The journey to UXV Technologies

The boy who wanted to fly

Ever since Steven Friberg was little, he has been different from other kids. When he got toys as a kid, we would not play with them but tear them apart to see how they were configured and how they worked.

When he was growing up, Steven was interested in airplanes. At 14, he started to fly, and at 16, he got his pilot’s certificate. When he finished high school, he wanted to be a part of The Air Force and become a Pilot. Unfortunately, education in The Air Force got shut down. Steven then discovered that The United States was using unmanned aircrafts like planes and helicopters for surveillance and to take pictures.

Here the first seeds for what today is UXV Technologies were sown. Steven got the idea for his first company, Danish Aviation Systems, which he started at 19. The company was the first in Denmark to work with and sell unmanned aircrafts, today known as drones.

Think outside the box

For a few years, the company made complete UAV solutions. However, when a Chinese company entered the market and started to underbid it, Steven had to think differently to stay relevant.

“I knew that I wanted my company to compete on knowledge and quality rather than price,” He explains. But, after a while, he discovered that the whole drone industry was poorly structured and began to think along other lines.

“I was inspired by the motor industry and analyzed how to get success best. The different components in a car all come from various companies. It is the same with drones. Today our company makes components that enable our customers to produce their solutions,” Steven Friberg explains.

Steven then starts UAV Components and invites Johan Nielsen, who was an employee at Danish Aviation Systems, to join him as a partner. UAV Components introduces a whole new way of doing things, and both Steven and Johans know that it will take a lot of hard work and time before UAV Components will succeed. After two and a half years, things are starting to evolve, and Frank Severinsen, a Danish Aviation Systems trainee, is invited in as a partner.

The three quickly found out how the name, UAV Components, set limits since it only reflected aircrafts and not all the other things the company does. So they then changed the name of the company to UXV Technologies. The “X” symbolizes that they make all sorts of things robotic, and they, therefore, found that the new name better reflects the essence of the company.

The three Musketeers

During his life, Steven has met a lot of people. However, Johan and Frank have stood out as the most memorable and wise.

Steven and Johan met each other at the computer specialist study, which only Johan finished, and Johan was employed when Danish Aviation Systems just started up. Halfway through the lifetime of Danish Aviation Systems, Frank was hired as a trainee and continued to work in the company afterward.

The three could not be any more different, but that makes them a great team. They compliment each other, and what one does not know how to do, another does. Steven is the business and the risk taker, Johan is the realist and takes care of the administration, and Frank is the technical one.

“I would compare us with a boxer. Frank is the muscles, Johan is the backbone, and I am the boxing gloves,” says Steven.

“Steven stands for the ‘What’ and I am the “How,’” Frank explains. “And Johan is the reason, we have a company to do the ‘What’ and ‘How’ in. He is the sensible one who creates the framework for us.”

It is a marathon, not a sprint

Building a company from the ground up takes a lot of hard work and persistence. It takes a lot of long workdays, sleepless nights, and setbacks.

When they first started, they worked between 80-100 hours a week. Steven and Frank could be so focused on a goal that they could easily work four days without any sleep. They would do whatever it took to solve the problem.

However, as time has passed, they have changed their working methods. They have made sure they do not have customers that make them end up in situations like previously. Instead, their focus is on the quality of the products. Therefore, it does not matter that you worked 40 hours the last two days if the final product does not meet quality standards and ends up being sent back for reparation.

“Sometimes we have sacrificed a little too much to achieve too little. The focus is to work efficiently and make something of quality, not just reach the goal on time,” Frank says. “It is a marathon, not a sprint.”