Get to know Propeller’s world-class team in our ongoing employee spotlight series. Today, we speak with Mohammed Morsi, who serves as a customer success engineer on the customer success team. He’s based out of our Denver, Colorado, office.
What do you do at Propeller?
I’m a customer success engineer. I help customers use our Platform and their drones to survey their sites. Basically, I’m helping customers work out any problems, big or small, and making sure everything is smooth sailing for them. I cover the central region of North America from Texas and up through Canada.
What’s your career background?
I’m a civil engineering graduate. Throughout college I did a bunch of different internships, then after college I co-founded a startup in the drone space based out of Texas and Qatar.
We ran into some regulatory and political issues in the Middle East when it came to flying drones, so we returned funding to our investors. After that, I applied to a job a Propeller, and here I am.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in the Middle East and stayed there until I was four. Then I moved to Houston, Texas, and stayed until middle school. Went to Qatar after that, and lived there until the end of high school.
I went to the University of Texas at San Antonio, and then split my time between the Middle East and Texas while I was running my company. Now, I’m based in Denver.
Before working at Propeller, what’s the strangest or most interesting job you’ve held?
I did an internship in high school at a local five-star hotel. We were put into a different department for a day to see how it operated, from housekeeping to room service to how the general manager is in charge of everything. Hotels are run like organizations and it was really interesting to see every level of that.
What’s your favorite Propeller memory?
I recently had a customer upload their first survey into the Propeller Platform after using our PPK solution for the first time. It took awhile to get the hang of things with this new workflow, and to understand the new PPK tech. Walking them through the setup, upload, flight, and processing—essentially, getting them working smoothly and finally seeing them succeed was a great moment.
Any talents, secret superpowers, or fun facts about yourself to share?
I like to buy and sell cars and trucks. Every vehicle I’ve ever owned has paid for itself—I’ve never depreciated the value of a car, which is a hard thing. I flip them like houses. The longest I’ve had a vehicle was two years, and the shortest was six months.
If you could be any piece of technology, what would you be and why?
A sensor, any type. Sensors are the future; they’re going to be collecting all kind of data and digitizing our world. I’d want to be some kind of smart tech or an IoT sensor, like those in autonomous cars.
Given the chance to invite any person living or dead to dinner, who would you pick and why?
My fiancée, because I enjoy spending time with her and sharing meals.
Do you have an office nickname? If so, what is it and how did you get it?
Everyone says Mo. I also go by my last name, Morsi, since there are a lot of Mohammeds in this world. Overseas, people refer to Mohammeds by their last names a lot.
If you could do any job on a worksite for just one day, which would you choose?
I would be a visual design and construction (VDC) manager on a stadium build. Those are the people in charge of the BIM models and all the new construction technology. They’re the first ones who get to play with drones, augmented reality, virtual reality, and all that. At my old company, we worked on some major stadium builds in Qatar and it was incredible to see how those go up.
