08 December 2025

By Jay of Jay's Tech Vault

I run Jays Tech Vault on YouTube, where more than 225,000 subscribers follow deep dives on drone mapping, automation, and the business side of flying. I'm also the creator of WaypointMap.com, AerialModel.com, and DroneInvoice.com. 

Most pilots underestimate how much impact they can make on this industry. We come from technical backgrounds, we see problems firsthand, and we often have the ability to fix them—but most of us never try.

I want to share a short story about how I accidentally ended up shaping part of the drone community, and why it led me to build something that I believe will define the next chapter of drone work.

How a File Hack Changed Modern Drone Mapping

In the fall of 2023, I was a senior in computer engineering at NC State University, studying under the late Marshall Brain, founder of HowStuffWorks. My senior design project at the time was a third-party RTK attachment for drones. But I hit a major roadblock: my brand-new DJI Mavic 3 couldn’t fly autonomous mapping missions. DJI’s SDK didn’t support it, and without automation, the RTK idea was dead on arrival.

Around that time, DJI announced the long-awaited Waypoints feature. I almost bought a Skydio X2 purely because of their waypoint capabilities, so this caught my attention. Then I had a thought: DJI stores mission files on the RC—what if I could modify them directly?

One weekend later, after digging through RC files and testing every variation I could think of, it worked. You could automate missions with no SDK support at all.

Building WaypointMap 

Winter break gave me time to turn the hack into something pilots could actually use. I built a simple map tool: draw a box, automatically generate a mission. My younger brother and I recorded a short tutorial and uploaded it to YouTube.

Within hours, it exploded.

I spent the entire spring semester adding features pilots asked for in my free time. Some people told me I should charge more. Some said it should’ve been fully paid from the beginning. But honestly, it never started as a business. It started because local pilots in Raleigh—people I saw every month at the downtown drone meetup—helped me. I wanted to give something back.

Those meetups shaped how I think about building tools today. Everyone there has real problems and real constraints. They’re the people I picture every time I sit down to create something new.

A Bigger Problem: Pilots Aren’t Getting Enough Work

Fast-forward a year. I noticed a new trend: pilots were struggling to get paid work. Not because they weren’t skilled, but because discovery was broken. Directories were outdated. Marketplaces weren’t driving real demand. And a lot of commercial pilots were stuck relying on cold outreach, referrals, or nothing at all.

How do we actually help pilots get work?

Back in April 2024, while still an undergrad, I wrote down an idea called DroneInvoice—originally just a better workflow for managing and delivering client files. At the time, I was still handing clients SD cards and unorganized download links. There had to be a better way.

But when I revisited the idea the following year, something clicked. Improving workflow wasn’t enough. Pilots needed opportunity, not just organization.

Why I Built DroneInvoice

So the question became: Can a tool do both — streamline a pilot’s workflow and actively help them get jobs?

The more I researched, the clearer the answer became. Yes — but not in the way directories currently operate. Pilots don’t need another marketplace with empty promises. They need something that:

• Shows their past work in a way clients actually trust
• Improves their SEO automatically each time they upload
• Gives them a public portfolio they control
• Helps them get discovered through real search traffic, not wishful thinking
• Handles invoicing, delivery, and client communication in one place
  
  

And most importantly...

A platform where their flights could keep earning long after delivery.

That’s when DroneInvoice evolved into something bigger—a single place where clients can find you, hire you, pay you, and license your past flights automatically.

It became the answer to the question I asked myself at 22. How do I help the pilots who helped me?

Graduation came. I walked with my masters, then asked myself, "How can I actually change the world now?"

I decided the best idea I had was to tackle the biggest, hardest problem I knew.

So I sat down—day after day, week after week, month after month. For six months, I worked away, building what I believe will revolutionize how we as pilots do our work in the drone industry. A week ago, I finally got to show it to the world. I know, deep down, this is how work will be handled going forward.

The Real Problem With Today’s Drone Workflows

After launching DroneInvoice publicly last week, I realized something that had been building for years—almost every pilot I know is losing income because of the same hidden bottlenecks.

Not lack of skill.
Not lack of gear.
Not lack of demand.

The real problem is workflow friction—the quiet, boring, administrative drag that quietly kills your earning potential.

After talking to thousands of pilots, the patterns became impossible to ignore:

• Your best flights stop earning the moment you deliver them — no long-tail value.
• Clients struggle with links, folders, zips, and approvals, costing you repeat work.
• Directories and marketplaces don’t send real leads—most pilots get better cold leads from Instagram DMs.
• Your past flights aren’t searchable, licensed, or connected to real-world demand.
• Upgrades, add-ons, and re-licensing almost never happen—even when clients would pay.
• File delivery remains slow and fragmented, and “Can you resend the link?” becomes a weekly email.
  
  

Every one of these issues impacts how much you earn per flight, how often you get booked, and how many hours you lose to admin work. These weren’t just pain points—they were clues.

Why DroneInvoice Exists

The point of DroneInvoice isn’t to create another directory, marketplace, or link-sharing tool.

It’s built around a simple idea. If we remove the friction in how pilots present, deliver, license, and monetize their work, we unlock more jobs for everyone. Automatically.

Pilots shouldn’t need to be marketers, web developers, business analysts, and file-delivery specialists just to get paid for doing good work.

Your past flights should keep earning you income. Your clients should have one clear place to review, approve, and pay. Your best work should help you get discovered—not sit in a hard drive.

That’s the future I believe our industry is heading toward. And that’s the future DroneInvoice is built for.

My goal isn’t to build another tool—it’s to make flying drones a viable, sustainable career for more pilots. If you’ve ever felt stuck between great flights and not enough income, I built DroneInvoice for you.