Not long after Raleigh drone developer PrecisionHawk was bought out by a European company, a group of its former employees has founded a new startup.
Securities filings show the new venture, called Cloneable, recently closed on $750,000 in equity from a single investor. But unlike PrecisionHawk, Cloneable isn’t focused on drones, said Lia Reich, a co-founder who left a marketing role at PrecisionHawk three years ago.
“It’s still an idea, a concept,” she said. “We just got a really small round of pre-seed funding to see if we can turn this idea into a business.”
The idea surrounds how to develop apps without code. The startup, still in stealth mode, is looking to capitalize on the trend of making technology accessible.
“All of us have these sales and marketing business backgrounds,” Reich said. “It’s how can people like us look at developing technology without code?”
Reich is joined in the venture by Patrick Lohman and Tyler Collins, who are listed as executives in the filing.
Lohman was vice president of energy at PrecisionHawk, and is president of the new venture, according to the filing. Collins, until March, was vice president of enterprise accounts at PrecisionHawk.
In addition to Reich, Collins and Lohman, the securities filing names Thomas Haun as a director. Until 2018, Haun was an executive vice president at PrecisionHawk, leading strategy and globalization efforts. Haun is currently president at Turner Mining Group in Indiana, according to his Linkedin profile.
It’s a big pivot from PrecisionHawk, which built a reputation in the drone space across multiple sectors such as energy and agriculture.
PrecisionHawk was acquired by Field Group, a Norwegian technology company that provides geo-spatial data to the infrastructure, construction, environment and public sectors.
At the time the deal was announced, PrecisionHawk said in a press release that it would keep its U.S. headquarters in Raleigh. But there has been executive turnover.
PrecisionHawk CEO Jim Norrod left the company earlier this year. According to the PrecisionHawk website, it’s now led by David Culler, its managing director since March.
