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Nick Pilkington

Founder

CTO & Co-Founder at Drone Deploy

San Francisco, California, United States

FoundedDrone Deploy

Find your path to Nick

547 people in our graph share verified history with Nick — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.

Hannah SealunlockedNick: together at University of Cambridge (2009)
×7Nick: together at University of Cambridge
Nick: together at NVIDIA
×3Nick: together at Drone Deploy

About

Nick Pilkington is the co-founder and CTO of DroneDeploy, the reality-capture platform Procore agreed to acquire for about $845 million in July 2026. A Rhodes University graduate and Nelson Mandela Scholar with a machine-learning PhD from Cambridge, he worked at NVIDIA and Toshiba Research, co-founded the South African bitcoin exchange Luno, scouts for Sequoia Capital, and coaches South Africa's international programming-olympiad team.

Deal analysis

Beyond investing

Founded
Co-founded Luno, the South African bitcoin exchange, before DroneDeploy.
Education
Machine-learning PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Nelson Mandela Scholar, after Rhodes University and an MPhil in NLP and signal processing.
Communities
Sequoia Capital scout and coach of South Africa's international programming-olympiad team.

Mentioned above: the University of Cambridge mafia →

From published sources — common ground for a warm intro.

CTO & Co-Founder at Drone Deploy

Intro paths

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In turn, Nick can intro founders to Drone Deploy's investors below.

Drone Deploy's investors · 12

AirTree VenturesSydney · $132K – $16.5M checksAngelPadSan Francisco · $120K checksBessemer Venture PartnersRedwood City · $5M – $100M checksDCVC (Data Collective)Palo Alto · $5M – $25M checksDRONE FUNDTokyoEmergence Capital PartnersSan Francisco · $500K – $10M checksEnergize CapitalChicago · $10M – $20M checksFrontline VenturesSan Francisco · $540K – $3.2M checksHigh AlphaIndianapolisScale Venture PartnersSan Francisco · $5M – $25M checks · since 2016Uncork CapitalSan Francisco · $3M – $5M checks · since 2014Winklevoss CapitalNew York · $100K – $5M checks

Co-founders at Drone Deploy

MWMike Winn
Mike WinnCEO & Co-Founder
JMJono Millin
Jono MillinChief Data Officer & Co-Founder

Experience

  1. DroneDeployCTO and Foundercurrent2013 — presentSan Francisco Bay Area
  2. Sequoia CapitalScout Investor2017 — 2025San Francisco, California, United States
  3. NVIDIASoftware Engineer2006 — 2008Santa Clara, United States of America

Skills & more

Software Engineering33Machine Learning34Cloud Computing20Web Development8Programming10Software Development8Start-ups4Large Scale Systems1Engineering Leadership1Engineering Management1DronesEntrepreneurship1
+8 morePhotogrammetryComputer ScienceAlgorithmsBirthday CakesPythonC++JavaScriptPython (Programming Language)

Languages English

From Nick's professional profile.

Writing

All posts ↗
Gem Island2020-09-04

A walkthrough of a combinatorics puzzle computing the expected gems held by the richest islanders, presenting successive algorithms from brute-force enumeration to closed-form counting of unique distributions.»

Frequently asked questions

Who is Nick Pilkington?
Nick Pilkington is the co-founder and CTO of DroneDeploy, the reality-capture platform Procore agreed to acquire for about $845 million in July 2026. A Rhodes University graduate and Nelson Mandela Scholar with a machine-learning PhD from Cambridge, he worked at NVIDIA and Toshiba Research, co-founded the South African bitcoin exchange Luno, scouts for Sequoia Capital, and coaches South Africa's international programming-olympiad team.
Where does Nick Pilkington work?
Nick Pilkington is CTO & Co-Founder of Drone Deploy.
What companies did Nick Pilkington found?
Nick Pilkington founded Drone Deploy.
Where did Nick Pilkington go to school?
Nick Pilkington studied at University of Cambridge (PhD, Machine Learning).
What has Nick Pilkington written?
Nick Pilkington has 1 tracked post on nickp.svbtle.com, including "Gem Island".

Founder mafias

Same school

Shared employers