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Enlarge / AAAAAH IT'S COMING RIGHT TOWARD ME! (credit: Lee Hutchinson)
Today we’re presenting the second installment of my wide-ranging interview with Chris Anderson. He was Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief for 12 years and then started one of the most influential companies in the brief history of consumer drones. Part one ran yesterday. If you missed it, click right here. Otherwise, you can press play on the embedded audio player, or pull up the transcript, both of which are below.
We start off today discussing how the consumer drone market graduated from DIY kits to fully manufactured projects. Anderson provided hobbyists with some kits early on, and boy, did they sell. They then began eternal afterlives as customer service nightmares (half his customers didn’t seem to know how to solder—and it went downhill from there).

Click here for a transcript and click here for an MP3 direct download.

Anderson met a brilliant fellow maker named Jordi Muñoz through the online community of drone tinkerers. They became well-acquainted over the discussion forums, and he eventually invited Jordi to start a company with him. The startup was (and remains) 3D Robotics. Anderson had no idea that his cofounder was a Tijuana-based teenager—and it wouldn’t have bothered him in the slightest if he’d known.
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