NYA FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT ‒ DON MATHIS, SKYFIRE AI CEO & CO-FOUNDER

Don Mathis, Skyfire AI CEO & Founder, has spent most of his career in early-stage ventures, both as an operator and a founder.  Skyfire is his second company as a founder, and his fourth entrepreneurial chapter in his career.   Read his interview on how investment from NYA led to top venture capital investment, the benefits of the structured diligence process at NYA, and how perseverance is critical in fundraising.

How did you first meet New York Angels?

I had certainly heard of New York Angels before I formally met the group, but the direct introduction came through Jason Klein almost exactly a year ago. At the time, Skyfire had just been selected as one of the final five companies in the Harvard Business School New Venture Competition alumni network. While I was there and presenting, I met Jason, who is both a member of New York Angels and HBS Angels. Thanks to him, I applied to both groups, and I am pleased to say they became our two largest angel backers.

When you were fundraising, what were you looking for in investors? Why did you choose to work with New York Angels?

I was looking for an investor base that matched the stage we were in as a company. We viewed the round with New York Angels as our Seed 1 round. Since then, we have closed Seed 2, which was almost entirely venture money. But to get to the point where top venture firms were interested in us, it was incredibly valuable to first have strong angel groups behind us.

New York Angels was exactly the right kind of investor at that stage. It is a high-profile group, which mattered, but what mattered even more was the force-multiplier effect. Angel groups bring together highly talented people with deep networks and diverse experience. If you get the right people interested in your business, the value goes far beyond the capital itself. It can create buzz, open doors to business development opportunities, support future fundraising, and help validate the company in the market.

That was absolutely true for us. Through the Angels, we developed business relationships, including meaningful channel partnerships. And when I later spoke with higher-profile venture firms, mentioning that New York Angels was backing us immediately signaled credibility. It helped pave the way for those next conversations.

What was the fundraising process like for you overall?

We were fortunate in our timing because we did not truly need capital until the market had opened up for what we were doing. If I go back to 2024, there were a couple of times when I tested the waters, and my sense was that the market was not yet ready for a company like ours. That began to change in 2025 as both the macro environment and our specific industry evolved.

Our message to investors was also a little different from the standard venture narrative. We are building for first responders, public safety, and national defense. Our core metric is lives saved, not contracts closed. That is not always an easy story to tell to traditional Silicon Valley investors. So what we needed were investors who had both the imagination to see the vision and the rigor to validate it.

New York Angels, HBS Angels, and a few others really fit that need. Their backing helped us tell a stronger story, and that momentum ultimately created the environment where venture firms began to come to us. By the time we raised Seed 2, the round was significantly oversubscribed, and I believe that happened in part because we had the right angel backing earlier on.

What have you enjoyed most about working with New York Angels?

What I have valued most is the thought partnership. It has been much more than a source of capital.  A lot of investor groups say they want to lean in and help, but in my experience that is not always true. With New York Angels, it really has been true. The diligence process itself was valuable because the questions we were asked actually helped us sharpen our story and improve our strategy. It was almost like having a strategic and corporate development force multiplier around the company.

I am the only person at Skyfire with an MBA. Much of our team comes from military, police, and federal law enforcement backgrounds. So for me, being able to tap into the experience of people like Bob Peck, Alyssa Tam, Tom Hirschfeld, and others has been incredibly helpful. I have been able to reach out for advice on key decisions and get thoughtful input from people with deep expertise. In many ways, it has felt like having an informal board of directors before those formal structures were even in place.

What have you learned from New York Angels?

One of the biggest things I learned came through the diligence process. We got an excellent set of questions, and those questions helped us focus. Early on, our go-to-market story was a bit too broad. The feedback, both directly and indirectly, was clear: you cannot be all things to all people. That pushed us to narrow our story, think more deliberately about prioritization, and better define how we would scale.

That was incredibly useful. We had no shortage of opportunity or inbound interest, but opportunity can be a curse as well as a blessing if you do not have a clear framework for deciding what matters most. The diligence process helped us build that framework.

In some ways, it felt like a Series A level of discipline at an angel stage. That has paid off. It prepared us for later fundraising and made us stronger as a company. New York Angels helped us navigate the final part of that 0 to 1 phase and get ready for the 1 to 99 stage. That was a very meaningful contribution.

How is New York Angels different from other investors?

New York Angels sits in a very strong sweet spot. I have spoken with angel groups that were too light on diligence, and I have spoken with others that were overly focused on the wrong kinds of questions for a company at our stage. For example, there was one group we ultimately chose not to move forward with that asked questions about things like SOC 2 compliance and highly detailed AI architecture in ways that simply did not make sense for a company of our size. Those were not the right questions for where we were.

New York Angels was different. The group asked rigorous questions, but they were the right questions. They got at who we really were as a team, what market we were serving, and how we were thinking about execution. The process pushed us, but in a constructive way. It was like working with a great coach. The diligence made us a better company.

There was also another practical advantage: the Fund. That was unique among the groups I encountered, and it was hugely helpful. We had strong individual angel participation, and then the Fund added another meaningful layer of capital at a point when every dollar mattered. That was a real force multiplier for us.

What advice would you give other founders who are fundraising?

Make you are ready to fundraise before you start.

• First, do you have a market that is truly addressable and large enough to make it worth investing in?

• Second, do you have the team that can access that market and build a company around it?

• Third, do you have a product, or at least a clear product vision, that addresses that market, along with the flexibility to evolve that product as you learn?

If you have those three things, you are probably ready to raise. But then you also need to be able to tell that story in a compelling way.

The other thing I would emphasize is perseverance. When we first spoke to some angel groups a year and a half before raising from New York Angels, we were not ready. We only had the rough outlines of those three things. At that stage, we raised from friends and family, not from more sophisticated investors. But if you really believe in the vision, you keep going. You keep refining the market, the team, the product, and the story. Over time, if the fundamentals are real, that perseverance can turn into the opportunity to raise from strong groups like New York Angels.

What advice would you give early-stage investors who are looking to invest in companies like yours?

I believe it really helps to do it through a group like New York Angels. We did have individual investors come in early, often people who knew me personally from Comcast or the Navy, and I was honored by that trust. But honestly, many of them did not fully know what they were getting into, even if they made a good decision in backing us.

What a strong angel group gives you is real diligence. You get the benefit of people with deep experience in technology, go-to-market strategy, industry, operations, and other areas, all looking at the company from different angles. As the founder, I learned from that process. As an investor, you benefit from that collective expertise. Even if you personally had some of that knowledge, you likely would not have the time to go as deep as a well-run angel group can. New York Angels moved quickly, faster than the venture capital firms did, but still did very thorough work. That is incredibly valuable from both sides of the table.

What has driven Skyfire AI’s success?

• First, we have a smart, passionate team that deeply cares about the mission. We are not doing this because we hope for a quick exit and an easy payout. We are doing it because we believe in the work and the impact. In our case, we are literally helping save lives, and that creates a very powerful sense of purpose. That purpose translates into hard work and a kind of relentlessness that startups need.

• Second, the market timing has finally come into place. Drones have been discussed in public safety for years, but in many cases the technology and regulatory environment were not yet ready. There were companies that had good ideas but were simply too early. In our case, the technology, the regulation, and the market all seem to be aligning at the right time. That matters enormously.

• Third, we have a team that knows how to work together. Many of us have worked together before, sometimes for years. Several people on the team came with me from Comcast, and others came from even earlier chapters of my career. That shared experience makes a real difference. It means we can move faster, communicate more effectively, and complement one another’s strengths and weaknesses in a very natural way.

I would also like to emphasize that this is a team effort. I am one part of a very talented, passionate group of people, and that is what makes everything possible. I also think that is something entrepreneurs sometimes forget. The story is never just about one person. It takes a team, and it takes a broader community. I had a commanding officer in the Navy once tell me something very simple that stayed with me: take care of your people, and they will take care of you. I have tried to carry that with me ever since. If you keep that front and center, you give your team the chance to succeed, and that is what ultimately drives everything else.

What’s something interesting about your that might surprise founders or investors?

Around the time we started the company, I went through a pretty serious health experience that led to a kind of reset for me. It made me realize that some of the ways I had managed stress in earlier parts of my career were not sustainable. I was not sleeping enough, eating well, or exercising the way I should have been. It was a wake-up call.

Since then, I have become much more focused on health and nutrition, and in particular I have gotten deeply into gravel biking. It is somewhere between road biking and mountain biking, and I have now done some of the iconic events in the sport, including the 100-mile Unbound race in Kansas.

In some ways, gravel biking feels a lot like entrepreneurship. It is mostly pain, a little glory at the end, and a huge test of endurance. But it gives me balance, helps me deal with stress, and keeps me sharp. There have absolutely been moments in fundraising and company-building that felt very much like the final miles of a long race. Each has informed the other.

What motivates you as a founder?

Impact.

I have been fortunate to have several entrepreneurial experiences that led to good outcomes for investors and employees. And while financial success certainly feels good, I have learned that what stays with me much longer is the impact on people.

One of the most meaningful things for me from a prior company was seeing what that success meant for others. I had an executive assistant at that company who had grown up in Queens and had never imagined owning something like a beach house on the Jersey Shore. After the exit, she was able to do that. That kind of change in someone’s life stays with you in a very real way.

And now, with Skyfire, that sense of impact is even deeper because the work itself can help save lives. I feel grateful every day that I get to build a company where the mission and the business are so closely aligned. That sense of impact, that sense of motion and purpose, is what gets me out of bed in the morning.