Danny Ellis spoke to the Entrepreneur Club at Siena Heights University Nov. 4. Ellis grew up in Kalamazoo and went to the University of Michigan for aerospace engineering.

Ellis said, “While I was there I was kind of awful at college. I’ll be the first to admit I didn’t care about class at all. I cared about doing real things.”

Ellis said he spent a lot of time in the student projects lab evolving his skills as an engineer. It wasn’t until Ellis’ senior year that he decided to build a drone.

He asked the department if he could build a drone, and they were so enthusiastic about his idea that they gave him $1,000. Still, the money wasn’t enough for resources, so he decided to start a student team. Within five days of coming up with the idea to build a drone, Ellis had recruited 15 students and had received $33,000.

He said the first meetings just included the team sitting in a room, having no idea what to do. The drone-making process proved to be a little harder than they imagined, and the team failed miserably the first year.

The next year with hard work, the team managed to win first place in a competition for autonomous drones. He said the university encouraged him and his team to make his drones into a business. The team turned down job offers with Microsoft and Google and Apple to jump in full-time working on the business.

Ellis said, “We didn’t have a clue what we were doing.”

A year later, they decided to compete in business competitions, and started doing quite well.

After relaying his story, Ellis listened to business ideas from the students and gave his advice. He offered his wisdom in the business field and encouraged the students to always give their all for their dreams.  Ellis made sure to explain to the students that failure will happen in your life.

Ellis said, “You can fail, but if you fail, you have to fail forward.”

Ellis told his first failure story when his team lost a job offer, but quickly compensated with an even bigger client. Ellis encouraged the students that no matter how bad a situation may seem, if you have a passion for what you are doing, always push forward.