Patrick Hessel: CEO of AeroMobil

Patrick Hessel and his company AeroMobil are attempting to build the first ever flying car. This modern luxury car is comfortable on the road and easily converts into an airplane within 90 seconds. Imagine driving and flying from Los Angeles to Napa for the day without needing to leave your automobile.

How cool is that? 

But I wanted to know, just how does one get in the flying car business? I sat down with Patrick in this week’s entrepreneur feature to learn just that. 

Patrick was born and raised in Germany to a German father and Slovakian mother. His father was a lifelong entrepreneur and growing up, Patrick was determined to become an entrepreneur as well. Patrick studied mechanical engineering at University and wrote his thesis on his father’s company management style (there was room for improvement). He set off on his entrepreneurial journey right after graduation.

Patrick was always into cars. He interned at a carbon fiber factory in his early 20s and had written a business plan while in University on building a carbon fiber business. He knew that was the natural place to start. 

The benefit of manufacturing carbon fiber is that you can do it in a garage. All you need is a clean space and a vacuum pump, which can cost around $5,000. Patrick, not having that kind of money at the time went on Ebay and was able to find a used one for $100. With that, Patrick was in business and ready to shape carbon fiber.

The next step was to find customers who would give Patrick a chance. He first started by cold calling people in the boat industry hoping to find a manufacturer in need of carbon fiber equipment. But Patrick’s first big break was when a small automotive company ordered some of Patrick’s carbon for their race cars. Race cars are constantly crashing so there is high demand for parts. And Patrick had developed a low cost bumper that was perfect for their cars. 

Five years later and his little startup was trucking along. It had grown significantly, but mostly because the growth was off of a low base. What would be the catalyst for the company’s hyper growth? Equipment. Once Patrick had saved enough money, he invested in proper machines that could produce carbon fiber in larger batches. This opened Patrick to work with more automotive OEMs.

As the company continued to grow, Patrick was able to prove that C2I was capable of servicing the biggest automotive companies on the planet, including Porsche. A major breakthrough occurred when they were awarded a contract to provide carbon fiber on the 918 Spyder, one of Porsche’s most famous hypercars. Patrick had to increase his factory 10x to service this contract. 

After 12 years of grinding away building C2I, Patrick sold the company to LG in 2017. It was the close of a major chapter in his life. Following the sale, Patrick was ready to tackle an even more ambitious opportunity and found himself getting involved with an upstart flying car company called Aero Mobil, where he is now the CEO and majority shareholder.

Learnings from talking with Patrick

• The key is to find something that you are good at and have a passion for
• Experience compounds
• Never give up, no matter how difficult the challenge is
• Just say yes. Even if you are not in a position to service a new customer...if you trust your skills and abilities, you will figure it out
• Stay ambitious no matter how much success you have had

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