Ali Perez on Lockheed Martin Ventures, innovation, and startup collaboration in emerging tech | E29

Speaker A: I guess the other way. I've seen uh, corporate venture groups do a pretty consistent job of adding value. Sometimes they're helping to support co development projects. I'd love to hear more about how Lockheed becomes a customer for some of the startups that you invest in. Um, obviously you're an active capital source and I guess occasionally an acquirer. Uh, can you just talk about value beyond capital? Uh, as you see it, when you're meeting with an entrepreneur and you really want to invest in that company and you, you realize uh, it may be over subscribed and you sort of have to market. Feel free to give us the unvarnished sort of commercial, uh, of how you're marketing to entrepreneurs with uh, regard to value beyond capital. Welcome to Impact tv, a corporate venture video series in collaboration with the Kauffman Fellows. I'm Jack Crawford, a founding general partner at Impact Venture Capital and alongside my colleague Pat Bumpus from Impact and my colleague from Kaufman McCoffman, fellow co chair Alessandro Santro. We're uh, thrilled to welcome to the show Ali Perez, a senior investment manager from Lockheed Martin Ventures. Ali, how are you?

Speaker B: I'm good. How are you doing?

Speaker A: Hey, I'm doing great. So uh, fun to reconnect with you. After getting a chance to moderate uh, the panel that you were on with the uh, National Venture Capital Association, I got a chance to learn a little bit more uh, about you there. But I have to ask, our team did a little bit of research on your background and apparently you're a flag football all star. And I did a little bit of coaching of my boys when they were uh, when they were growing up and uh, girls started to get threaded into the team and it started to sort of take off a bit uh, for both boys and girls at the younger ages. In fact, I think we went to all star tournaments in Phoenix and in Vegas and in la. You got to tell me a little bit about your flag football career.

Speaker B: Yeah, happy to. I absolutely loved playing flag football. So I initially got involved uh, just as part of a recreational league and got pulled into um, more of a nonprofit league. So we were actually raising money for Alzheimer's research and care and it was part of an organization called Blondes versus Brunettes. And you had your blonde team, you had your brunette team. And uh, we would play one massive flag football game at the end of a long season, uh, and it would raise a ton of money and it was great. And so uh, I was able to play in Dallas and in Washington D.C. and it was just such a great Experience.

Speaker A: Oh, very cool. All right, so you're a football, uh, player in the evenings and on weekends, but uh, during the day you're uh, a neuroscience researcher and cognitive therapy on brain damage and disease. Can you just tell us a little bit more about your educational and technical background and how that led you into a corporate venture arm at Lockheed?

Speaker B: Yeah, happy to. Um, I did my PhD in cognitive neuroscience and through my dissertation I was actually looking at how cognitive training and cognitive therapy could benefit people with PTSD and traumatic brain injuries and Alzheimer's. Um, and so really I was trying to understand whether we could use cognitive reasoning training to essentially mitigate the damage of disease and um, deterioration. And so as part of that program I was actually working with active duty special forces as part of a DARPA grant. And the DARPA program manager came over to Lockheed to start a lab in human systems and autonomy and asked me to come with them, which is amazing. And so I got to help start this lab that really was focused on how can the human operator interface with the autonomous agent, whether that's autonomy in motion like robotics, or autonomy at rest like a co pilot. Um, and it was just a great experience. And so that led me into working on larger research projects for Lockheed, kind of across the board. And I was able to join our chief technology office, uh, which is run by Steve Walker, who is also a former darpa. And uh, when the Ventures group had an opening, it was just a nice kind of combination of all the skills that I had gained from doing research and development and working across the corporation and using these portfolio companies to switching over into more of an investor focused mode.

Speaker A: So they found a technical genius and then they moved her over onto the investment side to generate strategic value and investment returns. I see how that works. I like Lockheed's strategy. Can you tell me a little bit more about sort of the investment focus by industry sector and just sort of how you guys think about, uh, you know, obviously Lockheed, uh, known for defense, uh, and space and sort of innovation and you know, deep tech. Uh, can you tell me a little bit about sort of the industry sector focus, uh, so that you know, not only we learn a little bit more about it, but the audience of co investors might be, you know, valuable sources of innovation for you.

Speaker B: Yeah, happy to. So Lockheed Martin Ventures focuses on dual use technology. So we look at technologies that have a commercial bend, but also have a defense application to them. We work across 14 different technology domains that are all considered, I would say deep tech. Think aiml, autonomous systems, quantum advanced, um, manufacturing advanced Materials, biotechnology. We cover a lot of ground. Essentially our focus areas very much mimic the technology domains that are listed in the national defense strategy. These are all technologies that could have big implications for national security, particularly with, for a Lockheed Martin lean. So we look at things that would be strategic to Lockheed Martin, enhance our platforms, build out our supply chain chain and um, work with us as partners.

Speaker A: Is it tough to keep up on all those different sort of areas of innovation? Uh, or do you have sort of subject matter experts in each of these areas that you lean on from business units? Talk a little bit about sort of how you keep up on. We're looking at, you know, AI applied to, you know, uh, security, finance, digital health and, and even those three sectors have subsectors that, you know, it takes a lot of time to actually keep up to date on sort of the areas of innovation and opportunity. Talk a little bit about sort of how you guys keep up on that, that broad area of broad different types of innovation.

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean it's a great question because it is far too much for one person to actually hold in their brain space at any given point in time. So we do have a relatively small team. There's about 10 of us, uh, there's five senior investment managers including myself and each of us picks uh, three to four focus areas in which we become the quote unquote experts in the investment space. Um, and so I handle additive manufacturing, digital transformation, biotechnology and advanced materials. Um, and I look at you know, kind of holistically, where is the space When I get uh, in front of a company that is really particularly interesting as far as a technology approach. I will then utilize the vast network of Lockheed Martin fellows that we have. So Lockheed Martin is a huge company, 130,000 people, 67,000 of those are engineers and about 400 of those are fellows which are true experts in these very specific areas. And so utilizing that network is one of kind of our superpowers as an investor is we can go to these folks who have deep expertise and say is this game changing? Does it break the laws of physics? Ah, what do you think about it?

Speaker A: Right, yeah, yeah, that makes great sense. Well, what an army of technical experts. That's, that's, that is amazing. Uh, Ellen clearly speaks to your value to add, uh, beyond capital deeping, uh, it, you know, dipping into the market insights from those technical experts. I guess the other way I've seen uh, corporate venture groups do a pretty consistent job of adding value. Sometimes they're helping to support co development projects. I'd love to hear more about how Lockheed becomes a customer for. Some of the startups that you invest in um, obviously are an active capital source and I guess occasionally an acquirer. Uh, can you just talk about value beyond capital? Uh, as you see it, when you're meeting with an entrepreneur and you really want to invest in that company, you realize the, the uh, it may be oversubscribed and you sort of have to market. Feel free to give us the unvarnished sort of commercial uh, of how you're marketing to entrepreneurs with uh, regard to value beyond capital.

Speaker B: Yeah, happy to. So I think, you know, obviously I'm a little biased. I think Lockheed has a tremendous amount of value to offer these companies but it is something that we do actually have to tout because each corporate venture capital is different in what they can offer. So for us we really bring expertise in not only technology development. Right. These army of fellows, as you will, which I will steal that term and use it forevermore. Um, we also have deep expertise in how to work on defense related business. We do a lot of education through our Lockheed Martin government affairs team, uh, business development and capture teams. We do a lot of work with um, some of our technical engineers to understand specifications that these companies need to build to. And so we offer a lot of insights I think in product development which is why we go in early. So we look for early seed stage and series A to make sure that we're getting in at the right point where they don't have to build out an entire other business line in order to handle defense customers. Really what we want to do is integrate all the requirements that are needed from a defense perspective into that product development at an early stage so they're not having to spin their wheels in multiple different factions.

Speaker A: Is a commercial engagement a requirement for the corporate venture arm to invest?

Speaker B: It is not. So one of the ways in which we move fairly quickly. Right. We're still a cvc, so we have a lot of hoops to jump through on the diligence side. But we can close a deal in anywhere from like two to three months, uh, which is pretty fast for a CVC, less fast for your traditional VCs. But um, you know, we purposefully said we don't need a purchase order, we don't need a business agreement in order to do these deals so that we could move quickly and get into uh, syndicates as far as funding rounds go. Then on the back end we do a lot of portfolio integration, like a lot of work. We walk them through how to get into our supply chain and into our exostar system which is a whole, you know, that's a whole effort. Um, we also really introduce them and do a lot of internal business development to introduce them throughout the corporation. We have four different business areas all of which are very distinct and they each have different aspects of the technology that they're interested in. And so doing a lot of just meet and greets throughout the corporation. Um, and we've had pretty tremendous success actually. So I would say uh, at one point we were up to 80% of our portfolio, had a purchase order with our businesses or business areas. And I think that you know, is fairly high. Obviously we want it to be 100% but um, we're, we're I think doing the right things in that arena. And then the final thing I want to mention that we do is we set aside of small pool of money and that money is actually used to pay for our engineers. Time to go work with these companies. So they come up with a project that has a quantitative solution that they're looking for at the end of it to help with transition to a larger program. So they have to have this North Star end goal in mind of I want to use this company in this larger program. And in order to do that they need to prove to me X, Y and Z that they can handle being integrated. And so we offer them just a small amount of money, maybe it's 50k, maybe it's 100k to go work with those companies and really figure out how best to integrate them into those larger efforts.

Speaker A: Uh, that's tremendous. I mean I didn't realize beyond capital post investment, uh, your ability to provide co development resources and then purchase orders obviously as an early stage VC looking for quality investors to add to the syndicates that we participate in. If you're bringing capital, co development resources, uh, and a purchase order, you're becoming a customer. That's tremendous. Value beyond capital. So yeah, thanks for that, thanks for that level of detail. I think that most of the corporates that we see are providing interesting market insight. They're somewhat a passive investor but we are seeing a shift in how corporate venture groups are going from a passive role at the series C or Series D to a more active role at the series A and B. And you guys may be leading the charge with regard to the value beyond capital. So, so thanks for that detail. Um, so let's talk about the AI frenzy, right? You know you've got this. I remember the early days of the uh, Internet where it was sort of like where is this going to apply to the business market, to the consumer market? Oh, now we realize it applies to every business segment in every consumer segment. I sort of feel like we're just scratching the surface of where AI might apply. Uh, we're seeing opportunity areas as I mentioned, in security and finance and digital health and education and in some, some other areas. As you think about sort of the evolution of AI and how it applies to some of the sectors that, that you're focused on, uh, talk about your perspective of sort of where this is headed and where the opportunity areas might be.

Speaker B: Yeah, So I think of AI personally as more of a through line than a business in and of itself. Right. So initially you have a lot of companies that are popping up with these large language models which are great. The space did get a little crowded and so now you're finding kind of green space in areas of actual AI application and I think that's where the rubber meets the road. It's going to be really exciting to start to see how AI models are put towards really hard problems. So instead of AI being the selling point, it's the application and the problem that they're solving that is going to be the selling point, which I think is going to be awesome. Um, I think just as an example, right, uh, these companies that are doing federated learning, so AI at the edge and working through metadata, I find that fascinating. I think it provides inherent security, um, and reduces the size, weight and power the swap of these models on edge devices. And so that's um, that's one example of kind of how we're looking at AI is that application space of can we use this at the edge in a contested environment and how are we going to make it work?

Speaker A: Can you talk to me a little bit about. Uh, we have one company that is uh, looking deeply at uh, the security aspects of generative AI and looking at private large language models. And you know, if it's great if we're all able to use this tool and exchange um, and get natural language responses. But the importance of security at an organization like Lockheed I would think would be pretty significant. Uh, we have an AI chip company that's, that's actually focused on that space and creating private LLMs with high performance computing with an eye on cybersecurity. Uh, we were thrilled when Qualcomm, Applied Materials and Softbank came in as follow on investors, uh, because that really helped to scale the scale the company. Are you spending much time thinking about security as it relates to generative AI and private LLMs uh, within uh, sort of the um, information exchanges of Lockheed fellows and people and thinking about it sort of I guess in theaters you might call it and sort of like also within the four walls of your corporation.

Speaker B: Absolutely, yeah. So I think you hit on the big kind of two use cases. Right? There's the use case for our government customers and how you use it in theater. And then there's a use case for how Lockheed uses it as an enterprise and bringing those kind of digital transformation aspects of AI into the business itself. Um, I think there is a large focus on security and how information flows into what buckets. So uh, certainly you can have kind of your base model and then provide different instances for it so that you can kind of silo information. We have a lot of folks in the classified space actually working on trying to figure out how to bring these models in models in but not let any data out. Um, and it's a hard nut to crack. But I think um, there's certainly progress there and aspects that are very interesting for us.

Speaker A: I may have an answer for you. So I'll follow up separately uh, and introduce you to Kournami. It's an interesting company, one of our portfolio companies. Um, but um, moving on, let's talk a little bit about investment trends and get your view on opportunities and challenges. I guess coming off of an election. You know, I guess the last 10 years I've watched the election till the, you know, the hours in the night last, uh, night my daughter talked me into going to the mall which was uh, which was a, huh, ghost town uh, because everybody was watching the election I guess except for us. How did the results of the election create sort of opportunities um, for Lockheed and maybe maybe talk about any significant challenges in the aerospace or defense industries that you think um, might highlight opportunities for new companies or new innovations.

Speaker B: Yeah. So you know I would say with any um, transition of government, right. Any change in leadership, there's always a learning period of what the priorities are going to be for that administration. There's always going to be uh, some learning curves as to which projects are going to get continued versus which projects are going to get held back. And so we're a little bit in a wait and see phase right now. Um, personally I'm on my like 4th cup of coffee of the day because I did stay up and watch the election. So uh, personally uh, we're, we're just kind of in that uh, processing phase right now. I will say regardless, um, of which administration took over, we knew there were going to be Some big themes that we could kind of hang our hat on and focus on, uh, specifically rehoming supply chain, domestic manufacturing and production. Um, AI of course is going to be a huge push, uh, to improve our capabilities, uh, domestically. And um, we know that aerospace and defense, it's always going to have some sort of presence regardless, uh, of administration. So we feel good in that there is interest and continued investment in that defense space. And so I think um, there's a lot of work that we can continue to do and adjust and pivot as the administration starts to set their priorities.

Speaker A: That's super helpful insight. Um, let's talk a little bit about any other requirements for your investments into startups, recognizing uh, that you're leveraging the business units and the fellows for due diligence. Do you need some kind of business unit sponsorship or fellow sign off to make uh, an investment? How much sort of autonomy do you have? I mean it's, you gather these market insights from this, uh, you know, significant army of technical experts. Uh, you've got business units to lean on, uh, but any level of sort of formal internal bu. Sponsorship required before you make an investment.

Speaker B: Yeah, actually so as part of our charter, uh, we don't require a formal agreement between the company and Lockheed or any of Lockheed personnel in any way. That said, in order for us to go up to our investment committee, we do need individuals to sign their name saying yes, I saw this company, I thought it was fantastic. Really interesting. And they become the de facto champion for that business within Lockheed. Which I think is why we've had so much success with integration is that once we've introduced these companies to the fellows and they really take a liking to it, they tend to really double down and say I'm going to help this company through and I'm going to be an advisor for them. And so it's nice to have that personal aspect to it I think for the companies to have their point of contact and their champion. Um, and it's nice for the fellows too. Right. So we worked with our Chief Technology office to make working with our portfolio companies one of the uh, checkboxes. On the long list of things that fellows have to do to keep their fellowship, they have to publish papers and go to conferences and be speakers. But working with a venture portfolio company, uh, handles some of those requirements and gives them a checkbox. It's a really nice way for everybody to win from those interactions.

Speaker A: You're so active, uh, post investment I could see how having a few internal champions could help with the onboarding process, process as you work to ah add value with those portfolio companies. So yeah that makes great sense to me. Let's talk about collaborating with the VC community. I mean we're out there. Impact venture capitalist Connect is collaborating with now hundreds of corporate venture groups looking um, to gain market insight that will elevate our own investing IQ at the seed level. So we bring uh, more relevant uh, uh, uh deal flow by industry stage and by uh industry sector and by stage to the corporate venture partners that we're working with. Um, I think we've now had more than $500 million of follow on capital from corporates into the seed stage investments uh that we've made and it's mostly through conversations like this where it's just a deal flow exchange, market insight exchange understanding of a little bit more about priorities. How are you working with sort of seed in early stage VC funds? Are you just investing alongside of them? Are you acting as an LP in some VC funds? Talk a little bit about the collaborative efforts between you and other early uh stage VCs. Broadly yeah.

Speaker B: So um, we've been around since 2006 so I think we're actually the longest running aerospace and defense CVC in existence I think. Um so we've kind of done it all. We started as a fund to fund investor where we did actually act as an LP in multiple funds. We started still have those relationships with some funds um although it's a much lower focus area like lower priority focus area for us generally we'll invest as an LP in funds that give us access to technologies that maybe aren't as accessible. So we're an investor in Amadeus and Main Sequence. Those give us access to the UK and the Australian markets. Uh we're an investor in SOSB Bio which gives us some of the biotech that we don't maybe wouldn't see otherwise. Um most net mostly now I would say like 95% of our investments now are direct investments in companies as part a part of syndicates. So generally we don't lead although I would say one maybe two out of every ten times we'll take the lead on an investment. Generally um, we come in as a follower, follow the term sheet and the terms that the lead has set and come in with a strategic side letter. Uh that way we don't muck up any of the terms in the process. Um but I would say we co invest kind of across the board because we do leave room for pro rata. I would say we're co invested with uh tens if not Hundreds of other investors and other firms. And that ranges all the way from early stage when we write our first check, all the way through late stage. So we have some companies in the portfolio that I think are on their series E or F at this point. And so we uh, also have relationships with the later stage investors as well.

Speaker A: I found that consistent follow on investments through multiple rounds of financing by corporate venture groups enhances the credibility of that particular group as um, stable in the ecosystem versus uh, the groups that historically were kind of parachuting in for one round and then, and then out and then in and out. The, the lack of consistent support I think uh, created some challenges for some of the corporate venture groups out there. So that's, that's actually encouraging to hear that you're being pretty consistent. Uh, and I think that'll inure to your benefit with uh, regard to you know, deal flow and, and being included in other syndicates. Because there's nothing worse than an early stage investor where you put together that syndicate for the series A and then they don't participate as the series B. In some cases I've seen co leads not participate in the series B. And if you're an entrepreneur that you're out there trying to raise capital and now your lead investors from the last round are not participating in this next round, it creates obviously uh, uh, damaging signal value uh, and create some challenges with those next rounds. So uh, appreciate hearing about the consistent support. Let's talk a little bit about sourcing. We're finding about 3,000 investment opportunities a year that we look at. Many source from the university environment, uh, some source from our corporate venture, uh, uh, co investors, um, uh, that are out there saying hey this is a little bit too early for us, but we think it's really interesting. Do you guys want to take a look and, and maybe mitigate the risk and bring it back to us? And those are very healthy and interesting relationships. Uh, and then we've got just a team that has an extraordinary network of relationships across the country and literally around the world for seed and early stage deal flow, including many of the fellows that are on the Kauffman fellows that are on this call. Talk about your sourcing strategy. How do you um, Are you leaning on business units? Are you leaning on co investors? Are you going to industry conferences? I'd love to hear about it.

Speaker B: Yeah, all of the above. Um, so you know generally uh, I would say we get inbound like very frequently. So of the 10 of us that are working deals, I uh, would say there's we probably look at 2,000 to 2,500 companies a year, uh, which is just a lot of deal flow through. So there's a couple different avenues that we take. One is sourcing from accelerators and partnerships and conferences and events. We get a lot of deal flow that way. Um, additionally we take a look at kind of what funding rounds have already happened over the last 45 days. And we do this every month where we take a look at the previous 45 days, what funding rounds have been completed and make sure that we're paying attention to the companies that have our keyword searches in them. And so we pull down a huge database every month, uh, just for our investors to look through and make sure that they're focusing on the right thing. And uh, finally we do get inbound from the fellows and I think inbound from partners as well. And this is an inherently people driven ecosystem. And so when we get a warm contact like that from a fellow that says, hey, I think this is really cool, or from a trusted co investor who kind of knows our thesis, we can really kind of dig into those companies a little bit easier and quicker because we know that it's from a trusted source. We don't have to necessarily, you know, do a deep dive before we even contact the company to make sure it's a real thing.

Speaker A: Yeah, makes it makes a lot of sense. Um, I have a question for you on um, on founders. I think many founders view the government segment as pretty challenging because it's often viewed as a long sales cycle and difficult to get into. There's some complexities in working through large defense contractors and other sort of government customers. Do you have any advice for sort of the founders that are out there? They're saying, hey, I think I have something extraordinarily valuable for the government segment, but if I focus on it and it takes me nine months to close a customer, I might run out of cash, uh, between here and there. Um, and so how do they, you know, sort of do they dominate, uh, another commercial segment first and then make their way to the government segment. What advice or ideas that would you have for founders that are looking to engage with Lockheed and maybe more broadly the government, uh, sector of customers?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think this is why we've had such a very kind, um, of regimented view of doing dual use companies for so long is because of those long sales cycles in the government. You need a revenue stream to keep you alive and going and investors interested. You don't want to get through three funding rounds and Then say, is there no cash flow yet? Um, that said, there are a lot of companies that are popping up that are defense only now. And so they are having to kind of run into that long sales cycle and adjust for it. And so I think there's a couple different problems and issues that they tackle. One is educating their investors on how to be patient capital in that space and what that revenue source looks like. It's chunky and it's long lead and once you have it, it's sticky, but it's, it's hard to get in the door initially. Um, additionally, you know, there are, we find that founders who come from some sort of defense background, whether that's working with Lockheed or working in the government or working with the small business programs, um, they tend to understand a little bit better how to couch kind of their, um, their proposals so that everything is, is hitting on more of a smooth timeline. And then of course there's always working with like one of the primes like Lockheed. Right. And our sales cycle, I don't know that it's all that much better than the government. But we do our best to really try and push forward the companies that are in our portfolio. We use them as preferred suppliers and preferred vendors. Uh, we try to make the route, the road, as smooth as possible.

Speaker A: If I'm a founder and I'm thinking about how my technology applies to government customers, is it better for me to think about Lockheed as sort of, uh, an efficient access point and a channel to government customers? And so, as opposed to trying to knock on the doors of various government agencies and develop my own relationships, would it make sense for me to think about Lockheed as an efficient access point to those customers?

Speaker B: I think if you're early, uh, that possibly could be the case. Really, I think the more prudent path is to go down both routes, making sure that you are making those relationships in the government and with the defense primes like Lockheed. And uh, part of that is because Lockheed really doesn't do programs unless there is a government customer request for it. So you can work with Lockheed, develop the relationships and build yourself as a supplier to us. But unless there is a government customer knocking at our door and saying, hey, we would like this very specific technology, it's kind of tough for us to put dollars against integrating your technology onto our platforms. So the most successful companies I've seen, um, they've done this kind of dual route where they've gone to the government customer, the government customer loves them, they've gone to Lockheed, Lockheed loves them. The government customer then writes, you know, uh, an RFP for something that is very similar to what they're offering, then Lockheed can take that and go work with the company. Um, so it tends to be a little bit more of like a full ecosystem collaboration.

Speaker A: Yeah, definitely. Um, having a uh, trusted advisor and guide uh, that is economically aligned um, through an investment seems like uh, an advantage for founders. So if they can find the Lockheeds of the world to invest and then help them navigate through the complexities and create some efficiencies in getting those customers, uh, it seems like um, uh, a more efficient path than trying to cold call or knock on the doors of a segment that maybe these uh, founders don't know that well. Um, and so yeah, that's interesting. Uh, okay, we're going to shift to the rapid fire portion of the program. Uh, just three last questions and then we'll open it up uh, to uh, the uh, fellows to ask a couple of questions. Um, but uh, just one question. If you had one technology trend or industry sector that you're most excited about over the next five years, what would you point to? I mean if you think about five years from now, you're looking back on, oh, I made these investments over the last five years. Is there one industry sector? Is there one area of innovation that you're particularly excited about?

Speaker B: So I'm really excited about uh, biomanufacturing and bioindustrialization. So uh, so much of biotech is really has really historically been focused on health care. But because there's this big push to rehome our supply chain and do it in a sustainable way that uses the resources that we have. Homegrown biotech has this open field to just go play and figure out cool and innovative ways to replace some of the chemicals that we use, some of the coatings, some of the resins, some of uh, the adhesives, all those things that have like PFAs in them or terrible chemicals or have like a huge environmental impact, a lot of that stuff can be remediated by the biotech industry. And DIBC is putting a ton of money into those kind of projects. Oh, USD just committed I think $1.25 billion to bioindustrialization. So it's going to be an exciting time in that uh, space for sure.

Speaker A: Okay, thanks for that. Favorite uh, podcast or industry publication. I'm a big fan of All In. I find myself sort of scrolling through uh, LinkedIn, uh, and let my network sort of uh, crowdsource uh, the most relevant things, uh, favorite Podcast or industry publication. How do you think about that?

Speaker B: So I love Acquired. Um, it's a little bit of like a longer listen for folks. Their podcasts are like four or five hours. They're very intense. Uh, but I think it's so cool and I think it's so helpful to understand the history of an industry and the history of a company and these big players because then you start to understand where all these startups can play in that ecosystem and what's right for disruption. I think that one's awesome.

Speaker A: Yep. Okay, last question for you. Uh, from a professional development standpoint, what are you doing or what are your plans or what have you done to sort of bring your A game? I feel like I've the Kauffman Fellows experience. For me, the two year program was just phenomenal with regard to developing friendships, advancing my professional skills and expanding my network. I've also been involved in the entrepreneur's organization eo. I'm not sure if you're familiar with it or how popular that is out in Washington dc. Uh, that's been amazing. And then just trying to be a good sort of thought leader publisher, you know, publishing things that are relevant out to my network. I, I find that those are the things that seem to be accelerating my own professional development. Anything in particular that you would highlight, uh, that you've done or that you have plans for going forward?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think I've been very active in nvca, which I think that organization is fantastic. Uh, VC and DC is a little bit of a homegrown ecosystem, uh, where we share deal flow and we do events together and you develop relationships that way. I think most of my, uh, career development has been a little bit like guerrilla warfare in the trenches. Kind of like, you know, just figuring it out as I go. Um, but there are some really great organizations out there, particularly for women investors. Investors in dc, Investors in Defense. The Silicon Valley Defense Group is an amazing org. Um, and I work a lot with Common Mission Project on figuring out how to bring that startup and you know, lean startup mentality to some of the universities, particularly HBCUs and minority serving institutions.

Speaker A: Super helpful, super helpful on behalf of Impact Venture Capital and the Kauffman Fellows. Thanks Ali for spending some time with us today.