What we talked about
Jonathan Collazo is an inventor, relentless builder, and the mission-driven founder and CEO of Ostrich Air and FireBot Labs:two pioneering deep-tech companies redefining the role of autonomous robotics in public safety, defense, and critical infrastructure. In this episode of the PreVetted Podcast, host Federico Ramallo dives deep into Jonathan’s fascinating and unorthodox path:from a teenage computer repair business in Florida to building battle-tested robots in Silicon Valley.
Show notes
Jonathan Collazo picked up a drone and described the experience as fireworks going off in his head. He had no engineering degree, no aerospace background, no pedigree, just an obsession with figuring out how things worked, a teenager’s history of turning any interest into a business, and a team of PhDs who let him ask the questions that formal training had taught them to stop asking. That combination got him onto Discovery Channel’s BattleBots. It is also building autonomous drones that can detect and suppress fires while fire departments focus elsewhere.
What we covered
- Ostrich Air began as an R&D lab that builds custom robotics for any client problem, ground robots, water robots, underwater systems, autonomous vehicles, and more, with the philosophy that if you can describe the problem, Ostrich Air can prototype a hardware-software solution for it.
- FireBot Labs was spun out as a separate company specifically so that investor involvement would not constrain Ostrich Air’s broader R&D work. The FireBot system is now launching: a fully autonomous drone that a user activates by clicking a location on a map, which then flies to the site, provides live video and situational data, returns to base, and recharges autonomously, no pilot required.
- The business model for FireBot Labs works by selling the same autonomous drone technology to commercial clients who can afford market rates, then using that revenue to supply the same equipment to fire departments at costs low enough that budget constraints are not a barrier, Jonathan’s stated goal is to get protective systems into neighborhoods regardless of what a fire department can pay.
- Ostrich Air competed on BattleBots with no pedigree, won a slot among 50 global teams, built their robot from scratch in two months, and went 2-1 on the show with a spinning AR-500 steel weapon that reached 250 miles per hour tip speed at 50% power. The robot, named Double Tap, would have valued at approximately $200,000 if labor and Silicon Valley overhead were counted.
- Jonathan’s hiring approach explicitly ignores resumes and focuses on three questions that he does not share publicly. His rule: if you do not pass those three questions, it does not matter if you were head of Lockheed Martin. What he looks for is people who show rather than tell, and whose honesty about mistakes, including their own failures, makes the whole team learn faster.
- His lab runs on a principle of radical transparency: all meetings are open to the entire team. Jonathan intentionally admitted to making mistakes in front of the team, including blowing things up himself, so that staff feel safe being honest when they break something, because a hidden mistake costs everyone more than a disclosed one ever would.
About Jonathan
Jonathan Collazo is the founder and CEO of Ostrich Air, a robotics R&D lab in Silicon Valley, and FireBot Labs, an autonomous drone company focused on fire detection and suppression. Self-educated, he built his knowledge base through hands-on work with drone delivery companies, drone security firms, and eventually his own lab staffed with engineers from Stanford and other top aerospace programs.
- LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/robotics-think-tank
- Website: https://firebotlabs.com
Episode 52 of the PreVetted Podcast.