Orlando-based Hoverfly Technologies is an Orlando Inno 2023 Fire Awards honoree, one of five Ecosystem Veterans winners. The category recognizes businesses that were established 11 or more years ago.
Launched in 2010, Hoverfly Technologies designs, develops and manufactures tethered unmanned drones used for aerial surveillance and secure long-range communications.
Read more about the Fire Awards in Orlando Business Journal's June 9-15, 2023, weekly edition.
Introducing the 2023 Fire Awards winners
Here’s more from Hoverfly President and co-CEO Steve Walters.
What led to your firm’s rapid growth?
We have had over 400 large orders from the U.S. Army.
How did you accomplish it?
Innovative solutions and the ability to be agile and iterate quickly on customer needs and requirements helped us fulfill orders.
What’s one big challenge your firm’s rapid growth has created, and how do you plan to overcome it?
We've had to scale rapidly to fulfill large orders from the military, so we partnered with a larger defense company with excess manufacturing capacity. They saw the large potential in the military for tethered drones and invested in us and became our manufacturing partner.
What is a little-known fact about your company?
Hoverfly was started in the UCF Incubator.
What’s your top company goal for 2023?
The goal is to launch our next generation tethered drone, Spectre.
How does your company stay on the cutting edge?
Our engineers love what they do and they are passionate about drones and the technologies that improve our drones’ performance. We are the worldwide leader in the tethered drone space and are always looking to stay on the cutting edge and ahead of our competitors.
Hoverfly Technologies
- Top executives: Steve Walters and Kevin Cochie, co-CEOs
- Year founded: 2010
- Central Florida employees: 48
- Companywide employees: 60
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