Jonathan Huffman

Jonathan Huffman is a patent-holding inventor of space propulsion tech, US national laboratory principal investigator, and Techstars-backed technical founder. He's also an MBA, with undergraduate degrees in Theater Performance and English, and no formal technical or scientific training whatsoever. He got an idea for an ion thruster from a video game, taught himself the rocket science, plasma physics, and quantum mechanics to do the math and prove it would work, then built it in real life at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he convinced the US Department of Energy to fund the effort, and the lab staff joke that he's the only MBA they've ever seen in the cleanroom. The resulting prototype outperformed prior art from MIT professors and post-docs by 152,000x on first attempt. It runs, literally, on mothballs.

Jonathan's background is non-traditional for a technical founder, but not for a business leader. He has over 13 years of startup experience, including direct experience with venture capital, laboratory R&D, deep tech, product development, M&A integration, financial planning and analysis, risk assessment and analysis, cybersecurity, and strategic planning. He is equally adept at modelling deep physics or building pro-forma financials - Uniquely, Jonathan's skillsets let him predict both the technical and the economic potential of an innovation, and then personally go out and build products to capture that potential.