This Billion Dollar Minnesota Company Started In A Wisconsin Barn

Everyone has to start somewhere, right? I didn't realize that one of the world's biggest companies actually started in Wisconsin in a family's barn. Now the company's headquarters are in Minnesota and they have facilities across the globe.

41 years ago in 1984, two brothers started working on a design for an aircraft in their family's barn in Baraboo, Wisconsin.

Dale and Alan Kapmeier designed and built the Cirrus VK-30 kit plan in the barn. It was a five-seat piston-pusher prop aircraft and it was actually featured on the cover of Aviation Week & Space Technology in 1990. (The first kit airplane ever on the cover.)

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In 1994 the brothers moved their team to Duluth, Minnesota where it still has its headquarters today. They developed the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System (CAPS). The innovative system was designed so that if the plane experienced an emergency, it could parachute safely to the ground. Composite designs, glass panels, glass cockpits, and many other innovations by Cirrus have made them the 3rd largest aviation company in the world.

In 2014, Dale and Alan were inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio. The company has won numerous awards for innovation and safety.

In 2020, the FAA Certified the first-ever emergency auto-land feature. Cirrus teamed up with Garmin to create a system where the plane would land itself in case of emergency with just the push of a button. If the pilot of the plane is incapacitated for any reason, a passenger can push the button and the plane will land itself.

The plane then uses GPS, terrain avoidance, weather avoidance, and autopilot to navigate to the airport for an emergency landing. It's really remarkable to see.