The self-taught coder building a drone empire

At 49, Bobby Healy—self-taught coder and serial entrepreneur—defied ageism and regulatory hurdles to launch Manor Air Delivery, one of Europe’s largest drone delivery companies. What began as a whimsical idea—using drones to deliver chips to his suburban Dublin home—evolved into a $120 million venture-backed mission to revolutionize last-mile logistics. Healy’s journey, rooted in childhood curiosity and fueled by a $200 computer gifted by his mother, spans four decades of building tech startups, including three successful travel technology firms. Now, he’s betting on drones not as a replacement for human delivery drivers, but as a scalable, profitable augmentation for giants like Uber Eats and Deliveroo. Despite the industry’s slow-moving aviation regulations, Healy found a green light in the EU’s progressive drone framework and is now live in Finland and Cork, with plans to expand across the UK and US—where he expects to go public within five years. His secret? A relentless love for building, not just money, and a belief that the biggest opportunities come not from avoiding risk, but from embracing it with full clarity. Healy’s story reframes failure not as a setback but as a natural part of innovation. His early video game venture collapsed, but he didn’t care—because the joy was in the process. Today, his company is profitable per flight, even if not yet overall, and he’s confident in reaching full profitability in two to three years.