Kimbal Musk raises $50M for Nova Sky Stories drone art — from 6K tickets in 2024 to 500K in 2025

Good to have you back on the show. Uh, it's been a busy few weeks since we last spoke. I know. I know. We saw we saw the the the display at the Vatican. We were blown away. Uh, Jordy didn't think it was real, I think, the first time he saw it. Then we saw more images. We were like, it's very hard to tell on.

That's your problem. It's like people just assume like, oh, it's there's no way this is real. Exactly. Exactly. It's unbelievable. Uh, but anyway, give us the update. What's new in your world? Well, it's just been extraordinary.

you know, uh uh we we closed our round as we discussed last time I was on the show and then uh made it to Bernie man, survived. Yes. Went to Vatican and we had just the most incredible show, you know, just Yeah. Uh a time when um you know, we had Charlie Kirk being assassinated that week.

We were able to just be sad with the world for a little moment. Um and then uh to also be joyful to go and u uh uh celebrate the fact that we are in this place as a as as a human species not not really Catholic church really just about u about everyone and grace for the world. Yeah. So inspiring.

I had my uh father and my daughter there and uh there wasn't a dry eye in there. There were 300,000 people there. uh when Pope Francis's uh image went up, it was just so emotional. And we did a memorial for Pope Francis. It was uh the original idea for this was it came came back in June of 2024.

Uh we did a show in K Francis, actually the same show that Shervin saw and uh the chairman for the Jubilee, Olivia Francois, found me in this conference and said, "We just have to do something for the Jubilee. " Didn't really believe it. uh and then one thing led to the other.

But actually that was also when uh when Shervin got involved and Shan and I have known each other forever for probably 15 years.

But what I love about Shervin, we just uh we just spent time together traveling the world and uh back in May or June, I think we were we were with Farel Williams in Madrid for a show to to explain to him what we were going to do at the Vatican because he he wanted to do it with us, but we hadn't figured out what to do yet.

and uh Shervin said, "Hey, let's find a way to work together. " So, um he led the round. Uh Jeffrey joined and he's also joined us. Shervin has joined us as our global expansion adviser. So, we are we're taking one country at a time. Very exciting. Very exciting. How quickly do you guys want to scale?

Because as as an American, I want you guys doing like, you know, at least a show a day here in the US before we give too much love. You you'll be amazed. We now this past weekend we did five shows around the world. Wow.

Uh one in two in Australia, two in Europe, two in the US and uh uh we're really we're really constrained by the number of drones we have. So we have building drones as fast as humanly possible and we have incredible artists like Andre Buchelli or Fel Williams that want to do amazing things with us.

Uh, and then the more countries we open, which is what Shervin's helping us with, the more attractive this becomes because if you're if you're Andrea Belli for example, his tours are global. It doesn't really help to do just the US.

You actually have you can't plan a plan a tour and think, "Oh, well, I only have this technology for these shows, right? " It's uh someone someone in the chat is asking, "Where can people get tickets for the next one? " Uh, I imagine they're all over the world, but is you have an email list, something to Yeah.

So, the place to go is go to Fever. So, there's a a amazing company called Fever. It's like a ticket master for the world. So, ticket masters focus on the US. Fever is all around the world. And uh we the show we're doing right now is called Drone Art Show. Just very simple. They can search for Drone Art Show.

They'll see what cities we're in. Oh, cool. Um this past weekend we were in Chicago. Oh, wow. uh Madrid, Brisbane and Orlando and I mean so it's just just so many better you can't be any town. Um did the idea is actually like kind of like sole we want people to get excited when Nova comes to town. Totally.

Uh did anything from the Sorry, what was that?

I just want to say how excited we are uh to be and honored we are to be able to lead the round the $50 million round in Nova Sky Stories and I think the world of Kimble I think he has one of the greatest hearts and one of the biggest visionaries that I've seen and uh he always talked about cracking people's hearts open and uh inspiring people and one of the great thesis we have is that the world AI is never going to replace the the human heart uh human emotion.

The algorithms are going to rationally try to explain it, but uh human emotion and feelings are going to grow in value. And what he did at the Vatican really did crack the hearts of all the people that saw it and the millions of people that saw it around the world. And so, and it's actually available on Disney Plus.

It's going to be there forever. Yeah, everyone should watch it. It it it gives you a peak of a completely new medium in entertainment uh that's combining human creativity and and AI and and drones and automation.

So, uh for Software Capital leader, it's a big honor and to be able to work again with Kim Kimble and and also work with uh people like Katzenberg and others. It's uh it's a great honor. So, we're very excited. Did anything about the Vatican show? And I'm sure you got a ton of inbound interest from customers.

Did anything update you about um the shape of the business? What interesting pockets of opportunity might exist for future shows? Did you have any learnings coming out of the Vatican show? I think I think the biggest learning we got is that uh 300,000 people came out of their homes.

It was a free concert, so not ticketed. Yeah. but not really well promoted because it's a Vatican. They don't really know how to promote their own thing. Sure. And we had 300,000 people come to the show live.

So I I think that we've not really opened up our our eyes to shows that have that level of scale in in the audience. And we've now gotten, you know, we we're very busy doing regular shows. The Vatican is not a regular show. That is a that is just absolutely next level and you just have to watch it to understand.

But um we now have interest for people uh whether it's America's 250th or uh repeating a a Catholic oriented show in Brazil or uh doing something about the history of uh uh uh the UAE. We these are these are hundreds of thousands of people will come to see the show.

uh we might you guys have a a problem where when you get into that scale of an audience, it's hard to ticket that many people because you're talking about just putting it over, right? I I don't even know how to do it now.

I believe that I believe it when our our ticketing partners say, "No, it's it's possible, but I don't know how to do it. " So, thankfully that's our problem. The ticket dealers say that anything's possible, right?

But yeah, I mean it's cool to think about, you know, a city like a city for example or a town saying, "We want to do this to celebrate something and we're just going to pay for it because it's almost a public benefit. " Right. Right. And and many countries want to do that.

Obviously, the United States wants to do that for America's 250th. Um we uh we're going to do we're doing we'll do many, but we're going to do a very big one in in North Dakota for Teddy Roosevelt's library being opened on July 4th for the 250th.

And it's um obviously as North Dakota it's going to be less people but it will be open to the public and she'll it'll be tens of thousands of people.

Are there any what open our eyes is how how much the public want to be in the live show the live experience uh because they could have just easily watched it on TV if they if that's what really what they wanted. Yeah.

But then you can just watch CGI, you know, you can just watch you can watch animations on your computer. Seeing it in the sky 3D around you. It's the visceral experience of it. You see the you hear the oo and a's and and uh people are excited.

So there's something physical that the drones bring and it truly they are drones. I mean they're they're used as weapons uh in other other parts of the world.

I think that physicality gives a visceral uh alertness that you don't get whether you if you're watching it on TV or on Instagram and uh and it's still awesome on TV and it's awesome on Instagram but it's it's just nothing like in person. I also want to just touch on how fast this is growing.

Uh just as an investor like to be able to see a founder and a company and a team uh really gigascale this idea um better than anyone else in the world when when I got involved late last year. Um how many tickets last year was in 2024? We sold 6,000 tickets. 6,000 tickets.

Our show our shows we should have half a million sold this year. Half a million going a million.

Uh, so it, you know, I've been traveling around the world with him and talking to sovereigns and, you know, uh, around the world and closing deals and hand-to-hand combat and and, uh, and you're just seeing the reception, the excitement of, uh, of the sovereigns and the partners around the world.

U, this is one of the fastest growing businesses I've ever seen. and going around with him has felt like the way I used to, you know, go around with Travis Giga scaling from a tiny company with 1 million revenue to to multiple billions. And and it actually it does matter going country to country.

You actually have to get on a plane. You have to get on the plane, work with the aviation authorities in that country. You have to uh navigate the bureaucracy. These are actual flight vehicles.

So if you uh if you u for example we we have we we work in Mexico but every drone we transfer over to Mexico is the same paperwork as transferring a 747 to to Mexico.

Well, yeah, from a from an investment standpoint, you know, if I was underwriting this, it's like you look at the mode, it's like the regulatory mode of like being able to fly, having government having these relationships, the technological mode of just like being able to coordinate, you know, thousands and thousands of drones simultaneously, the IP uh just the IP itself, right, is getting partnering with with IP in different categories.

Uh and then obviously the relationships with um even the individual uh venues to be able to like support and put on these. There's so many different layers to it. Funny you say the venues. The venues is uh is one of the greatest modes out there. And I mean it because it is handtohand combat figuring out each venue.

You know what is the weather like? What are what's what's the size of the audience? What's ticket price you can charge? What's what kind of a show is this? the Valdi4 season show with a live orchestra or is the should this be more of a of a a choir with Fel Williams? You know, it's every venue is is is different.

And so that that's just it's just almost like a real estate play. Just you just go one Yeah. one after you and you now all of a sudden have a portfolio of of venues or real estate that you can use when when it makes sense. Absolutely.

This this time last year we we might have had I don't know 20 venues under our belt and now we have a thousand. Do are you guys uh limited at all uh physically like being able to have enough drones to be able to put on the We are absolutely limited by number of drones. We are building them as fast as we can. Wow.

And it's not near fast enough. We we are uh we are we are constantly surprised. You know it's it's a six-month supply chain, right? you order everything. You got battery chemistries to sort out. You got all of the all of these nuances to the supply chain that change over time.

And so if I were to predict our business now, it's September. What is it going to be like in March next year? I'm going to be so wrong. It's just uh there's just no chance I get it right. And so we've just decided to just make as many drones as we possibly can.

That's the reason we took the fund raise so that we're not we're not keeping that in our in our back pocket as an issue like oh well what about the drones?

What right now we literally if someone said to us you know here's a gazillion dollars we want you to fly a show like the Vatican we don't we just don't have the drones. Mhm. Uh we we have to plan for sort of March and onwards for next year. Um and it's going to be great but it's Yeah.

And then now you get the you get the benefit of having to manage fleets already on different continents. It sounds so so in a sense the the the drone shortage enables us to train the teams in different countries.

So we're not just uh scaling so fast that you know safety as our at the end of the day number one priority and we've we've got 100% safety record and plan to keep it and I do think there's some value to being forced to to go a little slower but we are definitely being forced to go slower.

Well, congratulations on the fundraiser. It's a three-sided marketplace is what we realize as we analyze the business is that you have the uh the three sides are the venues uh dominating the venues around the world and and you get pretty creative with with the kinds of venues you can do outdoors.

Um and then you have the consumers uh who are coming and buying the tickets and and coming to it. As the venues grow, you have larger and larger people. There were 5,000 people that got ticketed to the show in Madrid and there was 300,000 people that show showed up to the free free show in in in Rome.

And then you have the IP on the on the third side of the marketplace. So you get more and more content and you get more more and more uh beautiful content that he's creating is basically building like a Pixar and a Disney all-in-one inside of a technology company.

So I I love the Pixar analogy and and actually Disney back in the early days was they were had they had to solve the technology as well. Yeah. And I read Walt Disney's biography. It's fascinating how it took them 10 years to add sound to Mickey Mouse. And well, Mickey Mouse came out with sound.

Was the first one with sound. 10 years. 10 years. And it took us It's going to sound crazy, but Intel was building this company 10 years before I acquired it. Probably took us 12 years to add sound. It's remarkable. And it's like, why? That's just crazy. Well, actually, this is really hard.

And then uh our shows are now becoming 90 minutes long. But that is a 2025 invention. That is not pre2025. And now you have to create content that's 90 minutes long. Just because you can technically do it doesn't mean you actually can do it well. And so that's where the Pixar comes in.

Really the creatives working with the engineers back and forth and pushing each other. I love businesses like this that are just such a simple idea but incredibly incredibly difficult to execute.

But when if you can do it, it's just, you know, the value is just the invention of new form factors and new new mediums of communication are is some of the most exciting things to to invest in.

And the analogies I I was using, I love that movie Babylon, which is like about the history of Hollywood and and movies going from silent to sound and what a transformation that was. And that's what Kimell's really doing with Nova Sky Stories.

He's invented a new type of of medium for for creative expression and entertainment. and then applied sound to it. Live sound. So the fever shows are choreographed to live sound. Like drones are drones are keep these are thousands of drones choreographed to the beats to the songs that are performed live orchestra.

That's really hard. Yeah. Well, congratulations on the fund raise. Let's ring the gong one more time. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much. Amazing stuff. I can't I can't wait to see uh let us know when the first or we'll get on the email list but uh excited to to have the first show.

Yeah, just go to Fever and then for the show go to Disney Plus. Fantastic. Amazing. Have a great rest of your day. Congratulations. Cheers. We will see you later. Did you see Chinese automaker BYD's UN U9 Extreme EV just broke the top speed record at Germany's ATP proving grounds.

They beat the Bugatti Chiron, uh, which went 304 miles an hour, 77. They went 308 miles an hour. The car has almost 3,000 horsepower. You saw that Birkshshire Hathway sold out entirely. They own zero. Well, I know why. Because, oh, this fancy car, everyone's so obsessed with it. Track grade battery, blah, blah, blah.

Uh, you know, it's Nurburg Ring time. 659, 10 seconds slower than a Chevy Corvette. What are we doing here? 3,000 horsepower and you can't even get around the green hell in under 655. What are we doing? Straight line. It's ridiculous. Uh not impressed. Uh go back to the drawing board, China. Try again.

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