Jetpack visionary takes flight as personal goal fades
The company has a different vision for where it wants to go [compared] to mine.
The founder of the ‘‘jetpack’’ flying machine, Glenn Martin, has resigned from Martin Aircraft Company with a parting shot: don’t muck it up.
Yesterday Martin Aircraft, listed on the ASX this year with an offer of shares to the public, announced that Martin had resigned as a director.
Martin, who chose to move to Christchurch from Dunedin to pursue his ‘‘personal jetpack’’ dream, said the resignation was a personal decision driven by factors including corporate demands, such as complying with advice from lawyers on what he said in public.
His reason for founding the company had been to supply himself with a personal jetpack, and he had left Martin Aircraft without achieving that dream.
The company had now relegated the development of personal jetpacks to No 7, in a shareholder update disclosed on the ASX exchange, he said.
The corporatisation of the company he founded had started from 2004. ‘‘Before that it was very much a family business, all the shareholders were friends and our AGMs were barbecues around at my place.
‘‘Over the years since 2004 it has morphed, as it would need to have done, into this corporate beast,’’ Martin said.
The ASX statement, delivered by chief executive Peter Coker in March, puts the personal jetpack below other jetpack products including a simulator and ‘‘first responder’’ jetpack.
The company has raised capital to commercialise the flying machine, aiming it initially at the emergency services market.
‘‘To me the personal jetpack was always No 1, and so the company has a different vision for where it wants to go [compared] to mine,’’ Martin said.
‘‘And eventually you go, ‘it’s not for me’.’’
He was required to keep his shares for a two-year period after the company floated in February this year and would then choose when to sell. He currently holds a 15.6 per cent stake.
The shares were offered at A40 cents for the ASX listing, and yesterday closed at A78c.
Martin hinted that he had other business projects in development, but did not want to say in which sector they were.
He left ‘‘on a high’’ from a company with huge resources including $27 million in the bank and a market capitalisation of $180m.
He said in a statement: ‘‘I only have two pieces of advice. Deliver the dream that people want, not the product that is easiest to build. Now don’t f... it up!’’
The company listed on the ASX in February after finding a Chinese investor as its cornerstone shareholder.
‘‘The new Chinese shareholders have been really good,’’ Martin said.
Coker said, ‘‘Any decision of a director resigning is their own personal decision.
‘‘It’s nothing to do with the board at all. I’m very sorry to see Glenn go.’’
The board said it wished ‘‘to acknowledge the valuable contribution made by Mr Martin in the initial development of the Martin Jetpack and wish him the best of success in his future endeavours’’.
KuangChi Science, listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, will own up to 55 per cent of the com- pany when the transaction completes. That could take up to 30 months or be done sooner.
Coker and company secretary James West are in China at present.
Martin’s shareholding in the company is 15.6 per cent and will dilute as KuangChi Science increases its stake, currently 22.73 per cent.
Martin said there had been ups and downs in the business including mortgaging the house to ‘‘raise money to make the payroll next week’’.
‘‘I go around the world now and I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who
Glenn Martin
have started companies and they all tell the same story’’.
He now wanted to spend extra time with his wife and children who had missed out on Christmas holidays.
‘‘When my wife and I sit down and go well was it worth it, as opposed to the normal day-to-day job, we go ‘hmmm probably’.’’
Martin came up with the concept for the jetpack aged 21, in 1981. In 1984, he strapped his new thrust device to a hang glider in a first test flight out at Birdlings Flat, near Christchurch, to test it could at least carry a light weight.
In 1998, he formalised a company.
These days Martin Aircraft’s prototype 12 can fly more than 30 minutes at speeds up to 74kmh and at altitudes above 3000 feet.