Drones and Airware: Why First Round Invested

“Why does this matter to you?”

This is one of my favorite questions to ask Founders. The answer to “Why does this matter to you?” is telling. It’s tough to hide behind a question which betrays so much about motivation. There is a difference between starting a company to solve a problem and starting a company to seize an opportunity. It reveals whether someone is intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. It can tell whether someone will tough it out through the turbulence every startup is bound to face. It shines a light on the vision that a Founder has for his or her company.

In early January, I met with Jonathan Downey and asked him this question. He replied that his grandfather was a pilot, his father was a pilot, and that he was a pilot. He told me that he first became consumed by autopilot systems during his freshman year at MIT. It was the reason he joined Boeing when he graduated, and the reason that he decided to start a company. He hated that every autopilot was a black box. In fact, they were designed to be impenetrable, which meant that tweaking them for payload or task requirements was unbearable.

There wasn’t any need to tell me that he was passionate about flying and piloting systems. His life story made it clear that this was his obsession. At First Round, these are the Founders we love to see in our community.

Of course, it helps when they have a vision as compelling as the one that Jonathan has for Airware: Building the OS for unmanned aircraft. At lowest levels of the stack this represents the autopilot systems for both fixed wing, helicopter and multiple rotor aircraft. The next layers are the detections systems which could allow drones to spot the areas of a farmer’s fields which need irrigation, land which may be subject to forest fires or powerlines which could be down. And depending on the application, Airware’s system will be able to deploy a payload, whether it’s fertilizer, GPS coordinates or a photograph.

First Round Capital is thrilled to finally disclose our seed investment in Airware. We partnered with the company in January, and the short time since then they have made terrific progress. Today’s announcement of the Series A financing is a testament to that. Jonathan and his team have recruited an enviable group to support the company including Andreesen Horowitz, Google Ventures, Y Combinator, Lemnos Labs and Shasta Ventures. Developing the OS for unmanned aircraft matters to all us now too. Please join me in “officially” welcoming Airware to the First Round Community!