Client story · Fractional CFO

IONA: drones and robotic hubs for rural deliveries.

Hardware, logistics and aviation in one P&L, and a position that owned the numbers underneath all of it.

The Iona Drones team with a long-range delivery aircraft

What the position owned

Not advice. Ownership.

Capital and unit economics

Responsible for deployment of capital and ownership of the unit economics that decide whether hardware ever makes money.

Costing and budgets

Owned material costing, growth budgets and the trade offs between them.

Reporting and direction

Core financial reporting plus a hand on the strategic direction of the group.

The company

What IONA actually does.

IONA is building an autonomous delivery network for the places vans serve worst: rural and remote communities. Founded in London in 2021 by Etienne Louvet with aerospace engineer Dr Saïf-Deen Akanni, and now based in Shannon, Ireland, the company combines three pieces: its patented Sonnet Quad tilt-rotor drone, robotic ground hubs, and Cosmogony, the fleet software that identifies landing zones, keeps flights compliant and decides which parcels go by drone and which by van.

The offer to logistics companies is turnkey: hardware, flight operations and regulatory compliance as one service, charged as a percentage of delivery revenue. The Irish Times reports the drone carries up to 20kg over 100–200km; the company has raised roughly €5 million, mainly from angel investors, runs a 14-person team, and works within the European Space Agency’s programme with Enterprise Ireland’s high-potential startup designation.

The market

Third-party logistics providers in rural Ireland and the UK, the routes where a van and driver cost the most per parcel. Named potential customers in coverage include An Post and DHL.

The business, on one page

The canvas.

Customers

Third-party logistics providers running rural and remote delivery routes in Ireland and the UK.

Value proposition

The expensive last miles flown instead of driven: autonomous drones plus robotic hubs, sold as a running service with compliance handled.

Channels & partners

Direct partnerships with logistics operators; institutional support from the European Space Agency and Enterprise Ireland.

Revenue

A percentage of delivery revenues on routes the network serves, IONA earns when its customers deliver.

Key resources

The patented tilt-rotor aircraft, the robotic hub design, the Cosmogony traffic-management software and the regulatory approvals around them.

Cost structure

Aircraft and hub hardware, certification and flight operations, heavy fixed costs that only route volume can amortise.

The position’s default plays

What a great CFO does in a company like this.

01Costs the route to the last mile. Revenue-share pricing means the CFO must know IONA’s own cost per delivery cold, aircraft amortisation, hub time, operations, or every new route is a guess about margin.
02Separates certification burn from operating burn. Money spent getting approved to fly is an investment with a milestone; money spent flying is unit economics. Mixing them hides whether the model works.
03Makes €5M behave like €15M. Angel-funded hardware companies survive on capital discipline: material costing, staged builds, and grants and agency programmes doing the heavy lifting equity would otherwise pay for.
04Builds the institutional funding ladder. ESA projects and Enterprise Ireland designation are more than badges, they are a funding rail. A great CFO sequences grants, agency money and equity so each de-risks the next.
05Gives the board one number that matters. Cost per parcel versus a van, by route. When that number wins, everything else, the raise, the partnerships, the fleet plan, follows from it.

Coverage

In hardware, the spreadsheet is the product. Get the unit economics wrong and no amount of flying fixes it.

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**Georgina King***Executive Partnership Manager*

Codi: Andreessen Horowitz backed tech from New York

The position behind it

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