A former Thiel fellow's startup just launched a drone it says can replace police helicopters | TechCrunch

Last day to exhibit your breakthrough to 10,000+ tech leaders at Disrupt is on Oct 2. Book Exhibit Table Now. Disrupt doors open Oct. 13. Get your pass and bring someone with you at 50% off. REGISTER NOW. When I speak to Blake Resnick, he’s walking around his drone startup’s newest office space in Seattle: a cavernous 50,000-square-foot facility that, Resnick estimates, won’t be fully set up until later in the year — potentially November. Still, the big (and for now, largely empty) building offers the promise of a fast-growing company intent on conquering its particular industry. The industry in question is public safety and the startup is Brinc, which sells drones to police and public agencies across the U.S. The company wants to be the “DJI of the West,” as Resnick has put it — a nod to the Chinese drone manufacturer and a signal that Resnick wants Brinc to become equally synonymous with the tech it sells. A former Thiel fellow — a prestigious program that funds young entrepreneurs to skip or defer college — Resnick founded Brinc in 2017 and not long afterward garnered interest from OpenAI founder Sam Altman, who ultimately served as one of Brinc’s first seed investors. Since the