While in college, Charlie Cannon took a year off to shoot a movie.
He successfully broke even — with the exception of four drones he damaged during filming, according to OpenStore’s blog.
The young filmmaker reached out to customer support for assistance, but the conversation proved fruitless. Realizing the commercial drone industry had long been dominated by one or two brands that charged high prices and offered little customer support, Cannon took it upon himself to make drones more accessible.
In 2020, at the age of 19, Cannon founded EXO Drones, which sold drones online starting at $200.
The company, which remained bootstrapped and took on debt to cover initial costs, sold just two years later in 2022 for $2.9 million — all cash.
Taking flight: How Charlie Cannon grew EXO Drones
When Cannon founded EXO Drones, he wasn’t completely new to e-commerce; he had experimented with dropshipping when he was bored during the pandemic, so he understood the fundamentals. With his experience using drones — and a lot of market research — he found a way to make drones more affordably, without sacrificing quality.
To drum up customers, he ran digital ads, including on Facebook
“You can’t just drive cheap traffic,” he said. “You can’t just sell nice products. You can’t just run cool ads or copy other people’s ads that are working.”
The secret, he said, is doing all of the above.
To combat what he saw as the industry’s lousy customer service, Cannon dedicated a whole section of his drone company website to a support hub. The hub contained information on EXO Care policies, returns, FAQs, tutorial videos and more.
The biggest challenge was learning to operate a tech company before even turning 21, Cannon shared with They Got Acquired. He grew to around $400,000 revenue before hiring a full-time customer support team member, he said on The Solopreneur Hour podcast.
EXO grew to a team of 22 people. By mid-2022, they had experienced meaningful growth with 200,000 monthly website visitors and 170,000 email subscribers.
Monthly revenue reached $1 million, and — since a lot of that revenue went into supply and ads — monthly profit was $100,000. Lifetime revenue eventually hit $15 million.
How this young founder sold EXO Drones in less than 2 years
In 2021, as the EXO team prepared to scale, the brand’s Facebook ads tanked, which had been their only source of profitability. Their expenses quadrupled, and while EXO managed to break even for four months, their momentum dwindled.
“It was just getting to be too much work,” Cannon said. “We had so much debt. No one was having fun anymore. It was very much a grind.”
That’s when he began considering selling. He wasn’t keen on a lengthy acquisition process, and he didn’t want to commit months after the sale to help transition operations. The business was also moving toward being considered by buyers as “distressed,” because it was no longer profitable.
So Cannon decided to pitch his ideal buyers on acquiring the business.
He turned to OpenStore, a holding company that operates more than 40 consumer-focused e-commerce brands. On its website, OpenStore promised simplicity, so Cannon reached out on June 27.
On July 6, OpenStore followed up with an offer. After a brief period of negotiating terms and conducting due diligence, they signed a final agreement on July 25 — less than a month after Cannon initially reached out.
The deal? OpenStore bought EXO Drones for $2.9 million, all cash. Cannon stayed on for around two months to help with the transition.
After the transition, OpenStore fired the team Cannon had built, which he said was the most difficult part of the process. Even so, when asked what advice he’d give to founders looking to sell, he replied simply: “DO IT.”
Since selling, Cannon graduated from college and is now building VibeRibe, which sells the first-ever skateboard with a brake. Cannon was even featured on Shark Tank for his invention, and — spoiler — Mark Cuban invested $250,000 for 12% equity.
