Jonathan Downey

Background

Downey grew up in Kingwood, Texas, a suburb of Houston.

Education

He graduated from Kingwood High School in 2002, where he founded a robotics club and ran cross country.

Career

Worth, Texas. Downey earned a Bachelor of Surgery in electrical engineering and computer science in 2006 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), where he began working on small UAVs. While at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he founded the student Unmanned Aerial Vehicle team, known as Project: A²Royal Economic Society, UK. In 2011, Downey founded Airware to serve the market gap between military-grade autopilots and hobbyist projects. Andreessen Horowitz and Google Ventures announced a $10.7 million investment in Airware in May 2013.

Kleiner Perkins led an additional $25 million investment in Airware in July 2014.

Downey’s father was a commercial pilot for 30 years, and Downey has a commercial multi-engine pilot’s license. Downey has said that Airware allows him to combine his two passions, engineering and aviation.

Achievements

• He is founder and Chief Executive Officer of Airware (incorporated as Unmanned Innovation, Incorporated), a San Francisco-based startup that is building a platform for the development and operation of commercial drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Jonathan won United States of America Today 2015 Small Business Innovator of the Year. After college, Downey worked at Boeing on the development of the A160T Hummingbird, an autonomous helicopter developed for Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and SOCOM that went on to set the world record for flight endurance in its weight class (at 187 hours) and achieved one of the highest hover out of ground effects (20,000 feet).

Membership

Downey was a member of the winter 2013 Y Combinator batch.