Phase 1 Complete · April 2026

The results are in.
And they’re good.

From Aaron, Founder · 2 min read

1,000+

Signups
Phase 1

<$2

Cost per
lead

<1 mo

To hit
target

Hi — Aaron here, founder of Fly-IRL.

I want to personally thank you (...in a mass form email...? ;) for signing up. You’re part of why Phase 1 worked as well as it did.

From a pure marketing metrics standpoint: it was a ringing success. Over 1,000 signups in under a month, at under $2 per lead. That’s about as efficient as digital marketing gets.

“It gave me something worth (almost ;) more than gold right now: some form of market validation.”

I couldn’t talk to VCs without it. Now I have a foot in the door — enough to start building relationships and showing I can hit milestones. I even converted that into a small investment: enough to cut back on one of my part-time jobs and put more focus into this.

Here’s the honest picture though. This is not a conventional Kickstarter. The product — flights at a real SkyPark — won’t be available for 5–10 years. Conventional wisdom says you can’t pre-sell $100 flight passes when the planes won’t fly for a decade. So the real question isn’t can we raise money. It’s: what would people actually pay for?

That’s where you come in. I’ve put together a set of proposed reward tiers and I need to know which ones resonate before I commit to the full campaign. If you suggest a tier that makes it in, you get it free — or at a serious discount.

Proposed Reward Tiers

$25Dreamer

You believe flight should be for everyone. Get your name on the Founders Wall and exclusive updates from inside the build.

✓ Founders Wall listing ✓ Private build updates ✓ Digital backer badge

$100Crew Member

Join the design review community. Attend live sessions where we share progress, take feedback, and shape the experience together.

✓ Everything in Dreamer ✓ Monthly design review access ✓ Vote on feature priorities ✓ Backer-only Discord

What I need to pull the trigger on the full campaign

► Survey responses — this is the big one

Which tiers would you actually pay for? What’s your realistic price ceiling? Your answers shape the entire campaign. 2 minutes, and it actually matters.

Day-1 backers

The first 24 hours determine a Kickstarter’s algorithmic rank — and whether strangers ever discover it. Knowing you’ll back on launch day is as valuable as the pledge itself.

Referrals

Send it to anyone who’s ever said “I’d love to fly a plane someday.” In particular: women. Only 2% of certificated pilots are female — but nearly every woman I’ve talked to about this lights up immediately. Huge market waiting to be unlocked.

Added Bonus

A robust discussion on Discord! Come argue about aircraft design, ask anything, or just lurk. Join the Discord ↗

FlyIRL is a movement — not just a startup

There are plenty of people who want to fly but can’t. This is a human dream — probably as old as humans. Spread the word. If you know anyone who’s ever said “I’ve always wanted to fly” — send them to fly-irl.com. Every person in that list is another vote that this matters.

I’ve also created a Discord. Come argue with me about aircraft design, ask anything, or just lurk. Join the discussion →

2 minutes · Shapes the entire campaign

Which reward tiers would you actually back?

▼ ▼ ▼

▶ Take the Survey ▶

Suggest a tier that makes it in — you get it free.

That’s it for now.

You signed up because you believe flying should be for everyone. So do I. Let’s figure out which path gets us there first.

— Aaron

Founder, FlyIRL / SkyPark

Update 2

Three Paths · One Vote

There ARE Kickstarter-ready options.
Which one do you want to see?

From Aaron, Founder · 3 min read

Thanks to everyone who filled out the Update 1 survey! It’s valuable data and we’re using it to strategize next steps.

In the meantime, I wanted to hit you with this thought. If you are someone who likes the idea but aren’t willing to pre-pay for an “experiential entertainment” product that won’t get delivered for 5–10 years, there ARE some interesting alternative Kickstarter options. If they succeed, they would support our goals to deploy the flagship product ASAP and within our affordability targets just as effectively as a FlyIRL-the-business focused campaign.

Please check them out and let us know what you think!

Campaign Option 1 · $500K goal

Rural Air Mobility

The aircraft that makes it all possible — built for the people who actually need it

The technology to build this aircraft already exists. Quadcopter-style distributed lift for safety redundancy. Autonomous landing as a failsafe. These aren’t moonshots — they’re in production right now. They’re just being chased almost exclusively by Urban Air Mobility: downtown-to-downtown, high-density, high-ticket.

Which is fine. But it leaves an enormous gap. Most of America isn’t downtown. And as work goes increasingly virtual — and as people continue leaving big cities for more rural areas — the gravity is shifting. Non-concentrated populations don’t need a commuter air taxi. They need a sky uber: a single-occupant, affordable aircraft that can take off from a field and land in a driveway.

There’s a real Rural Air Mobility argument here that nobody’s making loudly enough. There is exactly one purpose-built aircraft designed for this kind of experience — it’s made in China, and the company doesn’t appear to be taking it seriously. (Look up the EHang VT30 if you’re curious.) So: we build it here. Sub-$1M. Rugged, reliable, American-made. $500K gets the design rolling. FlyIRL is a dream — a purpose-built aircraft is a product, Kickstarter bread and butter.

See the full campaign page →

Campaign Option 2 · Deliverable within a year

Available Now

The STOL Cub Experience — proving people want this right now

This is experiential entertainment that already exists. I know the owner of one of the premier STOL training schools in the country. A 1-hour discovery flight in a backcountry bush plane — into genuine wilderness near Las Vegas, as low and slow and alive as aviation gets — is doable as a Kickstarter tier within a year. Starting around $250.

The pitch for this one isn’t “trust us, someday.” It’s: here’s the full STOL backcountry experience, now. Extremely fun. Extremely safe. The kind of flight that converts a curious person into a lifelong aviation enthusiast in 60 minutes. That’s the market signal FlyIRL needs — proof that when you make it accessible, people show up.

It also gives FlyIRL real manned flight operations on the books. The FAA pays attention to that when you’re eventually pushing into the autonomy space.

Bush planes on a backcountry field at sunset

See the full campaign page →

Campaign Option 3 · $50K goal

Smallest Ask, Biggest Leverage

A university X-Prize — outsource the hardest engineering to people paid to solve it

Here’s the most efficient option on the table: $50,000 to run a Moonshot competition for aerospace engineering departments at top universities. Student and faculty teams compete to design the aircraft systems and infrastructure we’d otherwise fund at $500K internally.

Yes, we’d share the IP. But FlyIRL is a business, not a product. Whatever gets the right aircraft designed — and gets the most brilliant aero minds in the country thinking about Rural Air Mobility — is a win. The design work gets done. The community builds. And the winning team gets something better than a grade: they build something real.