A promising Newport Beach startup that makes operating systems software for commercial drones is moving its headquarters to San Francisco.
The timing of Airware’s move to Northern California comes as a bit of a surprise, considering the company expanded into a new 7,800-square-foot headquarters near the Corona del Mar (73) Freeway in April.
But the benefits of relocating to the global technology hub and closer to its Silicon Valley backers outweighed the comforts of Orange County for the company’s 29-year-old founder, who hasn’t planted deep roots here.
“As we grow, we’re hiring for an increasingly diverse set of skills,” said Jonathan Downey, who built the company up from a two-man operation making autopilots in his kitchen. “San Francisco offers access to talented developers and engineers—people with unique skill sets who we want on our team.”
Airware plans to establish its headquarters in San Francisco in January but might keep some employees in Orange County.
The company has been on a hiring push this year, growing its workforce from six to 50 as it looks to ramp up production of its line of autopilot products geared for the international commercial drone market.
The U.S. government has yet to approve commercial drones to fly in domestic air space.
The Federal Aviation Administration is expected to release regulations for small drones by 2015.
A $10.7 million Series A financing round in May, led by Menlo Park-based venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz, has largely fueled Airware’s growth. Other backers include Google Ventures.
$14M Raised
The company, which launched in 2011, has raised about $14 million to date, with seed funding from First Round Capital in San Francisco; Palo Alto-based Firelake Capital; RRE Ventures in New York; Menlo Park-based Shasta Ventures; Promus Ventures in Chicago; and several partners at Y Combinator, an incubator launched in 2005 in Mountain View.
“Our investors are in San Francisco, and they offer a lot of great resources and opportunities that we can take advantage of,” Downey said.
Airware is integrating its technology into drones for commercial companies in a variety of uses, from search and rescue missions to the prevention of rhino poaching.
“It’s in testing and trials right now,” said Downey, who landed his first job in the aerospace industry about 10 years ago at The Boeing Co.’s OC operations, where he worked on unmanned military helicopters. “We’ve been working for the last nine months to tailor this technology.”
The company expects to secure a “larger base of customers” later this year, according to Downey.
The Houston native, who earned electrical engineering and computer programming degrees at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was open to starting the company anywhere in the U.S. without cold winters.
That eliminated Boston, but San Francisco was in the running with various locations in Southern California.
He ultimately settled on Orange County, largely based on the engineering talent here, a benefit passed down from the region’s strong legacy in software development, aerospace and chip design.
“The reason we started it here was because of the core base of programming people I knew who were really talented aerospace professionals,” Downey said.
But ramping up the business in OC presented some challenges from the onset, particularly on fundraising.
That prompted Downey to make weekly visits to the Bay Area for months as the company looked for backing from venture capitalists.
“We did try to raise money in Orange County first, but we found that it wasn’t as good as other places,” said Downey, who prefers khaki shorts and polo shirts to casual business wear.
Casual Look
Many of Airwave’s employees here, who range in age from 20 to late 50s, look like they’re headed to the nearby Balboa Peninsula, not a design lab. The casual atmosphere and cutting-edge research has attracted plenty of former Boeing engineers and others from around the country.
“Very few people are originally from here,” Downey said. “It’s still in the early days of the industry, but we’re growing significantly.”
