Redefining Distance: How Dronamics Is Building the Next Generation of Aerospace from Bulgaria
Before anyone believed Europe was ready for cargo drones, two brothers from Bulgaria decided to build a multipurpose drone platform for the future. From the very beginning, Svilen and Konstantin Rangelov were all in.
An economist and an aerospace engineer, they set out to build a new layer of infrastructure for global logistics and other missions, grounded in precision, persistence, and the belief that innovation doesn’t have to come from the obvious places.
Today, Dronamics stands as one of Europe’s most ambitious deep-tech companies, proving that commitment can move even the heaviest industries forward. In this interview, we speak with Endeavor Entrepreneur Svilen Rangelov, Co-Founder and CEO of Dronamics, about what it takes to build a new aerospace category from the ground up, earn credibility in one of the world’s most regulated industries, and scale a European company with truly global ambition.
Conviction at Lift-Off
Both you and your brother made the news for vowing not to shave your beards until your first drone flew, and that took years. What fueled such a powerful commitment to succeed?
To clarify – the beard vow was related to the first flight of the full-scale Black Swan which took place in 2023. We have been flying smaller-scale prototypes since 2017.
We believe in the mantra ‘do or do not, don’t try,’ meaning that we go all-in. Building a business from the ground up is always challenging, building a new category even more so.
Developing a clean-sheet aerospace program from zero is something very few organizations have done globally, let alone from a country where aviation manufacturing was wiped out for three quarters of a century. The exciting thing is that if we can do this from Bulgaria, we can do it anywhere. We call it ‘aerospace-in-a-box’.
Dronamics has never behaved like a “drone startup”. What, exactly, is the category you’re building and what are the non-obvious constraints (airspace, ground ops, insurance, corridors, SLAs) that define it?
We have developed a multipurpose UAS (unmanned aerial system, as the official term for drone is), called the Black Swan. It can serve a variety of missions – logistics being the primary market, with civilian protection, public safety and defense applications as well.
We were the first to obtain a license to operate in Europe a few years ago and when we did, we were the first remotely-piloted large aircraft (16 meter wingspan, 8 meter fuselage) to do so. In a way, we are in a category of our own. The Black Swan flies at a max altitude of 22,000 feet, or 6,700 meters, lower than traditional civil aviation but higher than two-seater aircraft or recreational drones. Because we are the first with this kind of aircraft in Europe, we are paving the way for shared airspace operations.
Global Deep Tech in an emerging market
When you first started pitching the idea, what was the biggest barrier to belief: the technology, the regulation, or the geography you came from?
The answer depends on who you are pitching to! The way investors see the world has a big influence on how they perceive the potential of a startup. After years of fundraising, we have learned that long-term oriented investors like family offices, large conglomerates and sovereign funds are the best match for strategic technology like ours which has implications for technological and national sovereignty.
How did you approach credibility in a high-regulation, trust-critical industry like aviation?
We started as an outlier. When my brother Konstantin and I founded Dronamics eleven years ago, we drew a Venn diagram with the key elements to start a business – talent, customers, ecosystem. Bulgaria did not offer a competitive advantage in any of those. We decided to start the company from Sofia regardless.
There are great engineers in Bulgaria, the country ranks highly on STEM sciences. The ingenuity of people, the ability to do more with less and keep your head up, is an enormous asset to a startup where every euro counts. Our generation has had the opportunity to study and work at top universities and businesses overseas and return with that know-how and an appetite to build and grow. It’s a real competitive advantage. We attracted lots of international talent as well who believe in our mission.
So we’ve worked hard to earn credibility, like everyone else out there.
The business of air mobility & scaling across borders
Dronamics operates as both manufacturer and airline, an unusual hybrid model, when freight is a notoriously brutally competitive industry with small margins. What allows you to build a profitable model around something so capital-intensive?
You are right – only 1% of cargo worldwide is shipped by air due to cost. Aircraft are traditionally designed for passengers, not cargo, and they operate from expensive airport hubs, with a full crew, etc.
To unlock the other 99% of cargo, lowering the margins further wouldn’t have been enough – we had to come up with a completely new type of aircraft. One that can transport cargo faster than road but cheaper than air.
Cargo airlines don’t normally control the design of their aircraft, and manufacturers don’t run operations. This is why we flipped the model to create a vertically integrated one.
The Black Swan is engineered with pragmatism in mind, for the operational reality of logistics: medium distances, quick turnaround, low operational and maintenance cost, minimal ground infrastructure. Only 7% of airports worldwide have regular flights, placing enormous pressure on these hubs, while approx. 50,000 airfields that have the potential to be local cargo portals, are underused. The economic potential of redirecting the flow of goods to these regional areas is enormous.
What needs to happen in Europe for frontier companies like yours to scale faster?
Hardware is hard, and aerospace is even harder. But the mission is more important and to date, we are the only ones to have repeatedly designed, built and tested large cargo drones, made in Europe.
If we don’t get comfortable doing hard things, Europe will have no choice but to rely on foreign-designed – and in the age of autonomy – foreign-controlled, aerospace products.
On the security side, Europe focused on small and tactical drones, and went overseas for MALE (medium altitude long endurance) drones, meaning that Europe had no Predator-size large drones, until Dronamics.
Imagine what passenger aviation would look like if Europe didn’t have Airbus. Was developing Airbus easy or fast or cheap? No, but it is strategic.
Europe needs to get comfortable with doing hard things again.
The long view
How do you see the importance of collaboration between regional founders from markets like Bulgaria, Romania, and beyond?
We have a shared advantage – we know how to create world-class technology with fewer resources and more constraints. It’s time we start thinking about us as a region, not as separate countries. Schengen was probably the last barrier, it’s up to us to place ourselves on the map as a bigger, stronger market and a critical defense player.
If you could change one policy and one piece of infrastructure in Europe to accelerate aerial logistics, what would they be?
Speaking of deep-tech more broadly, the 28th regime as an EU-wide regulation will unshackle startups from a lot of the bureaucratic burden and would create a more even playing field. It will have an equalizer effect, especially beneficial for startups from countries like ours. We should have ‘made in Europe’ as a brand.
On the infrastructure side, we don’t need to build new if we can revive what exists and improve it. By bringing back to life the neglected and abandoned airfields and airstrips across the continent, we could redirect the flow of goods, capital and jobs to benefit more territories. A strong economy is the best medicine against a lot of what’s happening in the world right now.
What has being part of the Endeavor network added to your journey?
Endeavor has given us something invaluable: access to a global community of founders who are building at similar scale and complexity. The mentorship, the honest conversations, the strategic introductions, they’ve all helped us navigate challenges that few companies ever face.
It’s also a mindset thing: being surrounded by high-impact entrepreneurs reinforces the ambition to build not just a successful company, but a generational one.
If Dronamics achieves its mission, how will the global movement of goods look different ten years from now?
On the logistics side, serving communities and businesses that currently don’t have access to fast and affordable logistics will have profound economic benefits.
On the manufacturing side, the creation of high skilled jobs and advanced manufacturing know-how ensures the strategic importance of our region.
On civil protection and security, it means being able to defend our way of life.
You simply can’t put a price on aerospace-in-a-box, made in Europe.