David Dicko

Post-pitch story

David Dicko, a former airline pilot, pitched SkyLights as in-flight cinema: lightweight virtual reality headsets that let passengers watch movies on a giant virtual screen. It was ahead of its time, and for a while it looked like it would work. SkyLights went through Y Combinator, picked up backing from Plug and Play and Comcast Ventures, and in 2018 merged with VR hardware maker Allomind to form SkyLights Inc., pairing film-studio content deals with its own optics. The resulting headset, Allosky, flew with airlines including Alaska Airlines on premium flights. But the whole business depended on people flying, and in 2020 COVID-19 grounded the industry. Dicko has said the adventure "unfortunately ended with the Covid crisis," and travel-tech trackers show the company stopped operating around April 2020. What happened next makes this one of the neatest full-circle stories in the directory: Dicko went back to the cockpit. After flying as a Boeing 777 first officer for Air France, he became an Airbus A220 captain there in 2023. The startup didn't survive the pandemic, but the founder landed right back where he began — just a little higher up.