging computing platforms. So I think I remember feeling like, wow, you know, some of the technology that exists is, is pretty neat, you know, circa 2005, 2006. But when the iPhone was introduced in 2007, it changed everything, and it was immediately disruptive and created that effect of making the existing technologies look immediately dated.

See, I am imagining in my head, I don't know if you ever did this. I'm 46 years old. And like when I was a kid and we took a trip, my parents would get this thing called a triptych from AAA.

From AAA, that's right.

You know, somebody would have this map that would unfold and you could never really get put back together quite right and have like a neon line going down the route you were taking.

Yeah.

And somebody would be opening this thing up, trying to look at it. And, you know, one person might say, hey, can you hold the wheel for a second?

And you were counting mile markers.

Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Exactly.

That's what I was imagining pre-ForeFlight, pre-your innovation. That's what I was sort of imagining. If someone said, hey, do you want to come up in the cockpit? I was imagining paper and, you know, that kind of experience. Is that far from reality or is that pretty close to reality?

That was the reality. So I remember when preparing for my checkride, which is, that's the point at which the pilot is getting tested by an FAA examiner. Will deem you worthy to get a pilot certificate. You know, you walk into the examiner's office with the stack of paper that you had prepared, and that paper was— and just as the triptych had, you know, yellow highlighting, you would have your aeronautical chart unfolded. So you'd show them your, your paper chart with the highlighted route on it, then you'd show them all the calculations that you made for the route of flight. So very much like a triptych where it would say, you know, take a left turn here and then you know, drive 50 miles to, you know, mile marker X. Same thing in aviation, which is I'm going to take off from this airport, I'm going to navigate to this particular point in space, I'm going to take a turn. And then for each one of those legs, they're called, you had to compute, you know, what was, what was the heading that you were going to take, uh, which is the direction you were going to fly, how much gas were you going to burn, what direction were the winds at altitude pointing, and how hard were they blowing. Because all those things were important to managing fuel to make sure you could get from point A to point B. And so the amount of time that it took to prepare for any flight was probably 10 to 100x more than it takes today with ForeFlight and that technology, because you had to sit down and one, collect all the information and the inputs required. You had to run computations for each one of these legs. You had to reference charts and grids inside of the aircraft manual. So every airplane has a, you know, a how-to manual that includes, you know, if you're flying at a certain altitude at a certain temperature, how much gas are you going to burn. And that's probably one of the most critical things about preparing a flight is making sure that you fill up the tanks. And then when you fill up the tanks, you have to make sure that the airplane isn't taking off heavier than it is actually authorized to take off at. And then when you land, you have to make sure that you're landing weight is of a certain value. So there's all these things that you had to compute and check to make sure that you were operating the airplane safely. And now in ForeFlight, you know, in contrast, um, you pick an airplane, you pick a departure or destination, like, you know, AAA Trip Kits, we figure out the, the route to take, we run all those calculations for you, we make sure that if there's any condition that would be unsafe, like you're landing with too much weight or you're taking off with too much weight and the airplane couldn't climb, we flag all those sorts of things, right? And so A pilot that I fly with tells me, hey, you know, back in the day, a flight that we're taking today might have taken us, you know, 5 to 10 minutes to prepare for today. That might have taken hours pre-foreflight. So it's transformed the efficiency and the accuracy and the safety that impacts how, you know, people fly.

So you are learning to fly. You're sort of experiencing the systems that are available. Impressed in some ways, dissatisfied in others. What gave you the sort of audacity to think you could change it? You could do anything about it? What made you and your co-founder think that you could solve this big problem that I guess lots of other big companies hadn't even thought about solving? Yeah.

And you know, I'd say that we, we didn't sit down and think about, you know, In 2007, when we started the company, did we know what 10 years forward would look like? We didn't even know if we'd have a business, actually. And so, what we were really motivated by was, "Hey, there's a platform here with no software on it, and we have the skills to write something for it." So, it was really more about, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did the following?" Right? And so, we didn't sit down and scratch out a plan and say, "We're going to transform this world." What happened was, this technology platform appeared and it inspired us and helped us imagine what sort of tool we could write that others— really, first ourselves and then others— might use. And so it was really just that, which is, hey, this platform exists. Oh, here's an idea, let's build something. Oh well, that's cool. Well, that means, you know, that creates another spark and another idea. Why don't we build that feature into it? And so What we started realizing was we can take things that were fragmented or available in other applications on legacy platforms like desktop computers and things like that and put them on an iPhone and later an iPad. And that was really sort of how we approached it. And the first time we put out the first release, the next day we had somebody buy it. And so that was sort of a wake-up call where we said, wow, we've done something that we just thought was cool and fun. And we happened to wrap a credit card form around it and someone put in a credit card and paid for it, right? And that's really been the story of the business. I mean, we haven't sat down at any point and said, you know, what are we going to be in 3 to 5 years? It has been this steady stream of disruptions and just a race and a sense of urgency to keep adopting those to ultimately build cool things for us and for pilots that make, you know, first our lives easier And turns out made a lot of other pilots easier and delivered a lot of value that they would pay for.

Okay, so you mentioned this earlier, but I want to circle back to it. Apple, the iPhone. It's hard for us to imagine. I mean, I was even talking with my kid recently about, you know, how cool it is to have thousands and thousands of songs in your pocket. That idea back in the old days, again, going back to like trip tick days or making a mixtape kind of thing. Kids today won't know what that's like. And so the iPhone comes out, and how did that change everything for you?

Yeah, so when I picked up the first iPhone in 2007, it was the day— it was a Friday that Apple launched it, and we went to the Galleria Mall in Houston, Texas, and sort of, you know, poked our nose into the store going, okay, what is this new thing? Maybe we'll take a look at it. I didn't intend to buy one. Then I went in the store and I unlocked the phone for the first time. And for those that may not have had an iPhone in 2007, you used to have to swipe and unlock a user interface on the phone. It would make this click and then the home screen would appear. And when I did that for the first time and saw a full sort of edge-to-edge screen and compared that to the, you know, the BlackBerry that I had at the time, I was like, this is unbelievable. right? Um, that I've got this device in my pocket that's got applications running on it that's way easier to interact with and a heck of a lot cooler than, you know, a BlackBerry with an LCD black and white screen on it for just typing messages. And it was at that point where we said, wow, this thing is really different. And it was that disruption that caused us to say, okay, everything that we had been working on in an attempt to deliver a web application we're going to change directions and we're going to build an application for this device. And yeah, I mean, I think, you know, it's, it's hard for us to imagine today life without it, but at that point in time, it was so novel and clearly going to be so disruptive that we were really just excited about the opportunity to write software for it. Because, you know, looking back, there have only been a handful of, like, major computing transitions that have generated opportunities for entrepreneurship. You know, one is obviously the emergence of the desktop computer in the '70s and the '80s. And then the next major disruption was in business computing where client-server was invented. So you used to have software you'd run on your desktop and software you'd run on a server. And the internet came about and now you had software running in a browser, talking back to servers. So that created a new wave of invention. And then between that and the iPhone, you had social networking. So that created a whole bunch of new companies around, you know, connecting folks together online. And then the iPhone came out, and that created a new computing platform, which was you can now run sophisticated software on a mobile device. And then in 2010, the iPad came out, which is, well, now you have a bigger screen and can run advanced applications on a slightly larger device with an 8-hour battery that you, you can take into an airplane, right? And so we were just inspired by this new greenfield computing platform that emerged for which there were no applications, right? And we were fast enough and fortunate enough to be the first application for aviators in the App Store when that launched in 2008. That was what helped create the business. First is the platform, which is, you know, the iPhone and being able to write applications for it, and then a new distribution mechanism, which is instead of running around with CDs and putting those in your computer or floppy drives or things we used to use to install software, that was sort of thrown out, right? And so, oh my gosh, we've got a platform that includes a distribution mechanism. So those are Apple's inventions that we, you know, got to ride the coattails of in order to build a new enterprise.

I think you told me the story about maybe Steve Jobs at one point saw your technology on an iPad.

One of the things that helped us early on is within Apple, there was, was actually a large pilot population. And as new platforms were being created, folks that were internally developing those platforms, whether it's the Apple Store or the software development kits that Apple provides, they would showcase developer applications. And so I remember a friend of mine at Apple being in line at the Apple Cafe behind Steve Jobs, who was getting lunch. And he said, hey Steve, you know, I just want to show you this, but you know, here's this application for pilots that's, you know, super cool. I just wanted to show that to you. And my recollection is, you know, Steve Jobs says he took a note and asked what the name of that application was and said, you know, thank you. And, you know, years later we ended up providing our software to, you know, Apple's flight department or the airplanes that flew for Apple and the family there. But that was one of our encounters with Steve a long time ago was You know, it's just someone in line with him saying, you know, hey, look at this cool thing that these guys are doing for the iPad.

And I think I also heard that your app was the most expensive app at one time available on the App Store.

Yeah, in 2008, when the App Store launched, the average price of an app was probably somewhere between $0.99 and $4.99, right? So we had already been charging for our little web application $75 a year. As a subscription. And one of the new dynamics of the App Store in 2008, which is they had no subscription offerings— you had to put your application in the store, put a price on it, and sell it one time, like a lot of software was sold, you know, before subscription businesses emerged. And when the App Store was about to launch in the summer of 2008, reps at Apple sat down with us and said, guys, you can't charge $75 for an application. These things are costing, you know, 99 cents to $5, and you maybe $9 is sort of where you need to be. And so we stuck to our guns. And one of the first articles written about the App Store and the apps in it included, you know, a summary of what sort of apps are there. And when one of the categories was, you know, most expensive applications, and ForeFlight was at the top, right? $75, the most expensive app. We were displaced shortly after that by an app called I Am Rich, which was something that someone charged $999 for, and all it was was a button that you pressed. And so, wow, you know, that was more of a, you know, more of a marketing stunt that didn't have long legs. But until that came out, we were the most expensive app in the App Store, and that earned us some press and some free media.

But that's a good segue. Speaking of press, how did people— it's one thing to create a cool product, but my guess is you didn't have a huge marketing budget. How did the word spread and how did you convince people to start using the tool?

So one of the first things that we benefited from was the App Store, in addition to distributing apps, would allow you to search for applications. And so, you know, search has been a really important growth or, you know, adoption driver of applications or websites. And so being the only application in the App Store in 2008 that was aviation-focused, if one of our customers would buy an iPhone, you know, get into the App Store and start searching on aviation keywords, we were the only application that showed up in the results. And so there are keywords in aviation like flight plan or METAR, which is an aviation weather report, and Apple indexed all the keywords in your description. And so for the first few years of the business, we bought no advertising. I think it was probably maybe 4 years into the business before we bought our first ad. And so we had, you know, we had the benefit of being one of the only applications in the App Store. By being in the App Store early, those keywords would get weighted such that when you search for one of those aviation terms, since we had been downloaded the most, we would show up in the search results first, right? So that drove a tremendous amount of adoption early on. Because we were the only thing that showed up in the search results. You know, as I mentioned, it wasn't until years later that we bought our first ad. And another dynamic that exists in the aviation world is aviation is very social. There's lots of opportunities for pilots to come together, whether it is, you know, a gathering at their local airport. Like, they call them pancake breakfasts. Every Saturday morning, pilots would get together at the airport, they'd have a breakfast, they'd all go flying. And that's an opportunity for them to show their fellow pilots something cool, right? And so very early on, customers of ours that adopted early would either be flying with another pilot and just say, hey, let me show you this, right? And so there was a big viral and community and social aspect to our success, which is pilots telling other pilots about that. And then some of those pilots would go to work where they flew professionally and tell, you know, the directors or the chief pilots of the flight operations, hey, you know, I downloaded this new application from my phone or from my iPad. I want you to check it out. And so there's a, you know, we have to put a lot of, you know, credit or attribute word of mouth as a big driver of the product early on because it was so influential that we didn't have to buy advertising until years later when, you know, other competitors started showing up.

Okay, perfect. So why didn't any of the big people, once they caught wind of what you were doing, put their own programmers on something and, and create a competitive product?

You know, they eventually did, and I remember being really paranoid and scared when one of our first large competitors released their first application for the iPhone. That was Garmin, but that was not until years after the iPhone had been introduced. I want to say it was maybe, you know, 2 if not 3 years later. And so, you know, when you think about why isn't it that a company jumped onto that as quick as we did, I would probably point to there are all sorts of priorities within any business that gain attention, right? And so if this new platform emerges and you've got a bunch of other things that you're already doing and projects that you're engaged in, you know, someone has to advocate strongly enough for that or someone at the leadership level has to latch onto that and drive the investment in it. It can be challenging for those new upstart things to get investment dollars. And for us, that we had no competing priorities, right? Our priority was, this is a cool new thing, and this is what we're focused on. So I'd say that, you know, it's sort of the classic innovator's dilemma, which is this was truly a disruption. And often it's hard to understand what the impact of that disruption will be and shift enough resources, investment dollars to capitalize on it. I remember a friend of mine was running Nokia at the time that the iPhone came out and wrote the famous burning platform memo, which is, you know, they recognized it very quickly. And that is, this thing is very disruptive to, you know, Nokia's phone business. But other competitors of ours didn't latch onto that very quickly. And I remember a number of companies over the years that were truly disrupted by ForeFlight and these platforms and went out of business. And I was asked once, you know, you know, how do you feel about those companies going away? And my response is, you know, if it wasn't us that had done it, it would have been somebody else, right? But the disruption is, you know, not something you can ultimately ignore or dismiss, and it will end up transforming you know, your business. But we were just early enough and fast enough and continued, you know, moving with this underlying principle of, I would say, a combination of fear and urgency that we need to continue building up the capability. So I think classic innovator's dilemma was applicable here, and we were just fast enough to ride the wave.

So at any point in the early days, did people come to you and try to buy the company, or did that not happen till Boeing approached you later on?

No, we had other companies approach us over the years. And I remember being offered really in 2014, what at that time I'd consider a considerable amount of money. And then there was a company that we were disrupting that came to us and they made a couple million dollars in revenue. And that was a company that we had aspired to get as big as, right? Like, man, if we could make a couple million in revenue a year, we'll have really succeeded. And I remember there was a point where we were talking about merging with that company. I think this was in 2009. And the net proceeds to the owners would have been maybe a couple, $3 million or so. And we were thinking, oh my gosh, that would just be an unbelievable success. We ended up not doing the deal. And within 12 months, I think we were many times the size of that company. Right? And so, you know, had we made that decision back then, the company would— I don't even know if it would have survived, right? Because the incentives would have changed, and we might have missed some of those, you know, opportunities that we capitalized on by remaining independent. So that was one of the early opportunities I remember. And then in, you know, 2013, 2014, we had some large industrial companies approach us at that point in time and decided similar reasons, we'd stay independent. We did take some investment money in 2014, but stayed independent and largely bootstrapped for a significant portion of the company's history.

And so at what point does Boeing come to you and what do they say?

One of the really important relationships we had created amongst many over the company's history was with Boeing and particularly a subsidiary of Boeing called Jeppesen. That had been in the aviation industry for, at the time, 80 years. They really invented a lot of the tools and charting products and procedures that pilots use to fly into airports when they can't see outside of the windshield, when there's clouds around the airplane. And we established a partnership with them in 2016 that was two components. One is we would become a reseller of their charting products, which were very popular amongst professional pilots. They made a product that pilots would consider essential, and that is the— what are called approach procedures that tell you how to get into an airport. So we became a distributor of theirs, and they were also interested in our technology for the commercial aviation market. And so we partnered with them on building a next-generation application for the commercial flight deck. You know, what had happened over the years was we became a more important distributor of their products And we also became an essential partner for, you know, a very significant business within Jefferson and the Boeing portfolio, which is delivering this application to the commercial market. And so I think we both looked at one another and said, you know, Boeing is really essential to our future and is becoming a really significant customer, and vice versa, you know, ForeFlight's got an amazing market share in technology, and the combination would be, you know, more valuable them, the two companies independently. And so we had a discussion with them about doing a merger. And, you know, the benefits to us were pretty clear, which is there's a lot of technology that Boeing had that we would be able to leverage and use to create more value for our market. One of the things they had was the world's best set of global navigation data. And navigation data, unlike road data, is one, safety and life critical. Because it describes how airplanes get to a runway, and it was unmatched in its coverage and its quality. So we became reliant on, on that navigation data. We became reliant on our technology. So our futures are really intertwined, and it was clear that having them come together would be important, you know, as competitors get stronger and, you know, we become more reliant on one another's technology.

So now that you have the backing of the big, big company, what's the future going to be? How much safer, how much better, how much cooler can the tools you've created or will create become? What's next?

I mean, one of the things that happens with our technology is there's more places that either the ForeFlight applications or components that we have, technology puzzle pieces if you will, can end up helping other products and customers of Boeing, right? And so that could include things like integrating more tightly with avionics, you know, we got instantly global distribution. So we have a, a product that we make for militaries. Almost overnight, that product now becomes available to all of the militaries that Boeing serves, right? And so those sorts of opportunities exist where, because we now have exposure to more types of customers and more geographies, that drives more investment in the product in order to serve whatever the particular customers are. And so one of the benefits of having a large footprint is you get much more intelligence where the market is heading and what customers want and value that ends up driving more revenue opportunities. So, you know, we're still digesting global expansion and tailoring the product or fitting the product to work for all of these different markets. And we've become even more essential to all types of aviators and types of aviation operations around the world, from individuals that fly their own planes up through commercial airlines and militaries around the world.

Yeah, I'll tell you this. I have an old house, like, built in the '20s, and it frequently requires some TLC, and I have to find, like, a really great contractor person to help me. I'm somewhat handy, but I can't do like really skilled stuff. And so I found someone who has all the skills and he's become a friend. And we were talking one day and I'm not sure how it came up, but I said, "Oh yeah, you should check out my podcast or something." He was like, "Oh really, what kind of people do you have on?" And then I somehow I mentioned your name and he could not believe it because he's a pilot.

Okay.

And he uses ForeFlight and he went on, I've never seen him so excited He was excited because your product has changed the game, and he had stories to tell me, safety stories about what weather situations and what it would have been like in the old days and what it's like now, and sent me a Facebook post showing like a little cartoon that showed the difference between how they used to feel about flying versus now it's like, "My— 4 flights down, I think I'm gonna die." You know, like, uh— And the story he told me is like basically everyone has an iPad now or two with ForeFlight on it. That across, just as you said, from personal or recreational pilots all the way up to the highest level and even the military, that this tool has changed the game from the triptych world to a new place. And so it's just really interesting because I asked several people, I know very little about aviation, but every person I asked sort of gave me this, story about how revolutionary what you've done has been. And in some ways, I think it's interesting because it, it probably took sort of that beginner's mindset as you were learning to fly and not having been tethered by, you know, some corporate experience or whatever. Like, it, it feels in some ways like the recipe for just the perfect setup, but you had to do it and execute it. And I guess all of us, as, you know, customers Thank you for making it better and safer.

No, thanks. It's been, it's been a pleasure. And I think, you know, one of the most fulfilling things about the business has been, you know, one, the team and what we've been able to create, but customers really are fanatical and love the product. And I think, one, they've gotten exceptional utility and capability that previously didn't exist, which has delivered efficiency and safety and really improved the sophistication of the sorts of things that pilots can do. But it's also wrapped around a really great experience with our support team and the product is really reliable, right? And so I think our customers, if they were to probably rank the top 5 or 10 applications that they use, ForeFlight would be somewhere near the top, especially on a day that they're flying. So it has become so essential and it's a really reliable tool for them to use when they're out and about.

Okay, let's do a couple of fun questions to end. I heard you're a tennis person. Is that true? And who is your favorite tennis player and what do you love about the game?

Oh, uh, gosh, great question. Favorite tennis player, I'd probably say it is Roger Federer, you know, contemporary tennis player, just because of the man and the character and just the remarkable talent he has and, you know, his persona on and off the court.

What about old-school tennis players, since you mentioned he's your contemporary favorite?

You know, it's, it's hard not to admire and like John McEnroe, right? I mean, just dramatic, talented, a unique personality, and was just so dominant in tennis when I grew up. But, others that are up there, Pete Sampras, love, you know, Rafael Nadal just watching him run around the court, his speed, agility, endurance. So, those are some other names that come up.

What do you wish more people understood about flying or about aviation?

That there are aspects of aviation that I think a lot of people don't get exposure to, like backcountry flying, right? And so that is one thing that I've started to do more of in my flying career, and what you get to see and the experiences you get are amazing. So I think people probably don't have a, you know, a good understanding of all the different types of flying there is out there. The other thing I don't think people realize is how many airports are out there that you can access as a pilot that get you close to adventure or where you might want to be. I mean, the United States alone has probably about 5,000 paved airports. You probably only know, you know, a few dozen of them because you fly there commercially, or most people. And that's just paved airports. And then beyond that, you know, grass, dirt airports, significant. The other is just how much general aviation and business aviation do for the economy in terms of moving supplies around from large to small towns, the role that aircraft play in things like wildfires and evacuations and search and rescue. But there's so many facets of it and there's so much that it does that it's really hard to get the word out, I think, on all the things that aviation does because most people just read about airplane accidents, which unfortunately get a lot of attention. You know, when you hear— there's car accidents every day, for example, but those don't make the news, right? But the airplane ones do. And so I think there's a lot of untold stories that most people aren't aware of about aviation globally.

Okay, then selfishly, when I go to Charleston, which one day I want to, what's the best restaurant in Charleston?

The best one I know of Edmunds Ost.

Edmunds Ost. Do you live in Houston and Aspen now?

I live in Houston full-time, but we've been in Aspen since the rise of COVID around May.

What's your favorite restaurant in Houston?

Favorite restaurant in Houston would be Oochi.

Oochi.

Yeah, good one.

Okay, well, thank you, Tyson. I can't wait to hopefully see you at some point in person in Houston again, and thank you directly, and really appreciate this. I think people will find it very valuable and interesting. Just respectful and appreciative of your time. Really appreciate it.

Great, man. I'm glad we got to pull it together.

If you were a pilot and could fly anywhere, where would you go? Please note, the information shared in this podcast is not intended as advice. The intent is to share meaningful experiences. I am likely not your advisor, nor wealth manager, nor financial planner, and my opinions are my own and not necessarily shared by Hill Investment Group. Investing involves risk. Consult a professional before implementing an investment strategy.

Thank you.