3D Robotics Inc., one of the better-funded, high-profile drone startups, is laying off an undisclosed number of its staff in a restructuring aimed at moving more quickly into the commercial market, due to heavy competition in the consumer drone market.

“DJI is doing great, it’s because they are moving so fast, it’s forcing the others to adapt,” 3DR co-founder and Chief Executive Chris Anderson told MarketWatch, referring to the biggest consumer drone maker. “Some companies are adapting by leaving, and others are adapting by moving upstream to the enterprise, which was always our plan. And is it just accelerating right now.”

Based in Berkeley, Calif., 3DR is also reshuffling its management roles, including the role of Anderson, known to many in Silicon Valley as the former editor-in-chief of Wired, and author of the 2006 business book, “The Long Tail.”

Anderson, who remains CEO, “will focus more on the external and strategic side,” he told employees in a company-wide email on Wednesday. Jeevan Kalanithi, 3DR’s chief product officer, was named president. The company’s former president, co-founder Jordi Munoz, left the company last year as part of the ramping down of 3DR’s operations in San Diego. “We have been consolidating offices since June of last year,” Anderson said, adding that much of that had to do with outsourcing manufacturing from Tijuana to China and outsourcing its warehousing operations.

3DR now has about 100 employees; he declined to say how many were being let go in this round. “It’s a minority of the workforce that’s been reduced,” Anderson said. “This has been going on for six to nine months.”

Anderson and Munoz, a college dropout from Ensenada, had each been building drones on their own and met virtually on Anderson’s website, DIYDrones.com, a forum for drone hobbyists. They co-founded 3DR together in 2009. “He is still a shareholder, he is a good friend,” Anderson said. “He is working on something new, well-aligned with what we do.” Anderson said Munoz lives and has family in the San Diego area and did not want to move.

Anderson said Kalanithi, in his new role, “will serve as the internal and tactical leader of 3DR,” and he will also join the company’s board.

“I have learned a lot over the last year,” Anderson wrote in his email. “It’s hard for me not to indulge my passion for the technology by engaging at the engineering level. But one of the things good founders learn is that their job is to hire people smarter than them and then give those people clear space to run.” Anderson added that at a certain point, his only product “should be the company itself.”

“As much as it might hurt to admit, I can’t be as effective at the detailed engineering level anymore as we’ve grown (both in size and the complexity of our engineering).”

The company is one of the better funded among a growing number of drone startups, and has raised a total of $99 million in four funding rounds. Some of its investors include the Mayfield Fund, Qualcomm Inc. QCOM, -3.64% Ventures and SanDisk Corp. US:SNDK Ventures.

Anderson said 3DR will focus more on developing products like Site Scan, an aerial analytics platform it launched earlier this month in a collaboration with Autodesk Inc. ADSK, -0.81% and Sony Corp. SNE, +1.73% . The system has a software-as-a-service monthly subscription model, which integrates Autodesk software, where using the 3DR Solo drone, businesses can upload aerial images, analytics and other data to the 3DR cloud. The system uses a tablet from Sony, a GoPro camera and starts at $3,249 for the hardware.

In the consumer arena, 3DR was making too many Solos. “We got knocked down for a really simple reason: We made too many Solos, especially given how fast our competitors dropped prices and flooded the market,” Kalanithi wrote in the Q&A portion of the company email.

Earlier this year, China-based DJI sharply cut prices of its Phantom 3 drone, ahead of its March 1 launch of the Phantom 4, an even smarter drone with more sensors, priced at $1,399.

By making job cuts and refocusing, 3DR currently has enough financial runway until the second quarter of 2017 without having to go back to investors, Anderson said. “We want to make sure we have a good long year of runway,” he said. “You don’t want to have to go back to the market every six months. This is a moment when the investors want to see a profitable, lean operation, and we are doing that.”