Building Tech For Tactical Decision Dominance | The Pair Program Ep90

Speaker A: Welcome to the PEAR program from Hatchpad, the podcast that gives you a front row seat to candid conversations with tech leaders from the startup world. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, the creator of Hatchpad. Join us each episode as we bring together two guests to dissect topics at the intersection of technology, startups and career growth. Welcome back to the PEAR program. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, joined by my co host, Sean Leahy. Sean, brand new year. Pumped to make some good content with you in 2026, brother.

Speaker B: Oh, likewise, Tim. And we're starting off with a bang for the first one that we're actually recording in 2026. We might have a couple more episodes from 25 coming out first, but this is the first one of the new year. We've got some great guests and, uh, our timing couldn't be better either.

Speaker A: That's right. Yeah. I wanted to just start it off as we were texting earlier about your survival kit for this monster storm heading our way. What, uh, for our listeners who aren't, uh, you know, deep into the, the doom prep lifestyle. What, what's on your, your list of essentials?

Speaker B: I never, I never said I was a doom prepper, but you, you put two, you put two and two together there pretty well, Tim. Um, look, you need that high protein diet with a little bit of fat to back it up. So I just went to Walmart and bought every ribeye they had. Right. I'm not, I'm not taking any chances. Uh, don't worry about generators, don't worry about any backup things like that. You just need a good bundle of wood. You get your, your wood burning stove, you're going to be fine. Yeah, doesn't matter if I dig out in 2036 or 1836, Sean's going to be ready.

Speaker A: Well, I'm gonna hit you because Sean

Speaker C: already has a zombie, um, proof camo on. So, yeah,

Speaker A: I'm gonna hit you for that, uh, spare generator. Uh, family will appreciate it over here.

Speaker B: Of course.

Speaker D: So Les and I are in Bozeman, Montana, and unfortunately for us, we've been praying for the kind of monster snowstorm that everybody else is gonna get. We're getting a grand total of maybe 1cm of snow this week and, oh, damn, until this week, it's been like spring conditions here. So my, my prep for this storm is board shorts, sunscreen, right? A Mai Tai, you know, little boogie boarding out there. Right?

Speaker A: Um, well, good stuff. Well, again, thank you guys for joining. A, uh, little preview of the episode for our listeners. Uh, this is a special one in my opinion. This is where kind of built for the operator actually means something. Um, not talking about PowerPoint warfare or uh, perfect connectivity assumptions. This is going to be tech that works when things get a little messy, um, so you know, decision making when the network's down, uh, the map is wrong and the stakes are real for the war fighter. And so at the center of this all is a company called Reveal Technology. A, uh, company that's quietly becoming one of the most combat validated startups and defense tech building, uh, software that gives operators real time 3D understanding of both physical and human terrain, uh, all while running on devices that they already carry. So we'll be covering three main themes, um, talking a little bit about that Reveal story. Going from the battlefield frustrations to kind of full scale deployment. They kind of cracked a defense acquisition faster than you know, a lot of other startups might. And uh, what this future of tactical edge and dual use innovation looks like from not just a founder's perspective, but also ah, an investor's perspective. So to help us unpack it all, we're joined by Garrett Smith, founder and CEO of Real Technology, uh, Marine Corps Force Recon veteran active reservist, uh, and Les Craig, general partner at Next Frontier Capital, former CIA, CIA officer and uh, lead investor behind Reveals Series A. Uh, guys, thanks for, for joining us on the Pair program.

Speaker D: Thanks Tim. Um, pumped. Uh, Les has been serving on our board ever since Next Frontier invested in Reveal going uh, on two years ago. And um, I think we each have been courting each other for a couple years before that and um, finally made things work out. But um, we're grateful to be uh, in this conversation. We love evangelizing, uh, our mission and the technology that we think is serving the modern warrior in an atypically asynchronously or atypically powerful way. And um, we're just bumped to be on the journey with guys like Les. So Les, thanks for, thanks for joining, um, and excited to have this conversation.

Speaker A: Yeah. And I'll note that Les is actually a returning guest. He's a Pair Program alum. Uh, had the pleasure of trading insights with uh, Mr. Leahy here before, so.

Speaker C: That's right.

Speaker A: Welcome back bro.

Speaker C: Thanks. Thanks Sam. And I gotta say, I think for whatever reason, I think uh, Sean now holds the title. I've been on like by a factor of five or six. I think I've been on more podcasts with Sean than any other human being. Uh, so yeah, this is a.

Speaker B: We all have our albatrosses to bear in life less. And for you, it might just be whenever you give an interview, I somehow happen to be in the same room

Speaker A: and ruin it or you for you. Uh, good stuff. Well, before we, uh, jump in, we. We kick things off with an icebreaker segment we call Pair Me Up. Let's go around the room, share two things that go together. Sean, why don't you kick us off? Yeah.

Speaker B: So this one's very pertinent to our guests. Um, there's this little sub genre of tik, uh, tok videos where contractor guys will take two drills and connect them to, like, two cordless power drills, connect them together, and then run them, and they kind of twirl around and fight, and then eventually one breaks and one doesn't. So it's like Milwaukee versus Ryobi or whatever. Uh, that pairing, I think, is a very accurate representation of Garrett and Les, where we're just going to have them direct them to each other, hit the go button and let them talk for the next 45 minutes to an hour and just watch the carnage ensue.

Speaker D: I was actually going to say that that sounds like something, ah, an army guy would dream up touching tips with, you know, power tools. I mean, that just sounds like, right up your alley. So anyway, yeah, yeah, you probably stole

Speaker A: somebody else's pairing here. Um, good stuff. I'll jump in real quick. It's, it's actually a non pairing. Uh, I'm going to go with skiers and snowboarders. Um, so been snowboarding my whole life, uh, growing up. Never thought twice about this, like, rivalry on the mountain. But as, as an adult, it's. It's becoming more and more clear that these two groups just don't vibe well together. So, yeah, you see, like, skiers will complain about Borders kind of ruining the mo. Their moguls. You got Borders getting called out, being reckless, cutting off skiers. Uh, uh, and it's just a continuous friction between these two. So I'm just kind of holding out hope that, you know, one day, uh, in the spirit of like, a shared stoke, that we can just all get along. And I'm going to point out, you know, Ulta and Deer Valley, uh, if you can find it in your hearts to drop the skier only policy, uh, in 2026, that would be fantastic. So that'll be my, uh, my, my intro and my, my non pairing. But let's pass around Garrett, um, quick intro in your pairing.

Speaker D: So I didn't know that I liked Mezcal until I met Les Craig. So this is like Ah, a good pairing. So, um, I thought I was a tequila guy. I thought I was a tequila margarita guy, and tequila being a subset, uh, of Mezcal, which I think Les introduced me to that concept. He introduced me to a library. Yes. A library of different Mezcals that he stocks at his home. Um, and, uh, I've now been fully converted, so my pairing is actually Mezcal and lime, because a good Mezcal rock lime is one, uh, of the choicest. One of the choicest things I've ever consumed. Unless. Thank you. Thank you for introducing me, Garrett.

Speaker C: Oh, uh, you all. You came so close to making me so proud. Well, young padawan, you still have. It's orange. You go orange slice with the Mezcal. You'll get it. You'll get it, though, eventually.

Speaker D: I'm working. I'm working on it.

Speaker B: I'm not.

Speaker D: Not as sophisticated as you. I'm still learning. Thank you.

Speaker C: It's a good baby steps.

Speaker A: That's good. You're doing.

Speaker C: All right.

Speaker B: Let's. Let's real quick question. How many Mezcals do you want to get in a founder before you pass the term sheet over? Is there an ideal number?

Speaker C: I don't even mess out the Mezcal collection until the term sheet sign, so. Zero.

Speaker B: Okay. That.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's. It's a. It's an honor and a privilege. No, it's, um. It's funny. I. I. I've been. I've been whittling my Mezcal collection down, uh, but I just. I only get it, and I only get it when I travel, so I just got some new bottles. Gary, go over, check them out.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker C: Sean, if you guys are in town too, you're welcome.

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm big fan of Mezcal. Little Mezcal Marg. Little smoky Marg. So good.

Speaker C: I just drink. I. I get, like, really small batch stuff, uh, um, in. In. And I only. It's stuff you can only really buy, you know, from. From, uh, you know, people that curate the stuff in. In Mexico. So it's good, good, good times.

Speaker A: All right. Once it hit you up for, ah, for a supply.

Speaker C: So, uh, yeah, so my pairing, um, I'm gonna actually go with teenagers, uh, and their annoying parents, and the only thing that connects them at this point in life is skiing. So I borrow a little bit from you. Like, I can't do anything with my kids anymore. They won't let me do anything. You know, I'm just the annoying parent that you were so embarrassing when you kicked all my friends out at 3:30am last weekend. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, so, but this weekend we're going skiing, we're going to Targhee and the kids will be my friends for a few hours.

Speaker A: So that's awesome. Are you going to get along with the snowboarders out there?

Speaker C: Nope, there's not a lot of snowboarders at Target. That's what I love. That's what I love about it.

Speaker D: He loves it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I dig it. All right, good stuff guys. Well, thanks again for, for joining us on the episode. Uh, let's just kind of dive into it, Gary. Let's, let's kick things off with you. You know, you've talked openly about, you know, leading missions without paper. I'm um, sorry. With paper maps and outdated tools. So take us back to a little bit of that moment where, you know, that experience where it kind of made you realize that this technology gap wasn't not just an inconvenience but was truly dangerous.

Speaker D: Yeah, I mean on so many occasions I would be confronted with tactical problems. This is when I was downrange.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: This is now 15 years ago, I suppose. But um, you know, the conservative nature of our war fighting establishment is that not much changes in 15 years. So like there have been some advances there and I'm not trying to poo poo the advances made over the last 15 years in uh, you know, the defense arena and equipping our warfighters. But not a ton, right? Not a ton has actually improved or changed. There have been some incremental marginal gains there. But on too many occasions I would like, you know, have a plan, um, and then I would take my marines around the corner and like the operating terrain that we were confronted with in no way was represented on the mapping graphic or whatever I was using for pre mission planning. And you know, we'd encounter a carez or a corral system, we'd have to like negotiate or go around or there was a built up area in a spot where we didn't know that it was going to be and we started taking rounds from over there, you know like so, so the, the risk that

Speaker A: operators uh,

Speaker D: take, uh, on in those kinds of high tempo, high stress operating environments in live combat operations is immense. Um, and it's a different kind of risk than is adopted by you know, a strategic decision maker back in the rear, a general officer or a flag officer, senior policymakers and civilians. They're taking different kinds of risks, political risks, resource risks, um, decision making risks, staff risks and all that stuff. But the True life and death risk lives with that frontline operator that, that warrior class that uh, you know, fires rounds in anger and gets shot at and saves their buddies and calls in uh, close air support and coordinates Kazavak. That, that. And so having lived in that environment for a long time and I'm 22 years and running in, in uh, tactical operations in the US Marines as, as a formerly active duty and now reserve officer. Um, and once upon a time I was an enlisted rifleman too, right? So I've lived, I've lived the spectrum of experiences. I've been downrange, multiple different combat theaters, all that stuff. And um, I got so like indoctrinated with that lifestyle and uh, with those experiences that when I left the Marine Corps, ah, when I left the active duty and found myself in, in Silicon Valley, um, at first I didn't real, I just kind of knew I'd had a lousy experience and a not optimal experience and I'd wished that I'd had something better. But when I landed in Silicon Valley and I started encountering um, uh, venture backed tech startups that were literally changing the way that human beings interact with each other, interact with data, navigate the world, make decisions, buy things, all that stuff, I was confronted by the state of the art of commercial and consumer grade technology. I realized oh my God, like the retrograde military needs to leverage Silicon Valley strengths and the commercial and um, private industrial uh, base to drastically up level and evolve themselves into the 21st century. Because we're not going to survive in a pure, on pure uh, you know, uh, a pure peer on peer conflict scenario. One last snippet here. I realize I'm on a bit of a ramble but mid 2000 teens, so 10 years ago or so there were a number of studies that um, evaluated the uh, US military across strategic operational and tactical uh, operating capacity and capability vis a vis strategic competitors. And we found that we had achieved and deployed overmatch or you know, exquisite excellent capability, uh, overmatch capability within strategic and operational realms. So this is like you know, intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuke silos, surveillance assets, ships, submarines like all these big exquisite things and, and, and other things but that we were actually faced in a new way in this generation with a fair fight scenario with a Russia or China. We never want to go to combat when it's going to be a fair fight. We want to make it unfair fight every single time. And we want to be assured of domination. Why? Because the American people demand it of the military. And um, with that as Kind of the base layer. I knew that I had to be involved with uh, the Defense Innovation Base as it helped the American um, national security establishment confront and overcome these challenges.

Speaker A: So farsight was kind of like that direct answer to that pain point, that frustration. And it's clear, it's resonating. Right? You've deployed across Army, SOCOM, Marines, FSOCs, um, tell us a little bit about that through line feedback from operators using it in the field. I'm always intrigued with that operator feedback loop.

Speaker D: Yeah. So even the most cutting edge um, well equipped units out there in western militaries will deploy with mapping and situational awareness technologies that are um, baseline better than it was for me 15 years ago. But still it's usually low resolution digital maps that mostly um, represent the battle space. But in a place like Ukraine or Russia, the battle, the battle space is changing. Right? Like artillery is destroying roads and bridges and buildings. And the map that was generated last week through the latest satellite collect, it might not represent the actual operating environment as it exists right now. And if I'm in tactical operations and I need to know what's a kilometer in front of me as I navigate through hostile terrain reveals Farsight tool is actually a really great way to get real time, up to date, fresh, high resolution, three dimensional understandings of that operating environment. So what happens is uh, uh, drone assets or surveillance assets generate a hu, a huge amount of overhead video information. And provided that our software can be exposed to that video stream, uh, farsight, our product generates on the fly in seconds to single digit minutes, a full 3D representation of that battle space and then exposes the user to a number of measurement and analytic tools that allows for ready uh, analysis and interrogation of the environment to make better decisions. So instead of going around that corner where an enemy can clearly see your line of approach, maybe go left around that building and use that window as a breach point as opposed to that window. And oh, by the way, you can analyze the terrain for helicopter landing zone, for casualty evacuation, or insert extract in this location as opposed to that location. So it's exposing tactical operators and decision makers to an exquisite set of tools that used to only be available to the highest tier, most cutting edge, most well uh, endowed, um, units uh, that are out there. We've democratized all of that and we've put that into the palm of the operator's hands.

Speaker A: Yeah, super valuable. Les, I want to kind of bring you in here and kind of get your perspective on this um, as a, as an investor, you know, what was that Moment where you kind of knew Reveal, you know, wasn't just kind of like an interesting dual use bet, but a company that you felt could really break through and, and kind of win at scale inside the defense ecosystem.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's a good question, Tim, because, like, as Garrett alluded to, um, you know, our relationship went back years before, you know, I was able to get conviction. And then even after I got conviction, I had to get my partnership, my partnership's conviction, and our investment committee's conviction in order to write the check and roll up the sleeves and team up with. With an incredible, uh, founding team. Um, for me, you know, I think the initial interest for me goes back to really the person. It's Garrett. I mean, that's. And that relationship that we developed and just building trust and his ability to understand the space, understand how to build, um, a company in this category, having the network, having the. Not only the investor network, but the personal and professional network to hire, to recruit. I mean, these are frankly, like a lot of intangibles that founders either have or they don't. And Garrett Adams, so, like, that's foundationally, like, as a CEO and founder, like, he had that from the get go. But then it gets into, you know, a lot of other things. You know, for me, I pulled this, uh, I pulled this off the wall. You know, you guys know I love props. Um, this was the status quo. And I love how Garrett said 15 years ago, because 15 years ago, he kept going back to that number. That was exactly the last time I was carrying around an M4 in 2011. Um, uh, in the intelligence community. But, like, even active duty, maybe this goes back a little further than that. But this was farsight 15 years ago. It's crazy when I see a capability that I can immediately identify and say, yes, this is not just bringing our warfighter at the tactical edge to the present. This is pushing us into the future and the capabilities and the things that you can build on this foundation and this platform with this team, like, all bets are off. This could be something great. And so, and then, of course, there's like, you know, so there's like, conviction there. And. And then, um, you know, and then it gets into some of the nuts and bolts about just like, looking attraction and, and, and validation that the time is right. Um, you know, the time is right, the company's ready to take our check size. It kind of becomes like, for a lot of investors, like a Cinderella slipper fit. You know, it's like, gotta be right for the fund. You gotta be Able to underwrite it. It's gotta be the right stage. It's gotta. There's so many variables that have to fit. And Garrett, like talk about Cinderella slipper, like we threaded the needle. I mean if it came down to like uh, literally I feel like a few weeks time period where it was a perfect fit and that's when we got it done.

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Speaker D: Yeah. In the venture backed technology ecosystem it's very easy to hype up your company and grow faster than revenue will support on an organic basis. And that's enabled by aspirational aggressive venture capital investors who just want to grow, grow, grow and kind of build a hype based, rhetorical, defensible, uh, position as a category leader. Right. And so we stiff armed that way of growing a business. And I think that actually turns some investors off. And again I'm not pandering to the investor. Like Les said, uh, there was every chance in the world that our thesis and our model didn't work for them for any number of reasons. Timing, scale, technology category, market, whatever. And so we're unafraid to quickly sift in or out investors and they, they are willing to do that for us as well. So that the way that we wanted to build the business uh, matched up with the, with the investor community. And again I, I'm not chasing or pandering to the investor group. If it, if what we are works for them, great. If not, I wish you well, you know, go build some other company in some other place. So the way that we approach the market and balance, achieve the balance Tim, that you're talking about is, is um, we first committed to ourselves that we were going to Put the end user first build the tool that we knew they needed and that they would help us build that along the way. And we recognized that in the venture ecosystem maybe that would mean that our initial couple years were going to be slower burn than most investors might want. So I can see Les nodding his head and you know, this is just like an investor truism that they would prefer to see things moving much faster. That's the whole reason for, you know, investing from the venture ecosystem at all. It's to accelerate growth, um, when organic means wouldn't allow you to grow quite as fast. So we were very disciplined in our early days about building the right product, keeping the blinders on, staying focused and living thin until we actually had product market fit. We had a robust product that was ready to go. So by the time we did start raising venture capital, we had proven the value proposition of our core product farsight, and we have a few other products on the platform, but we had proven the core value proposition. We'd uh, identified the target customers. We'd uh, determined that it was a large enough market for it to be exciting for our product and to invest more of our time, energy, resources and to bring more investors on board. So it was really a case of organic discipline, um, and discipline, uh, around our cash spend and opex. But by the time we got that product market fit and, and recognize, uh, it was time to dump gasoline on the fire. We did that responsibly. Too many companies kind of achieve uh, uh, a big uh, venture financing and go and blow that money, get way out over their skis, hire too many people, ramp up the burn without being able to adequately, uh, capitalize on and execute on a revenue pipeline. We were able to do that. We were extremely disciplined. I've got to think that that was one of the reasons Lesson Team invested in us. In addition to many other reasons we demonstrated many years of discipline.

Speaker C: Garrett's absolutely, Garrett's spot on. I mean he speaks the truth. Uh, you know, but, but like people might be wondering, like, why, why in the world would an investor want it any other way, right? Like why would they want you to just blow their money? Why would they want you to, you know, uh, fund growth at all costs? And the dirty little footnote is because that's how most firms are incentivized. That's how their incentives are aligned. And what I, what I mean by that is, you know, if, if you can, if you can write a check and you can get a quick markup, whether it's hype based or whatever, then now, suddenly that position is worth more. You can go back to your LP base and say, look what I turned that into. Oh my gosh, this is, this is such a great win. Yeah, sure, it's on paper, sure it's hyped, it's overvalued, whatever, but, but you can still communicate that. And then you can also, it also creates a rhythm where firms can deploy money faster. And it, guess what? When you deploy money faster, what do you need to go back out and do you need to go raise another fund? Raising another fund means you have more assets under management, means you have more fees. That's the way for most firms, I'm not saying all firms, but a lot of firms, that's the way their incentives are aligned. So I always encourage founders like, know what you want to do, know what you want to be. Garrett is, as a, as a lot of clarity in that. And what we found in Garrett was a founder aligned with our, the way that we do business, which is capital, efficient growth and growing companies responsibly, but still growing, like, still creating, you know, exciting growth opportunities. And so, you know, we are super

Speaker D: aggressive, but we are aggressive, uh, from a discipline perspective. Another item here, Les, is that venture capital ecosystem and venture firms generally operate on the power law. And the real numbers behind the power law is that 60% of a firm's returns are going to come from 6% of their investments. In other words, they don't really care necessarily if every firm or every company they invest in wins. What they care about is having just enough big wins. And it's a very small minority, usually of a fund, uh, with monster outsized returns. So they don't care if they pump up the valuation of companies, one of them is going to win or, you know, one of 10 is going to win, one of 20 is going to win. And when they win, it will make up for all the lost, uh, money and all the other investments. Maybe to help us segue into it into a separate topic, though, like, I would say that the venture ecosystem is learning that defense is not actually always about having the best product. I would say humbly that we actually do have a category defining product and, and all that. But the real secret behind going to market in defense is that you need to solve all of the customers contracting, compliance and acquisitions problems along the way. They might want your stuff day one, but they still need to forecast budget, request it from Congress, be authorized to do it legally on a contract. That makes sense. You need to have facility clearances and all the compliance checks that go along with getting new technology onto military systems. It needs to be integrated across their ecosystem. So there's this, there's this idea that, like, yes, you can build the best mousetrap, but you also need to figure out how to help your customer buy that mousetrap. And so solving that go to market motion in partnership with the defense customer, is actually the main piece of the secret sauce behind a successful defense platform.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, that's, that's kind of teed it up perfectly because you can't really talk defense, uh, tech on a podcast without saying Valley of Death at least once. Right. So how did you execute in terms of, like, procurement. Procurement strategy? Like, what did you do differently with procurement strategy and like, integration with. With services?

Speaker D: Yeah. So, uh, the classic way that the, the rising prime, new defense primes have been going about doing this is they cast a big vision. They say they're going to do it all. They get a bunch of general officers and flag officers, senior civilians, and Congress excited about it, and then they get a gigantic, you know, overblown contract awarded to them. And then eventually, if they ever build something real, it gets crammed down the operator's throats. And, yeah, you've successfully, like, rammed an adoption into the defense. What's up, Les?

Speaker C: My favorite is like, the hundred million dollar IDIQ that we won.

Speaker B: Oh, sure.

Speaker D: Amazing. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, so. So Les is making reference to, uh, a certain kind of, like, contracting vehicle, which is a contract mechanism that greases the gears for selling your product, but it doesn't come with any revenue on it just comes with contract ceiling. So, like, reveal has a $105 million contract that is going to help us service all kinds of customers. And indeed, we've already executed a bunch of purchase, uh, orders on it, but it was $105 million, which at the headline level sounds incredible, except that there's no actual revenue guaranteed there. It's just a vehicle through which you can allow a customer to pump that amount of money. And anyhow, that's. That's like one of.

Speaker C: By the way, for the audience. I wasn't teasing Garrett on that one. I was teasing companies that don't understand that, that win that. And then they think like, well, I should be able to go, I should be able to raise a Series D now, you know?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think you, I think you're right. Lesson. You know, I almost made it through dry January, but then today I heard Valley of Death and idiq. So, yeah, it's going to go out the window.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Um, drinking hand.

Speaker B: Excuse me for interrupting Garrett, but the um, the. I like where you're going with this in terms of the defense tech space because there's been so much change really over the last five years, maybe um, going into year six now, but you had Palantir is really the forerunner back in the teens. But then with Anduril, uh, entering things, it started to grow and then there was kind of this bomb that went off, uh, bad pun there in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s, um, for a long time, number one, you had new entrants who really didn't know exactly what you just said. That it's not about just building a category defining product, but then guiding your customer to being able to buy it and then being able to buy it again in out years by planning with the correct budget and everything. But you also had from the less from the investor perspective, um, investors who really didn't know what the character and dynamics of the defense market looked like. And so they thought it would be hockey stick growth after 18 months, 24 months, and they didn't understand that a strategy like reveals, which is disciplined, aggressive but disciplined, with a little bit of an upfront lag. But then year three or four really getting some traction. Do you think that's starting to change? And this is where I'd like to kind of hear from both of you on different sides of the coin, maybe starting with Les on, um, do investors kind of understand the character and profile of a defense tech investment now? Are they still learning? What's, what's the, what's the current state of things?

Speaker D: I think that uh, there's a chance that the venture capital model is wrong for defense and that um, at least the, the traditional way of venture investing into software, a software dominated tech innovation landscape I think is not appropriate.

Speaker B: Why?

Speaker D: Well, funds and I'm sorry Les, I'm, I'm not lecturing on your topic of expertise here, but you know, a fund, fund life Cycle is typically 10 years. You expect that returns are going to start trickling back what, average seven, eight years after an investment. Right? Well, if we know anything about the defense industry and where it's been, it's that it's a very, very slow industry. Right. It could take you almost that long simply to penetrate a major program of record and get like, you know, actual production technology being fielded into a program. So at first, that first, uh, one of the first major learnings and what reinforces to me that traditional venture might not be right for defense is the timelines just don't match up. You won't know if your defense tech investment is a big winner or not until probably year 10, year 12, year 13. So I think, I think um, I think patient capital is going to be a thing of the future and I think it's already moving that direction. For the defense category, um, uh, a couple of other kind of truisms there, um, that we've learned over time. Um, uh, investors started picking up little bits of jargon that they would throw at you during investor meetings. Right. They'd say like well when are you going to get into the ndaa which is the National Defense Authorization act, which is ah, policy legislation that um, has some impact but like what they really meant is uh, is Congress appropriating money to you, which is a completely different piece of legislation called the Defense off, uh, um, Appropriations um Act. Right. So the investor community has like slowly been waking up to this as a category. I think they're still deeply inept as a general um, grouping at talking about this intelligently which betrays the fact that they don't understand it which again is fine. But I think it's meant that uh, some companies have been able to pull the wool over investors eyes in a pretty significant way. And what we're going to see is a bunch of flame outs. So I don't think I'm breaking any news here but Rebellion Defense stood up a while ago run by Chris lynch, got a bunch of venture investment turned into a unicorn multi billion dollar private valuation. Uh, they just flamed out and were privately bought fire sales style by one of their early stakeholders for pennies, I mean talking pennies. And that's just one of many examples of how the venture industry is on a learning curve and I think we're going to see a number of flameouts before we see some big proof points. And then on the proofpoint side les chime in here but proof point side like there haven't been any, there haven't been any. Palantir was a 20 year, I'm not quite 20 year but like what a 15 year run to eventually going public and they have a large market cap now. It's an incredibly valuable company but like what else is there? SpaceX hasn't gone public, Andrew hasn't gone public. There haven't been big liquidity events for investors who have been investing in this category since 2016, 2017. So I'm on a run.

Speaker C: Less tagging on the whole I, I agree with Garrett, with you know on the whole of, of kind of his, his contention there, um, with, with VCs getting involved in um, in defense tech. But I think there's a couple interesting kind of subtleties I'll tease out. You know the first is um, I think like, like you could see I would agree that like funds and strategies of funds that are 100% focused on building a portfolio of all defense tech investments. I don't understand that at all. Like I don't understand how they build those fund models. I don't understand how they underwrite those investments. I don't understand how they manage those portfolios. To me it's that sponkers. Um, but people are doing it. So I mean maybe they're, they're, I would hope they're, they're smarter than I am and that they have it figured out. But I don't understand it. Um, that being said, I think there are strategies like for instance our firm strategy. I'm the only one that, that really kind of leans heavily into defense tech deals at our firm. And I'm starting to bring one of our other partners in as well and he's doing a great job. Um, but, but we're only going to probably you know, lead one or two defense tech deals per year as part of a microstrategy in our larger fund strategy which is regional, regional uh, seed to Series A, uh firm. So it actually builds a nice little diversification, diversification for us and gives us access to some really unique deal flow. So for me that's like, I think that's a portfolio advantage. I think in order to do it well though, yes, you have to understand the industry of course. But most importantly if you have to understand your own underwriting model and the way that I underwrite defense tech deals, understanding the category, understanding how to underwrite them, when I'm getting in, when I'm getting out, they make sense. They make a lot of sense for our portfolio and they're very exciting venture class returns. And the last thing you have to know is how to underwrite these or uh, how to manage these investments. It's all about portfolio management. If I would have led Anduril's series A in 2018, I probably would have been sitting pretty good in 2025 when they raised a $2.5 billion series G. And I could have sold that whole position out in secondary at a $30 billion, 30.5 or whatever it was, billion dollar valuation, that would probably be a good outcome. And I think secondary is a mechanism hopefully that earlier stage defense tech funds can get liquid and realize value back to their LPs. So that's kind of how I think

Speaker A: about it in the essence of time. Just because I know we're uh, in a little bit of a crunch here, Garrett, I wanted to make sure that we spent just a quick snippet talking about this kind of like ecosystem for autonomy at the edge, uh, that you're driving and with one of those ways is shaping kind of like the culture with uh, Battle Lab. Uh, so it's the series that you launched on Vet tv. I had a chance to kind of check out the trailer uh, this afternoon. Very, very cool. But can you just explain it to our listeners, uh, what it is and, and what you're hoping to achieve with it.

Speaker D: Sure. Um, Battle Lab is uh, uh, what we think of as um, a very compelling activity that allows us to do a few things at once. One is replicate something like real world operating scenarios so that we can test and experiment with new technologies in our products in uh, something like real world scenarios. And that there's, it's invaluable to get your, your technology, your products exposed to real world conditions so that it actually works when it gets to the field. Um, you know, in too many cases we've seen uh, all the hype that goes into, you uh, know, a western technology company selling or deploying a uh, you know, a critical technology to the front lines in Ukraine and it completely fails uh, in that context because of the electronic warfare environment, uh, or any number of other stressors or conditions of the, of the modern battlefield. So it allows us to address that, you know, get something like a real world training or test experimentation venue. Um, and the second is that we can help our active duty thought partners and counterparts develop new tactics and techniques to marry up with the new technologies that are being fielded. So it's, it's kind of like a live thought leadership, tactics, techniques, training or experimentation ground that we can invite our customer stakeholders into. So what is Battle Lab? I kind of like, you know, leaned in a little bit hard there without actually talking about what it is. Um, what we do is four to six times a year we convene at uh, a location and it rotates depending on what conditions or operating environment you want to. We want to test in. We get a force on force situation developed. So we have a small team, team, uh, Alpha and team X ray that go against each other in uh, accomplishing tactical tasks. An example might be a strong point scenario where one team is trying to assault uh, into a built up area and take over a building or a Structure that's being defended by their opposite numbers. And what we do is we outfit one of those teams with one set of technologies and capabilities and equipment, and the other team with a different set or no capabilities beyond kind of a baseline set of, uh, you know, guns and radios and helmets and ppe. And what that does is allows us to run iterative training lanes or experimentation lanes where we see the effects or the challenges of integrating new technology into that type of environment. So we get reps running through tactical scenarios. And the kind of. The cool thing that. The flashy thing about it is that we capture all of this on video. Every operator's, you know, carrying a helmet cam or a chest cam. There are film. There's a film crew following each one of these, you know, elements as they move through a tactical scenario. And we're capturing all of it and we've gamified it so there's a scoring mechanism. And then we run through a lane, recock, run through it again, recock. We score it, we flip offense, defense, we uh, switch up the equipment, loadout for each of these teams. And then in the end what we have is like something kind of like a reality TV show, except that it's real. Right. This is real, uh, consequential new technology being fielded into the hands of real operators. And we have the benefit of having some great partners who are all former tier one soft types. And so these are literally the best of the best of the best. Testing and experimenting new technology. We capture it all on video, we make it available to the general public, and then we, you know, extract learnings from it and cycle that into product development. And um, it's an invaluable platform. We've. We've now fully, uh, filmed, uh, two seasons, each one having multiple scenarios. And it's being released with our partners at Veteran Entertainment Television or VET tv, uh, and our buddy John Acevedo, former Marine and really good friend of the company.

Speaker A: Very cool. Yeah, I want to make sure we plug that, uh, in the episode because it's a very, very interesting, uh, kind of like transparent look into field testing and Les, I'd imagine that's got to help with investor confidence when you get a chance to kind of see some of this, uh, and how it really works in action.

Speaker C: Yeah, it's fun and it's kind of like, uh, as boring as my kind of day job is it kind of like every once in a while I get one of those videos and it's kind of live a little vicariously through those guys remembering the glory days in places like Fort Bragg and other, the Fort Bragg Mount site, you know, places like that. So yeah, uh, maybe Gary, maybe uh, maybe we should do an investor, uh,

Speaker D: just to break in real quick. We filmed, we filmed in North Carolina. We're about to do another season where we uh, were again. I don't think I'm teasing or spoiling too much. We're going to be out in Texas and it's simulating US Southern border or uh, Central South America operations, which is obviously relevant to the news cycle. It's not that we're warmongering and encouraging, you know, uh, our military to go and operate in these areas. We're simply trying to like mimic and understand those modern operating environments. And then later in the year we'll be doing a, ah, season in Montana, um, we'll be doing one in Hawaii to kind of mimic that Indo Pacom, littoral, maritime jungle kind of effect as well. So it's um, it's a pretty cool project. And encourage, I'd encourage your listeners to check it out.

Speaker C: I got a great idea, Garrett. Why don't we get the board to go to one of these events and we like your board members, we can be role players. Like maybe get, get like a goat costume I can put on and to like run around the village. Um, you know, we can get just

Speaker D: like that party you and I went to last year. Um, this is incredible. Can you imagine Peter pays, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, you know, strapping on kit and going and breaching a door.

Speaker C: Could be like the village elder. You know, we could get uh, Neil could uh, like pedal, you know, a cart selling uh, you know, uh, goat or something. I don't.

Speaker A: Yeah, ah, just bake in a lot of like snack and beverage breaks in between

Speaker D: Ben Gay and ibuprofen. Yeah.

Speaker A: So, uh, in closing, just one final question to you, Garrett. You know, how do you kind of prioritize like what's next for you and what's on the roadmap? Just give the, give uh, us a little bit of a tease of what's on the vision board.

Speaker D: Yeah. So, um, growth is happening, as Les mentioned, disciplined growth is happening, but it's aggressive. Um, we double in our headcount over the course of 2025, we tripled our revenue profile. That trend is going to continue as we build organic capability, as we capitalize on the go to market, uh, channels and vectors that we've established. And I think you're going to see, you and your audiences are going to see a couple of Things come from us this year. First, we are acquisitive. We're buying companies. Um, uh, we're likely to make an announcement here in the near term about a couple of those activities. Um, every platform, um, every defense vendor, every prime contractor in the space is inherently a consolidator and is acquisitive. We're not going to behave any differently. We're going to buy up companies that have incredible teams and technologies. And um, we're going to do that in service to our customer base. So be looking for big growth. Um, from a revenue, a technology acquisition perspective, um, all of that. Um, we are styling, uh, ourselves as the rising prime contractor for the Warrior. So you've got all these prime contractors and defense industrial players and upstarts who are building exquisite systems. Like we mentioned or discussed earlier in the conversation, we are the prime contractor of the 21st century for the Warrior. Like if, if a Warrior needs tech, that's going to be a piece of reveal technology, or reveal is going to facilitate getting that piece of technology to the Warrior, um, through a prime contract by system integrating or solutioning for our customers. So we are definitively on that pathway. The venture ecosystem may play a role there. We might continue to opt, um, into taking on additional venture capital, which sometimes makes splashy headline fodder, sometimes it doesn't. We'll see. Um, and uh, we're just excited about, you know, uh, carving out a pathway toward deterrent, uh, posture for the United states in the 21st century. War is awful. Uh, you know, we've experienced war. I've been to many combat zones. It's a terrible thing. Yeah, it's fulfilling. It can be exhilarating, but it's awful. And the goal here should be to deter open conflict. I'm grateful that we haven't been pulled into open boots on the ground conflict in some of these, uh, hot areas in what I think is a new Cold War. Thank God we're not actively, overtly in Ukraine, Russia. Thank God we're not putting troops on the ground of Venezuela or elsewhere. So the idea here is to build the defense industrial base from the innovation perspective so that we never have to go to war, so our kids never have to go to war. Um, and I think the way that we do that is by outfitting our warriors with the best possible technology that's revealed.

Speaker A: Yeah, well said, man. Uh, we're excited to track it. Um, and uh, yeah, we'll wrap here with a final segment. We call it the five second scramble. It's just rapid fire. Q&A. Give uh, us your best answer within five seconds. Uh, Sean, why don't you lead off with less and then I'll close with Garrett.

Speaker B: My, my, less. How the tables have turned. Last time you and I were on the same side.

Speaker C: Careful what you wish for here.

Speaker A: Ye.

Speaker B: Uh, it'll be a little truncated just the interest of time. But our first question, Les, uh, if you weren't in defense tech and if you weren't investing.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So take, take both of these off the table. Both of those off the table. What's an industry you would want to disrupt? Not one that you're just be interested in, but what's one you'd actually want to try and change?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, uh, I'm really intrigued right now with uh, with like commercial applications of uh, of drones. So like, I'd probably lean heavily into drones, whether that's delivery or something else.

Speaker A: But.

Speaker C: Yeah, something drone related.

Speaker B: Yeah, like a drone style cowboy stuff out there in Montana.

Speaker C: Hurting.

Speaker A: Hurting, yeah, drone hurting.

Speaker B: Yeah. Right on. Uh, what's a skill that you've learned in your career that at first you thought it'd be completely useless, but it's actually turned out to be kind of handy?

Speaker C: Ah. Ah. Um, I'd say, uh, probably just, just the ability to, to model investments. You know, it's. I was always more of a qualitative guy, like go with the gut. And I think, you know, Richard Hargest at our firm whose background in Citadel really instilled the importance of it. And over time I've learned the value of it. So just a deep, deep, deep modeling,

Speaker B: financial model balance between that, the qualitative and quantitative. Um, if you could use AI to solve one investing or venture specific problem, what would it be? And you can't say sourcing.

Speaker C: Uh, honestly, like, I think diligence is something that I think is very, is like critical to an investment. But I want to talk to people. I don't want to have to write investment memos. I hate writing investment memos. I love doing diligence though, so.

Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. Uh, and then I'll finish up with this one because I think it's also applicable to Garrett. But I'll leave Tim for your five second scramble. But they call Montana the last best place. Is Montana and specifically Bozeman going to be the next best place for defense tech?

Speaker C: I'd say it is the best place right now. So I, uh, don't even think about it as the next. It's the best place if you, if you scratch your head and don't know why? Come out here and we'll show you why.

Speaker B: Oh,

Speaker D: many of you, but not too many of you.

Speaker A: Not too many.

Speaker C: Only if you're. You're like, good too, if you're cool.

Speaker B: The winners are filter them out, right? I mean, I know you guys don't have. You're a little bit behind, but, uh, when it's negative 20 out in, in January, February, and we'll see who's actually, you know, in it to win it.

Speaker C: As we sometimes say Montana's, uh, full, but I hear North Dakota is pretty nice too.

Speaker A: Uh, we'll have to run that Mike Tomlin question by him offline. Sean. Uh, that was a good one. Um, all right, Garrett, you ready?

Speaker B: Hit it.

Speaker A: All right, if, ah, Reveal were a band, what genre would it play?

Speaker D: Punk rock.

Speaker A: Nice. What, uh, are a couple of critical roles that you're looking to hire for in the next three months?

Speaker D: Well, I'm actively interviewing for a chief financial officer. We've got a lot of skill sets in the company, and we've been growing like gangbusters. We need a real talented, um, you know, chief of finance to take us to the next level. Um, we're also exploring a lot of different new markets. So, um, we don't have any specific wrecks open. But I'm opportunistically always on the hunt for how do we breach into a new market. I need specialists who know how to navigate those markets. And you know, our, most of our customers are public sector. Right. So we need specialist ninjas who can take us into X, Y or Z countries. Public sector. Um, that's, that's, uh, that's just a couple of them.

Speaker A: Cool. What's, uh, one leadership lesson from your time in the military that's directly shaped

Speaker D: how you run Reveal, Um, uh, and higher excellence. Um, which a lot of times in the, in the military, you don't have a choice in hiring. Right? You're kind of like assigned bodies. But, you know, sometimes you have the, the ability to promote or shift roles around. And so I would say hire or promote excellent operators and then enable them to go and be them their best selves rather than micromanaging, like too much, uh, leadership in the military is actually micromanagement. I actually don't think that it's leadership at some level. And I think letting go of the impulse to like, get too deep into the weeds and details, especially on topics where you, the decision maker, are not an expert, is actually deleterious to the mission. And instead you should hyper enable excellence and hire people who are better than you, uh, and then defer to them and enable them. That's, that's the key.

Speaker A: Awesome. Uh, you're based in Bozeman. You know, what's an outdoor activity that you lean into to decompress?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: So we talked about, uh, a little bit about some of this, um, before the show, uh, went live. But, um, I recently got into, well, I'll say what I was into before and then talk about the migration. I'm an ultra distance trail runner. I'm not a good one, but I'm an ultra distance trail runner. I love to suffer. I love to be in the mountains. I love to suffer in the mountains. So, uh, you know, those things kind of married up, uh, in Montana with the landscape and geography here to just, I mean, it's a trail runner's paradise up here. It's amazing. And then I recently, in the past few years took up a sport or a discipline called speed riding and speed flying. So it's a small paragliding wing that you either foot launch or ski launch. Um, and, uh, I think in my background I might have. I don't know if this is a video recording, but I've got a picture of me in the French Alps. Uh, speed flying, uh, in my background, it's an incredible sport. It's obviously high risk. It's a wind wing sport. And, um, it takes a lot of good training. So if you're listening and you're thinking, oh, that sounds awesome, and I'm going to go buy a mini wing and go fly, I'll do that. Get a professional to tell you exactly how to do it and train you. But it's an incredible way to be in the outdoors in a place like Montana.

Speaker C: Most most importantly, we have that key man insurance policy. Okay, just making sure.

Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Board fiduciary question right there. Thanks, Les. Yes, we do. It's a robust package. Yes.

Speaker A: Uh, all right, last, last question. What's a charity or corporate philanthropy that's near and dear to you?

Speaker D: I've got two. Um, so for those who don't know, uh, the unseen catastrophe of the, the um, of suicidality amongst military veterans is incredibly overwhelming. If you get into the data, you know, we're talking something on the order of 17 military veteran suicides a day over the last 20 years. Specifically global war on terror, period. Right. So this is 2001 to present, and that totals to many hundreds of thousands of veteran suicides. So I currently serve on the board of an organization called the. The Impossible foundation, which is an endowment like entity that raises uh, money and then directs that capital and resource to nonprofits and programs that are making outsized impacts and reducing that incredibly sad, tragic statistic. And um, you know I've, I've had family members and friends uh, involved with you know the uh, with that, with that, that crisis moment. And um, it's a uh. It's an incredibly important thing that we as a nation need to pay more attention to. And I think you know the, the philanthropic sector has uh, every, every ability to make you know, strong impact there. So I serve on a board there. And the second is a um. The Impossible foundation also is a Bozeman based charity. Another that is near and dear to our heart is ah, another Bozeman based outfit called warriors in Quiet Waters which um, addresses many of those same transitioning kind of post active duty veteran populations who find it difficult to transition back into real life um, and find mission and purpose as fully realized individuals. And they have some incredible programs that get people um, uh, out into the outdoors with mentorship and cohorts uh, that uh, enable them to be them their best selves. So the Built for More program, uh, which is one of their many program offerings is an incredible thing. I've had friends and family members go through it. It's a great thing. CEO Brian Gilman also is a former Marine Corps boss of mine and uh, he's here local in Bozeman and runs the national warriors and Quiet Waters organization. And then uh, my, My uh, uh, my. My friend Andy Worth is the CEO and president of the Impossible Foundation. Also an incredible patriot. Um, those are two. Sorry that was long winded but those are.

Speaker A: Oh man. No, we'll make sure we plug those as well. Uh, appreciate you calling them out and uh, that's a wrap guys. Garrett, last thank you both for, for joining the conversation and joining us on the podcast.

Speaker D: Sam.