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July 27, 2021

Richard Kane | The Business of Meetings Podcast

Today, you are in for a treat! We are excited and honored to be speaking to Richard Kane, the CEO of VeriJet. Richard is also the CEO of the Inc. 500 company, Coastal Technologies Group.

Richard is an amazing individual who is changing the way people travel! In this episode, he shares his fascinating story, talks about what he is doing to revolutionize air travel, and shares his goals for the future.

We hope you enjoy listening to our conversation with Richard today!

Richard Kane’s bio:

  • Inc. 500 CEO and Company Founder
  • Board Member of SF, LF, NHSD, Space Canada Mining
  • Seven World Speed Records
  • Researcher in AI with patents in multiple verticals
  • CEO of VeriJet, where we are reinventing mobility

How it all started

Richard Kane started doing commercial computer work when he was fourteen or fifteen years old. At the age of seventeen, he started writing AI (artificial intelligence) programs. He was featured in the New York Times for inventing new types of security. The principal of his high school quit his job to market the software that Richard wrote, and then Richard became the school’s first computer teacher.

Ancient computers

When Richard started writing AI programs, he worked on machines that would barely be recognized as computers today. A very tight code was required to get any performance out of the eight-bit processors with little bits of memory.

Richard Kane’s journey after high school

The State University Systems in Florida bought the software that Richard wrote while in high school, and Richard was also doing tech support for one of the deans.

Faculty Scholars Program

Richard joined a Faculty Scholars Program at the university. He was backed up by a team of professors who were, in turn, backed up by a team from Motorola. It was the best place in the US for computer education at the time. Richard was one of 100 students recruited from around the world.

Jumping two years

Joining the program allowed Richard to jump two years of college.

Personal Computers

The program had the most amazing professors who created the PC, so Richard learned all there was to know about PCs.

Bigger computers

Richard wanted to learn about bigger computers, so he went to work for a small phone company. A few of the people he had working for him there are still with him today, thirty years later!

A three-decade journey

Richard’s journey has happened over three decades and has been about how to route things more efficiently. His job at the phone company involved routing phone calls, which segued into routing airplanes. VeriJet was built on top of that.

Richard Kane and routing airplanes

Richard Kane and one of his board members, also a pilot, thought that routing airplanes would have a more environmental and social impact, and would be more interesting than routing phone calls. Richard spent the next decade tackling environmental-impact and efficiency problems. He eventually fixed the problems and changed the industry, but they were still flying the wrong machines for what they wanted to achieve.

The last decade

Richard’s last decade has been about software, solving the Traveling Salesman Problem, and making the industry run more smoothly.

Changing the way people travel

The SATS program and VeriJet are changing the way people travel. They are all about tripling the speed of short-haul travel and bringing it up to 300 miles per hour.

The Traveling Salesman Problem

Solving the Traveling Salesman Problem is about optimizing the path of the traveling salesman to cover the most distance with the least traveling time and cost, as quickly and efficiently as possible. Quantum is a first glimpse of what might be a solution to the Traveling Salesman Problem.

Three problem areas

IBM has chosen three problem areas to showcase quantum. They are medicines discovery, catalyst discovery (for clean and unlimited energy), and the Traveling Salesman Problem.

Cirrus Vision Jet

Richard waited fifteen years for a Cirrus Vision Jet. Even when it came out, he waited for the second generation because it is made of carbon fiber so there is no metal fatigue. It was designed for short hops. It is extremely efficient, quiet, and safe. It can land itself, it has AI on board to help the pilot avoid problems, and it has a ballistic parachute that will lower the whole airplane to the ground if necessary.

Two Collier Trophies

The layered approach to safety has resulted in two Collier Trophies for the Vision Jet. One was for safety, the parachute, and its ability to land itself, and the other was for efficiency and design.

Cost efficiency

Having only one engine and one pilot has dropped the cost of flying the Vision Jet. Its fuel efficiency has allowed them to drop the cost of private charter by about a third.

Their second fleet type

Their second fleet type is also fuel-efficient and also has a parachute.

Their third fleet type

Their third fleet type costs about $45 to fill up because it is all-electric. It has no carbon footprint, and takes off vertically, and flies horizontally. It is about a thousand times safer and much quieter than a helicopter. They will be flying electric aircraft around Florida and California by 2024.

Sterilizing

Richard’s planes get sterilized between hops. In-flight, they have a medical-grade FDA-approved device that cleans the air.

A goal

One of Richard’s goals is to fly people in VTOL drones.

XPRIZE

Peter Diamandis wanted to commercialize space, so he decided to put out a ten million dollar XPRIZE for suborbital space flight. The team that won the ten million dollars ended up spending twenty-two million dollars to win the prize. Many of the other teams also came up with super-creative ideas on how to open up space.

Carbon footprint

The AI Richard developed for routing airplanes and using them more efficiently saves 200,000 pounds of carbon footprint every week. It does that with more efficient routing and use of the aircraft.

The right tool

VeriJet is the right tool for safe, efficient, and environmentally-friendly travel.

Convenience

Ninety-eight percent of everyone in the US lives within twenty miles of one of Richard’s 5,400 airports. Go to www.verijet.com, type in your zip code, and you will see all the airports pop up.

Connect with Richard Kane

On Website

On LinkedIn

On Facebook

Book mentioned:

The Spirit of St. Louis by Charles Lindbergh

Connect with Eric: On LinkedIn | On Facebook | On Instagram | Website

If you’d rather watch the video of this interview, subscribe on YouTube

About the author 

Eric Rozenberg

For two decades, Eric Rozenberg has consulted with Fortune 500 companies and produced conferences in more than 50 countries across diverse industries. His focus is creating meetings that are not only breathtakingly memorable but which bring corporate strategies to life and amplify team motivation/performance.

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