Mission Speed: How Commercial Innovation Is Reshaping Defense Acquisition | The Pair Program Ep92

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 Pair program. I'm your host, Tim Winkler, joined again by my co host, Sean Leahy. Uh, Sean. Yeah, we're nearing the, uh, the close of the, the 2026 Winter Olympics. Uh, so have you kept up, uh, with any of the action?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, I mean, not necessarily directly, but, uh, I've gotten some, some pretty passionate group texts, usually past 11pm Right. For some, maybe some folks who are enjoying curling at the bar. Uh, but I feel like. Yeah, exactly. I mean there's some, there's some. Definitely some flame wars going on. M. I did see that there's a bit of a, A controversy with, uh, I think a skier like, called out his ex girlfriend after winning a gold medal or something. I probably had the details a little

Speaker C: bit wrong, but I, I think, yeah, I think he like cheated on his girlfriend or something and then like announced it and apologized and trying to make like this grand gesture and it just went totally sour.

Speaker A: It kind of blew up in his face.

Speaker C: Not the right forum.

Speaker B: Yeah, you don't, you don't, you don't usually expect the Winter Olympics to be that spicy, but there you go.

Speaker A: Yeah, we actually had like a local, uh, I guess figure skating hero. He's actually out of like Vienna, Virginia. Um, right, the quad. The quad. God.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Ilya.

Speaker A: Ilya.

Speaker C: Oh, the backflip.

Speaker A: Yeah, the backflip guy. And uh, just had an absolute meltdown. I feel awful for him, but yeah, he had like a, ah, just a complete mental breakdown and just his entire performance was like, he got like last place. But, um, I kind of, I felt bad. But then I also kind of coined him the quad Fraud after that. Like, I don't think he deserved the quad guy title. Uh, but Sean, I wanted to ask you, you know, if you're a competing winter, uh, Olympics, what's. What's your sport? What are you going with?

Speaker B: Biathlon. They give you a gun.

Speaker D: That's easy, right?

Speaker B: You ski and then you get down prone. Shoot. I think it's actually like, is that

Speaker A: a new one or is that always been.

Speaker B: It's been around for a while, but I think they're using, they use like rim fires. I think they use 22s because in the summer Olympics. A lot of the shooting events they use electronic like or digital captures for the, for the target shooting. No, no, it's got to go bang. So definitely biathlon.

Speaker A: Yeah. I was, I was thinking you were going ski mountaineering.

Speaker D: If I could offer.

Speaker C: How about that guy running uphill and like six minute mile uphill. I'm like, unbelievable.

Speaker D: It is crazy. Sean, on the biathlon piece of things, I somehow, when I was in the National Guard, figured out how to get myself or was forced onto the biathlon team. And so representing Arizona as a person who I was coming from the Cypress section, so like you can shoot. And then I was also like a, uh, high pt. I was like, you're fit, you can do this. And I live in Arizona. We do have snow, but very rarely in my like skiing or doing like anything along those lines. So the first time I went out there, the chasm between me finishing and a guy who finished in first place who at some point had been in the Olympics was profound. It was like three and a half hours. I was still on my first lap trying to figure out how they made a course 100% uphill the entire time. And I'm like stripping clothes off so I'm unprepared. The other guy's like waving at me as he's going back into the lodge. And I did really well in the shooting part. That part was easy, but it was the uh, I had no idea how to do this crazy skate skiing, which is different than cross country and different than regular skiing.

Speaker B: Oh, ye.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker D: So easier said than done. That's all.

Speaker B: Yeah, I just want to, I just want to double tap on that for our listeners that um, you know, an Arizona, you know, based guy was drafted for, for the BIA biathlon in the United States Army. Anything is possible, right. There are no limits.

Speaker D: I love it.

Speaker A: I love it. Yeah, I was going to go, um, I'm going full send on a snowboard, half pipe. I think that's. Yeah, I go once a year. I figure I could probably. Yeah. Keep up with.

Speaker B: Yeah, you were, you were training early this year. You're out there in Utah. You were.

Speaker A: Yeah. Tag you in training with, um, no conditions.

Speaker C: Yeah, I'm going skiing this weekend in Bam. So, uh, uh, not really.

Speaker A: Well, hopefully it's uh, it's better conditions than what the first half of the winter has been out there.

Speaker C: Out in the west they actually have like record, they have record snow this year and everywhere in like the west is like record lows.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's been crazy. I think they're getting two feet this week, so I'm sure they'll be all right. All right, I'm going to tee us up for today's episode. So today we're talking about moving at mission speed, um, shortening timelines, rethinking acquisition and building ecosystems that allow commercial innovation to thrive inside the defense world. Um, to tackle the conversation, we've got two great guests joining us who are pretty deeply embedded, uh, in that mission. One's accelerating dual use startups that already have commercial traction but need help kind of cracking the defense market. Uh, the other is shaping the national security innovation infrastructure in one of the fastest growing defense regions in the country. Uh, so first, uh, join us is Darian Harris, managing partner at Fuse Accelerator, helping scale stage dual use startups grow across both commercial and government markets. Uh, Darian, on my research 5.5X founder go to market. Kind, uh, of expert and, uh, driving force behind some of the most successful dual use transitions, uh, coming, uh, out in the last couple of years. So thanks, thanks for joining us on the podcast.

Speaker C: Thank you. I always like to say I'm foolish enough to try. That's, uh, it's really all you got to do. Just make it happen.

Speaker A: That's most founders got to, um, and then alongside Darian, we've got Drew Trojanowski, uh, president CEO of Southwest Mission Acceleration center, uh, better known as the Mac. Drew's, uh, worn a lot of hats from White House policy, lead military sniper, uh, national innovation leader, and now focused on removing, uh, barriers that prevent tech from reaching the mission that need it the most. So, uh, thanks for joining us, Drew.

Speaker D: Of course.

Speaker A: Uh, good stuff. All right, guys. Now before we dive into the main conversation, we, uh, have a little tradition on the pair program. We warm up with, uh, something called pair me up. Uh, we'll go around the room, spitball, uh, two things that kind of go together. Sean, why don't you lead us off? What do you got for us today?

Speaker B: Yeah, I kind of hit it at it earlier, but it's, um, group texts and just unread chaos. Uh, yesterday I had my phone on deep focus mode for a couple hours. I was cranking away, and then I popped it open and, you know, I had 67 unread texts in one group chat. And people are breaking up over the Olympics and AI stuff. Uh, just, just absolute chaos. But I'm sure we've all been there, especially after plane rides usually. And, uh, other times where your, your phone's not connected, do you ever take

Speaker A: the time to actually reread them? Or are you so, like, buried, you're just like, um, I'm just gonna.

Speaker B: Oh, I decided I go for the chaos. I won't even read it, and I'll just be like, you know what? Tim was right. Just throw that in there. See?

Speaker A: They're like, who the fuck is that?

Speaker C: I was gonna say everybody who knows me knows that I just, like, open it and close it. Let it go. And then when somebody asked me about it, I'm like, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Reread the last 70 messages and find out.

Speaker C: Yeah, no chance.

Speaker A: Uh, cool. Good stuff. I'll jump in. Um, yeah, also kind of a little. Little, uh, segue back from the. The opener up. I'm gonna go with FPV drones and the Winter Olympics. Um, so anybody. Oh, yeah, that's been watching, like, you. You can'. Seeing or. Or hearing, you know, one of these little, tiny drones that are trailing, like, every athlete, just kind of ripping down the course. Um, I did a little, like, search, and it was like, yeah, they're going up to, like, 60 plus miles per hour. Um, the footage is insane, but it's, like, the precision that it takes for these pilots that are trailing. Like, I was thinking about, like, the bobsled or the skeleton events. Like, there's, like, zero margin for error considering, like, this little alley that they're, you know, that they're trucking through. So it's just pretty cool. So I was gonna go with, yeah, these drones, which is. They're getting a ton of press right now in the. In the Olympics.

Speaker B: So do you think there's, like, a SOCOM recruiter in the. In the audience who's just watching the drone pilots and be like, sure, what do you ask? Another job?

Speaker A: Yeah, for sure, man.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker D: Did you see the one? They did a backflip, and I had a drone basically fly through the person as they were, like, folded over in the middle of their backflip, and it caught. Yeah, that's.

Speaker A: That's a. That's a. No, no, I think. I think they have to trail them, right? They can't ever be right over them just for safety reasons, but that's pretty cool. I kind of want to now watch that, uh, that video footage. Um, cool. All right, uh, let's pass it around to, uh, to our guest, uh, Drew. Quick intro in your pairing.

Speaker D: Um, Drew Georgenowski, CEO of Southwest Mac. Yeah. Thank you for letting us be here, and glad to have the conversation and pairing. I mean, we were talking about before the call. So I guess being married, having a bunch of Kids and always, I mean, that's uh, an easy one. But you know, like, I, I think also like just teasing, uh, like with Sean and going that route, I think we end up always, um, with Darien, there's like, prolific amount of Instagram finds and I've tuned my Instagram feed to be just like nothing but nonsense and funny things because it's like a event relief as opposed to trying to avoid all political and like down selecting all those things. So it's a prolific amount of finding nonsense and in the feeds that just crack you up from either in the past, something that someone's made with AI and like proliferating that into the group chat as much as you can.

Speaker C: It's a frequent thing. Like we'll. I'll probably have multiple on this call and you'd be like, when did he see. How did he.

Speaker A: Yeah, Our goal is to create some short clips, uh, from this and, and dub everybody's, you know, with some AI just to, just to get some buzz going.

Speaker D: Perfect.

Speaker C: Cool.

Speaker A: Uh, yeah. Thanks again for joining Drew. Darian, quick intro in your pairing.

Speaker C: Yeah, uh, quick intro. Uh, Darian Harris started, uh, next to multiple companies in multiple different spaces. Um, so kind of come from the startup world. And so when, when Drew and I kind of put these pieces together, um, I think it's, it's been relatively, um, revolutionary. So I guess I'll give, I'll cheat and I'll give. Two pairings. One serious, one non serious. I'll, uh, go. Startups and corporates. Um, a lot of people are afraid in the startup world to like, take things to corporates too early. They don't understand how it works. Like, there's entire teams designed to receive these things. And if you do it right, it's very effective on the non serious side. And I can just imagine Drew's shaking of the head when I say this. Canes, raising canes, chicken and skiing. So my retirement plan someday is to. My retirement plan is to put canes on ski mountains. Because every time you're at a ski mountain, you're hungry, you get these terrible chicken fingers. And you could have canes with some cane sauce right there live.

Speaker A: Oh, damn. That's a great idea.

Speaker C: That's a game changer.

Speaker D: We, I was telling Darian that we all went this last year. I took the whole gaggle. Four kids, a wife and the whole family. Like, we had gone to Italy. Uh, we were in Rome for some stuff and then we went up to the Dolomites. I didn't know, not know what to expect. I mean you see pictures and it's like the Sound of Music, right? It's stunning. And then you get done with this like, you know, winding five mile hike and you end up at this crazy hut which would used to technically be Austria. So you've got like just Bavarian food. You've got schnitzel and um, sausage and great beers. And you know, there's like baffled, like this is in Italy and it's some of the best like end of day hangout. And they also like had crazy like in the middle of the mountains, these crazy playgrounds for kids to go on to. So it was perfect for us. We're drinking and having a good time and kids are off on swings again in the Sound of Music. So it's amazing. It's a good idea. But why Canes? Come on, buddy.

Speaker A: I mean, Canes has a cult following, man. Like, I drove down to Florida, uh, a couple months ago and they had a ridiculous amount of billboards just like team people up. Like raising canes is coming. Get ready.

Speaker C: 78 miles.

Speaker A: 78 miles. Yeah, it's like that and Buc ee's, man, it's just insane.

Speaker C: I was gonna say Bucky's is like we have one here that is. They're building a Bucky's in Arizona, but like right now the closest one is in Texas, which is a whole state away. And you're like 10, 58 miles from a Buc EE's.

Speaker A: Oh yeah, we just opened our first in Virginia and people are just like standing outside like it's you know, going to Disney World or insane.

Speaker D: Cool.

Speaker A: Uh, guys, all right, good, good, uh, pairings all around. Let's, let's uh, transition to the, the main discussion. So on this episode we want to cover three main themes. The first was, you know, how modern conflict is, uh, forcing the do do to rethink how it acquires technology. Um, and you know, obviously why speed is, is so essential. Um, you know, we'll talk a little bit about dual use startups. Um, obviously you can't, can't talk, uh, dual use and defense tech without talking about the valley of death and scale there. So we'll cover a little bit of that. And then also, uh, wanted to obviously talk a little bit more about these mission aligned ecosystems like, like Fuse and the Mac and how these are reshaping, uh, you know, the path from prototype to program for a lot of commercial companies trying to innovate in defense. Uh, Drew, let's, let's kick things off with you. You know, you've kind of been on both sides of the table. It's a war fighter now working, working to really kind of bridge that gap between innovation and adoption. You know, where do you see a lot of traditional acquisition models breaking down when speed's, you know, so essential?

Speaker D: Um, I mean, it's a good question. And I think really what it kind of boils down to is you always have fundamental misalignment. I mean, everybody is looking for stuff, everybody's trying to find stuff. Like, just organizationally, just like a little context, too, for us. Um, you know, you look at it like a decade ago, and as give or take the time frame, I was up on the Hill, so, like, I worked for Senator McCain when he was chairman, Armed Services. I went and worked in the White House. And so you're watching, like, acquisition break apart and give or take about a decade ago, that was roughly around the same time when ventures started getting a lot more interested in defense. And then you started seeing the propagation of innovation happening, so acquisition starting to loosen. And then you have Naval X being stood up, and then DIU gets stood up. And actually, DIU was first, but DIU and the Naval X and AF works and kind of all that proliferation. And now it's kind of this enormous leviathan of innovation organizations meant to kind of be a front door to some degree. And so the gap that gets created in that are, uh, like two major pinch points is you have a ton of new and emerging tech. This, I'll use a phrase that Darian loves when I use, which is a Cambrian explosion of defense tech. And they don't know how to interface with the department. And then conversely, the department has no idea how to ingest all the new and emerging tech. And so you create like, this weird nexus where everyone's trying to figure out how to get in. And then on the other side, there's just not enough cognitive load of people who are looking for stuff. And at what pinch point? Right. So it depends where you're at in that valley. Is it six one? Probably not six two six three, maybe. And then, like, the gap always gets created because the people who are responsible between those various funding lines and different programs, there's no accountability or responsibility for them to functionally hand things off to the next person or go through a maturation process unless there's a very hard pull and a very specific programmatic development. You have all of these things coming in that are great components, potentially great subsystems, some version of that, and there's not like a good functionality between the various different funding lines or they're like, services are looking for a lot of the same things, but it's like, not my backyard mentality.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker D: Like, that was an Air Force product. It's space gray. I like things to be army tans. Like, I am not going to work with this. So you get into those, like, just goofy OODA loops where it would be really great if there was a mechanism by which. And I'm sure we'll get into, like, how we decided to stand up our organization, but something that's neutral, that's just helping. Be this, you know, kind of daisy chain or this belay line in between these different mechanisms. As these things mature in capability and mature and, like, how they're going to be acquired at some point.

Speaker A: Yeah, I want to. I want to kind of pull the thread on that a little bit, but I'm going to quickly pivot over to you, Darian. Um, maybe just kind of set the stage a little bit of context on Fuse, uh, to begin with. And then you kind of lean into, you know, how you're working with these founders that maybe have that commercial traction, but no defense experience. Like how you're helping them kind of get a little bit more position for that government customer.

Speaker C: Yeah. So I think, speaking on the. On the speed piece, and I'll tie that into Fuse, uh, we kind of think of it as, like, we talked about this yesterday. Slow, uh, is smooth, and smooth is fast. And so speed isn't always just like, chaos. Like, speed can be curation. Right. And so if we know how to navigate things appropriately, I think Drew always says there's something like 278 defense innovation organizations on the government side alone. And so how do you navigate that? How do you pass through those things? And sometimes speed is just knowing where to go and not necessarily, um, just how quick you're moving. Um, so Fuse was stood up, um, around a year ago. We've been doing accelerators for far longer than that. Um, but Fuse was stood up specifically to focus on dual use technologies. And so my team all came from the commercial side. Drew's team all mostly comes from the defense side. And so the idea of Fuse was kind of putting the two pieces together where our perspective is. We see a lot of things in the dual use world that are defenseless. Right. Everyone calls it dual use, but it's just organizations that do defense. And so, uh, you know, I think when Drew and I put this together, it's like, if we could actually be great at both and not just good at one or the Other or great at one or the other, then we could be revolutionary in our ability to get technologies to market, speed them, you know, speed the transition. Um, and also, like, if you think about it from a venturous perspective, the majority of acquisitions are going to happen on a commercial side of the equation. There's far more commercial companies, there's very few defense primes, there's becoming more and there's more Neo primes and more things happening. But a lot of those companies are not that acquisitive. Like if you're going to get acquired, because there's only three outcomes, three good outcomes for a startup. You get acquired, you get capped out in the secondary as an investor of some sort. Um, or you ipo. And IPO is not that reliable. Like it's very rare. It's not something that you can bank on as investors. And so we wanted to create an organization where we could essentially help companies really be great at both sides. Um, so can we find commercial technologies and in some cases defense technologies that can go into commercial, but more often than not, can we find commercial capabilities that have defense application and can we put them through a process? And so the majority of what we do is actually in person because we believe that the in person nature can't be replaced. Like, you need to build relationships, you need to navigate these different things. Um, so I'd say kind of what, what I believe that we're sort of the best in the world at is we focus a lot on strategic partnerships. Um, a lot of this is you can't do things with speed without partners. Like you want to play with big players, you want to integrate with other larger technology companies. And it's not always the primes. It can be other players, it can be other corporates. But we focus a lot of our program in sort of like three phases. Uh, the first phase is sort of like readiness. Can we get make sure all the companies are enterprise readiness for the commercial side, DoD readiness for the DoD side, DoW side. Um, and then company, uh, readiness. Do you have the right pieces in place to be able to scale? Uh, and then we go into the second phase, which is commercialization. How do you commercialize the technology in the DoD DoW and in the commercial world? And then the last segment of the program is kind of what we call action weeks, where it's like we're going to put you out in the field, we're going to get you in front of the people and you're going to have the conversations and our team is going to be along the way with you guys to help you navigate, help throw in the things that maybe that company can't, say, create a little competitive fire, competitive juice. Um, and so, uh, big companies in general, same with daw, they're sort of conditioned not to move, right? The general thesis is like, do nothing and it will be fine. And so we need to create these moments of fomo, right? Like you need to create moments of action where they need to do something, otherwise their competitors are going to get it. And obviously DO doesn't quite have that in the same way, but it definitely works in the commercial world.

Speaker D: If I could add to that too. And you know, one of the reasons it was great for us to kind of pair up with one another was that, I mean, imagine any DoD DoW accelerator, like, it's not really feasible in 10 weeks, 8 weeks, 12 weeks. Pick a number that you're going to make any material impact. Like, realistically, you're prepping the teams if they have no DoD experience to work with DoD, but ultimately that tail is going to be somewhere between two years plus. Right? And so the commercial viability is going to be what matters the most. And so that's why it was great for us to kind of tag up with one another. Because I don't speak commercial like he does. I can speak defense and I can angle them where they need to go. And so a lot of times when we run folks through it, the accelerator that we have, uh, we'll spend time doing is thinking about, all right, how do we figure out, like, here's what your cape is. How can I run through. We have tool sets, but I can run through the J books. I can figure out like, hey, who responded you historically, what's that finding amount? Is there current contracts available teaching folks like, how to hunt? Like, hey, where's this going to go? I'm not going to hunt for you, but I will teach you how and where to hunt. And in the interim, I know that you need to get from here to here in the next 18 months. Why don't you figure out what the commercial pathways look like for that? Why don't you figure out what the, uh, can you raise money for that? Can you do whatever you need to do for you to get to a maturity so that when the time comes when you're pulling the thread on whether or not this can be either pulled in their program or you can be rolled up to the OEM or whoever, it's going to be like you're in a much more position in a, uh, scalability that you guys can get today. Like for whatever reason, that wasn't something that I saw a lot. And a lot of the like Dow focused accelerators, they were always just kind of like here's a snippet in time and hopefully you get a siver. And that's not really a viable path. Right? Like, because if you're trying to mature and get to where you need to go, you're going to have to have scale.

Speaker A: Quick shout out to our sponsor, Defense Unicorns. This one's for the problem solvers out there. They're hosting Warhacker, a uh, first of its kind hackathon built for the defense community. No buzzwords, no slide decks, just hands on keyboards solving real mission problems with real code. You'll be side by side with developers, engineers and innovators from across government, industry, nonprofits and academia, all hacking for the warfighter. It's happening June 16th through the 19th in San Diego. Got a real world problem to solve or want to join a team that does. Learn more@defenseunicorns.com Hatchit

Speaker B: yeah, there's a lot of really, really deep experience you guys are sharing here. Um, I like the um, juxtaposition, Darian, that you had between Enterprise and Dow. I know that, um, Andrea just outlined it where uh, any engagement with the DoD DoW is like a two year plus engagement, right? There isn't a quick sales cycle. I mean you can do some stuff if you already have some existing relationships on small amounts, but if you're really looking for a substantial contract, there's no quick win within one quarter. Any federal sales teams that are oriented around quarterly quotas are not going to have a good time. Um, but this also raises an interesting question, Darian, that you pointed or that you brought up, which is there are a lot of companies that say they're dual use when they're just Defense. And so really what they're saying is I want that sweet, sweet commercial growth and funding and to be attractive to investors. But I'm really 90% or 100% defense. And then on the flip side there are commercial um, entities who look at defense revenue as like always there, recession proof, big fat five year contracts that can happen, but it takes a lot of upfront work. So I guess my question to you, the million dollar question is how do you really get a gauge or a good feel? How do you evaluate if something is actually truly dual use or if it's just pretending to be dual use?

Speaker C: Yeah, you want me to take that, Drew?

Speaker D: Not it, not it.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think in the world That I come from, um, commercial technology is trying to get into defense. Like, I think we've got a pretty good read on different things that DOD is looking for, right? Like we get demand signals. We're able to sort of understand what things they're looking for. Um, I say the same thing on the commercial side. We can't ever promise a company in any way that the dog is going to eat the dog food, but we can put the bowl in front of them. And so if we know that there's a demand signal on either side of the equation, we can go out and source, find those types of technologies. And we want to do things that are relevant to the ecosystems that we operate in. So in Arizona we have, I think, one of the largest mining states in the country. Um, so we do a lot of things in the m. Mining, uh, tech space, um, energy, uh, autonomy, like doing a lot of stuff in the advanced air mobility space. Um, so, like, those are areas that Arizona has a right to win. Manufacturing, um, has a right to win. And so if we can figure out how to navigate those things where we just talked to a company earlier today, I won't name the name right now, but like, they were coming at this with an autonomy platform, um, focused on defense only. And I'm like, I think you're making a mistake by focusing on defense only. Like, autonomy Stack is everything. Like, advanced air mobility needs autonomy. They need to be able to do all of this synthetic data. Like this needs to happen real time on both sides. And so I think it happens both ways. Um, but I think it starts with demand signals. Like, can you understand if there is a market for it? Because I don't. None, uh, of us on this call control timing, right? We can't decide that all of a sudden Dow likes lasers or they don't. Right? We can't decide if all of a sudden big banks care about quantum encryption. Like, we can't decide that, but we should be prepared for when those moments happen. And we should have a pipeline of companies that we can integrate with.

Speaker D: Conversely, on our side, um, we think about just a bit of a cheat code, right? Because we are embedded in a lot of different DoD organizations. So we'll have tech calls as an example that come down from CENTCOM and part of the Regista structure. And they're looking for stuff because they want to put it in the field and part of their rapid acquisition or working with just different service components. And we know what they're looking for because they're going to ask us, like, help us Go find this stuff. Like the way that we began positioning ourselves or inadvertently began positioning ourselves, was that that kind of neutral broker when they're looking for stuff? The D Dow has a challenge with what is, who's responding on SAM.gov. i mean I don't know what the number is. It's something like 30,000 solicitations a month or something like that. And then you have Vulcan and then you have uh, you know, any of the consortiums, you have all these things and like it's only as good as who's aware of it to respond to it. So if you have something pre picked, great, you can tell them to select for it. But when they were actually looking for new capabilities, they would be like, how do we find these things? Like, and you know, you've got guys who are GS 1315, whoever, they're like OSINT trying to find these things. And we would be in these conversations and they were like, help us find this stuff. And so then we just started getting an influx of like, here are the things that we're looking for. Help us go find these things. So not only do we have relationships on the program side, you know, on the operational side, but then like the others organizations, as they're looking for this, other federal agencies have uh, come to us, are like, hey, help us find this stuff. Like really just sort it and make sense of it. So we sit in a weird position where it's like again, just reducing the cognitive load on the federal side because most of those teams are small. Like we've had an agency come to us. They're responsible for all the new tech integration. There's four of them and like an 8,000 person organization. They're like, we can't do this. So they're happy to be transparent. I mean we're not like, obviously we're soliciting things on the uh, unclass side, but we'll have high sided conversations to understand what is it that you're looking for to understand when things are coming through our door? Because we're in a position now where we don't have a challenge with teams coming to us Again, if we're running demonstration or experimentation events or running solicitations, things like that, people come to us and so we can fairly quickly like understand, hey, I'm really glad that you decided to make this Group 1 drone. Unfortunately for you, here are the 38,000 other people who are doing the same thing and you have no, there's no technical interest of like anything new. You've not created any Variants. I'm really glad you're making this. I'm going to put you, you know, the pile of other technologies over here and then you find those ones that are kind of really unique. Whether it's advanced comms or pick your poison, whatever it's going to be. You're like m. And then that begets a spiraling process with us where we start to have that conversation with them and like, do we do like a uh, technical rating assessment with them? Because a quad chart's great, a slick sheet is great, but how do you actually like kick the tires on that to make sure, like, hey, can you do the things that you say you do? Hey, where have you performed on this? I can start pulling their contract data. Like, hey, have you performed before? Are you a new entrant? Are you like, are you selling vaporware? And start to like, we'll begin there, like, oh, this is a real thing. And then we'll begin that kind of relationship with those teams as we start to figure out like, hey, I think you have a unique value proposition and you should get in front of these folks, like, let us help you connect those dots.

Speaker A: Can you just. Oh, uh, sorry, go ahead.

Speaker C: I'll just add one small piece here. I think the other nice thing is because we see so many things that we probably look at 3,4000 different companies a year and I think that gives us the ability to see these demand signals and be able to say like, okay, this thing needs to fit with this thing to deliver one capability to whoever needs it. Because so often startups are developing one part of the stack or one piece, but really they need to integrate with each other to have an actual capability, an actual solution that they could sell. And so that's really also a really important piece so that we can give fully baked solutions and not just these things innate. Like the government doesn't really know what to do with enabling technologies, right?

Speaker D: Like components is what I call it. It's like great, you have like a component part. I'm really glad that you make this thing. Unfortunately it needs to be integrated into this system. So have you talked to these vendors about how you're going to integrate that component into these systems? Because that's what they're going to buy. And like part of it too is that like, if you think about positionality in terms of what over the 10 year horizon we've been talking about, uh, what is the department signaling? We want to grow the defense industrial base. No one's been in charge of sherping the wild to Help them orienteer themselves to where they need to go. I always tease there's like this bright, shiny line between when you hire a GR firm for, like, where your contract value is at, but what are you doing with everyone prior to that? And you're like, they may have good stuff, but you haven't spent any time figuring out how to, like, just help them navigate where they need to go. And so we end up doing that a lot too. That's part of the regionality. But, like, we spent a lot of our time just working with companies from all over the place, and not just in the Southwest, uh, but like all over and just helping them navigate, like, what is like a quarterback risk, you know, cheat sheet that they can look at to, like, who should I be talking to? What should I be listening to? How do I need to think through integration, both commercial and, like, where is this going to go in the department? Like, none of that's articulated anywhere, right? So, like, unless you're a veteran of the space, how would you know? Like, you just like, I guess Chad GPT will tell me, like, nope, you're not going to get an answer.

Speaker A: You like, yeah, uh, that partnership between Fuse and the Mac just seems like, super, uh, invaluable. And that, Darien, that pattern recognition of seeing you said 3,000 companies, that's really, really, ah, invaluable for a founder coming in, that's saying, like, okay, what have you seen that's gotten from pilot to production? Where are they getting stuck and helping them kind of troubleshoot some of those key areas. Um, Drew, I. I know we kind of briefly talked a little bit about this in the opener, but, um, give us a little bit more of like, a overview on the Mac. Like, I'm interested a little bit on, like, the size of, like, how many people are a part of the. The Org and everything like that.

Speaker D: Okay, um, quick, like, history for, like, how this all started too. So, um, when I left the White House, I came back to Arizona and I went into academia. I worked at Arizona State University, and I was intended to be working on a scene between kind of basic and fundamental research and the applied side of the House. And in that process, we had had, um, at the time, there's an organization that's now been absorbed into diu, but it's called Ensign. So we had someone from Ensign that was here with us, and we were running mates, um, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to proliferate across the ecosystem. And what does it look like for you to find Stuff and get it in there. We'd had a quick conversation with some um, uh, intel dudes and some pilot guys out at Luke Air Force Base, which led to the creation of like an Amazon expedient solution of what we call like a low cost red emitter. So think of it simply as there was a challenge that is existing where the, the fighters that are out there, they don't have like threat density. Like they don't have if they're gonna fight, like they have future conflict. You need to have a lot of signal noise. It needs to be contested, it needs to be congested, it needs to be all those things. And the systems that they were buying were just from an old OEM and it was very expensive, you know, four pack trailerized vehicle. And it made sense for what they were doing, but they needed more noise. We pulled something together pretty quickly and it worked. And then what ended up happening was I watched uh, AFRL and ACC and AETC get into a knife fight for who's going to own this thing. OSD got really interested in it too. And then while that was happening, I showed to the army. The army was like, yo, this is awesome. We really want these things, but we need them for the types of thing that we're doing, which is us being out in the Pacific. So it actually ended up going all the way out in the Pacific. It got raider dollars, it got pimtech dollars. And then it was figured out how to it made uh, its way back to the Air Force to do a program of record the life cycle for all that was like 18 months. And what that ended up teaching us was like, hey, you could figure out how to maneuver and navigate all these things, uh, agnostic to wherever your ecosystem is, right? Like you can figure out how to kind of touch all these spaces. And it showed us like, hey, there's a gap here that who's helping figure out responses to juons ans ufers ipples, all those types of things. How is that being contextualized out in the wild? Unless you either already have something, but when you actually have a jewon or non, how do you go find an answer for that quickly? And so that's where we were like, huh, huh. Maybe we need to create a structure that is kind of geographically dispersed and you can think through like how do you go between supporting and supported fairly quickly as you are finding things and overlaying different capabilities from each one of these kind of ecosystems. So what ended up happening was a couple of different partners came together. There was five original states and, uh, put it on a congressional ad. I think it was like 50 the first year, 65 the second year. So give or take, like, um, $120 million to stand up the Mac Org structure. It lived inside of Ensign, and then Ensign was absorbed into DIU and it turned into the onramp hub. But the overall theory, uh, remains the same. Right? So the onramp hubs have kind of propagated in a couple different places, and we can get into that too. But the spirit of Core, if you will, on the Mac side was like, how do you figure out how to commandeer geographic, uh, region and leverage everything in there in support of where do wants to go so that you can create more ROI for Dow? And the general thesis was Dow's ROI is like maybe one to one, if not less than one, because of how much money they put into a system. There's so much seepage and just so much bloat, so much waste. And it was kind of like, how do you figure out geographically to leverage that place? And so can you bring in other economic development dollars? Can you bring in additional resources if you like? Theoretically. And it's not theoretically anymore. Like, we built a range place, so we're able to go do all of this, like, experimentation and demonstration. We've cobbled all the stu together. The department doesn't, didn't have to pay for the front end, but now they're the beneficiary of the tail end of that. But you have other assets all around the country who do manufacturing at scale, or you've got folks who are able to do ATO quickly, or you have, uh, transition quickly between, you know, secret to very high side on the SAP side, like, how do you, how do you figure out how to cobble together the component parts that are the gaps, what these teams are always facing, when you have new and emerging tech and then kind of run them through a process pretty quickly so that there's a certain level of maturity that you can then hand it back over to the government? And all of these resources have been invested in some place or another in different ecosystems. And it becomes a matter of, like, how do you identify where those ecosystems are and then cobble them together in a way so that they are all moving and pointing in the same direction towards, you know, maintaining superiority of our peer threats, making sure that we can mature technology, making sure that our war fighters are the best equipped. And like, that was the general thesis.

Speaker B: That's it. Uh, it's definitely, uh, a, uh, differentiated thesis because a lot of These other innovation organizations across DoD are more or less like mission area focused or aligned. Right. Where we're just going to do UAS or even just counter UAS or something like that. Uh, where you guys are taking a much more of a regionally focused but breadth driven um, approach. Uh, do you think, can you just kind of say more about that? Because it's definitely novel compared to I would say the majority of the other innovation uh, orgs. Yeah.

Speaker D: And I think of us as kind of an intentionally outside the fence line but as close to the fence line as possible organization so that we understand what the capability gaps are, we understand how to move through the system. It was kind of as I was describing earlier, like if you're crosswalk from 6:1 to 6:6 or above, like who's connecting those dots and like who's figuring out where all those parts and pieces are? And it's, it's irrational to think that you're going to create a fiefdom that's going to solve all of those riddles. And so there's a way that you can kind of spread that out with different parts of the ecosystem and it's like play to your individual strengths that you have and whatever the ecosystem is and bring those folks to the table. All of the partners that came together are all hyper mission aligned and hyper focused on supporting the Dow and it was just a matter of like how do you have all of these component parts that are respective Ferraris, how do you put them all together and effectively race all in the same direction? So that was kind of again like I guess the novelness of like you know, how do you figure out one what those assets are and then how do you align them? And that's like really what you're doing in Dow to succeed too is it's everything is alignment. You're trying to figure out like timing alignment, like do we have the right kind of authorities, do we have the right kind of institutional uh, alignment all those parts and pieces. And so it just makes sense to bring in like kind of the outside as well. And plus we can move different. I can hire differently, I can travel under CR or travel restrictions like, like all these other things that the government entities can't do. They can't talk when there's a solicitation happening. I have no quartile talking to those teams. I can flight follow the companies as they're moving through that process, like not running afoul of that. Like I can be supportive in the process and help them as they're trying to respond to things or trying to do things, you know what I mean? Like, there's just so much more asset that can be brought to bear being outside the fence, but intentionally aligned directly with what's inside of fence.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think, I think it's a great model. Yeah.

Speaker A: Darian, I want to kind, uh, of tap in a little bit more in terms of where Fuse leans in the hardest. So when you think about helping these companies at such an early stage survive, like that capital, customer credibility triangle, what lever tends to move first? Um, what's usually the unlock for you guys?

Speaker C: Yeah, I think in a ideal scenario we focus on contracts and funding, um, in that order. So at the stage in which we're working with companies, they usually have some degree of materiality. Like a lot of cases, a couple hundred thousand to a few million in revenue post seed stage. Like, they've got some funding, they've got some relevance, they've got like they, they have something. And so for us, we really want to think about, like, how can we accelerate that? Like, we use the term displacement. How do you get from A to B as fast as possible? And I think a lot of that is sort of value per connection. Like we can't send them out and make, you know, here's a hundred people that you should meet with like that everyone's going to die by fatigue if you go that way. And so we try to think about it like strategic partnerships. I always tell companies the worst way to scale a technology company is to try to sell to end users one at a time. Like, you could never grow fast enough, you can't raise money fast enough, you can't hire fast enough. Like, it's just not really possible to do so. And so if that's not the way, then what's the way? And our view on that is like strategic partnerships. And so whether it's selling to government or commercial or both, like there is a partner along the way that can help integrate, help put you in the right rooms, can also have an entire salesforce behind them that can get you in the right rooms at the right times. And so I really do think, um, the first thing that we go after is like, is there a real signal when we start to engage with companies? We'll go to the big primes, we'll go to the big companies and we'll say, hey, is this of interest? Is this something that matters to you guys? Um, I can't promise that this is the one, but is this a space you guys are going to lean into? And if it is. How do we start to get CVCs involved? How do we start to get Venture involved? Um, Venture goes in the cycle of deploying rapid amounts of capital to being more conservative and wanting to see more traction. And it's just this constant wave. And so we try to stay somewhere in the middle in a steady state of like, let's go capture revenue, let's go capture contracts and then we should be raising money because it's a necessity to grow, not because it's a need to stay alive.

Speaker A: Yeah, you mentioned something I. Oh, go ahead.

Speaker D: I was going to tease honestly foot stomp one thing which is what makes us uh, trust and I believe it's trust through neutrality. That's one of the things I think is really important is that we spend a lot of our time. I'm not selling and I'm not taking consulting fees off these teams. Daring's not doing the same thing. So I don't have a dog in the fight. I have unbiased uh, uh, when someone asks for something here, here's a stack of potential solutions. You tell me what you want, I will support your decision and we will move out. And I think that's been an interesting neutrality. There are other larger primes who do things that are similar, but they're also kind of hawking their own stuff as well. And I think that raises a lot of eyebrows. And there's uh, just a value proposition that's different when we're able to just again remain neutral and create trust that hey, we're here to help.

Speaker C: Yeah. Fuse in Mac. We don't take equity or fee from startups. So we're not, we really are neutral brokers in that we don't, we don't owe anybody anything on that site.

Speaker A: Yeah. Something that you brought up that I think is fascinating, especially in like today's kind of like remote, you know, working kind of philosophy is uh, you know, in, in house. Right. They, they need to be on site with you guys. Um, I, I've been out in Chattanooga, Tennessee off and on for the last few years. My family and I have some ties there and there's a, an accelerator slash, you know, venture kind of firm, m called Brickyard. They relocate folks that you know, need to be there. They basically, you know, eat, sleep, breathe, live on site because it's just part of like sort of being dialed into to building. Like they just feel like you need to be there with your co founders. What is it about, you know, your location, um, and the types of companies that come through your program. I'M curious on like, how many of them are local to the area? How many are relocating, uh, to be a part of Fuse? And what does that breakdown look like?

Speaker C: Like, yeah, I don't know if I have an exact number. I. We always kind of focus on like, how do we get the very best companies that can make the most impact. And so it could be 100% Arizona and it could be, you know, 50%, it could be 25%. Like, we, we don't really sort of track that. And I think that goes for all of our sites. Um, we want to find the best technology companies and we want to get them to where they need to go. And I think if we focus on that, um, I always joke that we are not an economic development organization that should be one of the top economic development organizations in the state, in the area, whatever it is. Because like, economic development is a byproduct of success that we can create. If we create success, if we give them customers in the area. Like if we get buy in from everybody around now, uh, all of a sudden, like they're, they're forced to hire in the area, they're forced to do these things and not by us. Like we want to create success for companies and if we do that, everybody, all stakeholders win.

Speaker A: How many sites do you have?

Speaker C: Go ahead, Drew.

Speaker D: Well, don't forget that question. But I guess I would say yeah, on the economic development side, that's the uniqueness, I think of the regional model, um, and being outside the fence line is we can leverage a bunch of other resources that the local entity, wherever we're working at the state has. And we have done things in other markets where we'll push folks to those guys too. But, but uh, we got into this conversation about a company who is a portfolio company within DOD and they were looking at him to try to figure out how to scale. And they're like, we don't know how to figure out how to connect the dots on. And it's not their job to be fair on the Dow side. Like, that's not something they should really care about. Like who do you hand them to? And so we end up in these weird conversations all the time. We're like, hey, if you want to build this size of facility and you want to figure out what your power draw is going to be and you want to figure out how you have a transportation hub and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I guess not part of our core mission, but it's a, uh, way that we can reach into an ecosystem and kind of Pull the pieces together that are struggles for you know, the, the teams that we're dealing with, which is, it's been a fascinating outcome like and again we can leverage additional resources from the locality, from the state and like other federal pots that all just amplify the sets of activity that we're doing. Because the activities are all like in an economic development bucket in some form or other. But the product ends up being a um, mature capability that goes to the department in some form or another. And then as far as like who we bring in into the cohorts, that has been, it's been an interesting toggle between the two of us. Again think about the oddity of you know, if we want our market to grow and not that you should be that like well aware of how Arizona is positioned, but it's changing from is historically a construction state and it's now shifting into like uh, high tech market. And so we are still struggling with talent growth. So for us the state has been really happy with us because we're able to figure out how to be a uh, pull mechanism to like effectively acquire talent that brings it in state. And so they want to be here because if we have access to experimentation areas and they could do product development, they can do those things. It becomes like a flag that we're able to plant for why they want to be here. And it just creates more velocity in terms of like what our proliferation is the department, what our proliferation is for the teams being able to develop and a locality to be able to develop. So you can combine all those sets of activities and resources into an outcome that's just again ROI for the department.

Speaker A: Yeah. Uh, Darren, I was curious on just a little bit more info on like those cohorts, like um, you know, how many companies are kind of coming through, what's the length of the program, stuff like that.

Speaker C: Yeah, so it's a, it's a 12 week program. Um, we, we usually take in for each program a couple hundred applications that will down select to typically in like the 40 to 50 range that will go to interviews. Um, we'll have multiple rounds of interviews and down select to usually 8 to 12 more than more, more often like 10 to 12 companies. Um, it's really high touch. Like we're, we're extremely engaged with the companies. I always say like while they're in person with us, we should be their go to market team. And so we should be able to augment and supplement what they're able to do through manpower, uh, depth, you know, bench strength, kind of thing. Um, and so uh, the other thing you asked earlier was sort of where we are. So we've got office, uh, in D.C. office headquarters, uh, in Arizona and we do a lot of work in Arkansas as well. Arkansas, um, one is sort of mainly focused on supply chain given Walmart, Dyson, JB Hunt, all the kind of big players there. Heavy, um, on the commercial side. But obviously supply chain is a core capability for defense as well.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting, these kind of regional, uh, hubs popping up and trying to figure out, you know, how much of it's tied to, you know, what that vertical strength is, uh, if it's manufacturing supply chain. Well, we see a lot of stuff, you know, obviously coming out of D.C. and more and more of these, you know, uh, kind of call them like, you know, connectors. Uh, like station DC is a great example. Right. They're just trying to bring, you know, the, the right minds into one centralized room to you know, pollinate, cross pollinate, you know, between policy, venture, industry, uh, and I think it's, I think it's fantastic. I think it's something that we kind of, you know, has fallen off over the years and it's starting to get back to it now that there's a lot more in person and events are thriving. But are there other hubs, um, that you point out that you kind of channel this kind of regional ecosystem? Um, like for example, when I think about manufacturing, there's a lot happening in Utah right now. Is there anything that you all see that you, uh, just want to highlight or just, yeah. Bring to the forefront for our listeners?

Speaker D: It's always a competition. Right. And so I know the 47G guys fairly well and I'm just impressed with what they do. Right. Like this is really good, like marketing that they're doing in order to draw people into the ecosystem. They have some really great talent there. Like we just had an event, but the vector guys that are up there came out of here. And I know you've had Annie, uh, on the podcast before, but you know, I look at other states too. Like I'm looking at these second tier markets that are taking this a lot more seriously. And it doesn't mean to be diminutive of Indiana, but that's one that I'm, I have my eye on. I'm watching them like those guys are moving and grooving and they're taking it a lot more seriously and like vertically aligning same when you look at Ohio, it caused all this perturbation. Uh, in Arizona, Andrew was looking at a couple of different places and they ended up selecting where they're going to build fury at is going to be up in, in Ohio. But I, I have been watching Ohio for a long time and seeing how like they again are vertically integrating. They're not afraid of defense, uh, and they're trying to pull all the parts and pieces together so that when companies do come there like how does this work? I mean all the way down into their education structure, they're focused on autonomy across all the R1s and R2s that they have. Like there's just some of these markets are just doing an exceptional job of again just vertically aligning all the sets and reps of things that are being done so that there's a material outcome. How do you leverage those things is where my head goes.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think even some other like Kansas, uh, Rhode island, like major state federal support. Um, you know we've been out to Kansas multiple times at the on ramp hub there and they're doing some awesome work. Um, we were in Rhode island uh, maybe late, late last year and Andrew built, is, is building and maybe done now like a major facility out there. Regent, um, building a couple hundred thousand square feet place uh, out there. Like it's incredible to see some of these other states that are doing a lot of this. And Drew and I talk about this all the time. Phoenix is the fifth largest city in the US um but historically has been a real estate construction kind of space and more recently we're getting TSMC and uh, all these major semiconductor data centers. We're starting to see all of this stuff and becoming a major winner in the space also. I think the state's been very forward thinking in terms of uh, autonomy in different areas. One of the first states to fully scale Waymo, um, doing a lot of stuff in advance, air mobility. Arizona's competing now and I think there's no reason that Phoenix shouldn't be one of the top tech markets in the world.

Speaker B: Yes. Kind of stemming off that. Um, Drew, you just mentioned something interesting about R1 and R2 research universities kind of aligning themselves to whatever stack they, you know, they choose. And I know that specific to Arizona, ASU has had some kind of innovative um, educational planning over the past couple of years. I'm just kind of an open ended question here about anything with higher education you're seeing that excites you um, as it relates to some of the technology innovation that you're working with.

Speaker D: Um, I'll give an answer on like the negative side of this. So, um, not to call anybody out, but, uh, it's been fascinating to watch. I mean where I came from and There are other R1s here and I've watched this in other markets too. Like the academic institutions believe that because, you know, do, or adjacency federal funding comes into them, that they do national security. And the challenge is that they don't really know how to convert that into a commercialization quotient for themselves. They don't know how to spin a company out. They don't know how to leverage that within a market. And it's like that to me is going to be one of the biggest challenges that academics are going to have to face at this point. Because I don't, I mean. Safe space. Yeah. Like I, I take the fund, uh, like basic and fundamental research that comes out as almost like, uh, we're just going to keep tabs on you and keep like a workforce pipeline aligned to what the department wants. And there's not a real like, emphasis or focus on the department of like functionally getting that stuff out of the universities. And this administration has taken a baseball bat to uh, NIH dollars and NSF dollars and all these other parts and pieces. To me, the universities that are going to thrive and survive and succeed are going to be able to figure out what that commercialization quotient looks like for them because you have an enormous amount of federal dollars coming in. But there's an additional, like, how do you create a value proposition? How do you create enough of like a flywheel that you're getting return on revenue from the great research dollars that you've been given? And I think that's the frustration that a lot of the federal agencies have is like we pour so much money in. I don't get a tangible product from that because there's that valley of death, right, of like, how do you go from science and some of like the kind of earlier stage like concept to like prototype and there's just a giant ch. And you look at some of the markets that are doing well, again, it's because they have a university that orientated themselves as a business and like the, the, the portion of it that can do DFAR work, like having a portion of the university that can really do that, and those are the ones that are thriving and winning that uh, understand dfar.

Speaker B: No, I, I think you're right. And I'll, I'll, I'll throw some top cover on top. You know, more than just a safe space. I think that largely a lot of basic research out of universities has um, frankly failed to really make mission impact in a timely fashion. I mean, um, I've seen instances where professors even sometimes leave to start a company because they feel inhibited by um, the uh, academic, uh, organization. So uh, I think those are salient points that should be well considered as things continue to change.

Speaker C: Yeah. And I think. Sorry, I was just gonna say national labs have similar challenges. Right. Like I think a lot of times researchers want to remain researchers and that's what they're very best at, want them to continue doing that. But so often like where they fall short is how do you transition that technology out and then start to scale it via funding? Because a lot of times early stage funders, whether it be venture, family, office, whatever fashion it is, like early stage funding is about people. And if, if there's not the person who created it that's willing to kind of run with it and even sometimes when they are, they're not the right person to commercialize technology. And so there's this, this constant competing like, like it is a very difficult thing to do and it's a heavy lift it.

Speaker D: We, we struggle with this. Not like us, but like we are supporting other DoD labs, supporting other national labs. And this is just a challenge of, to your point, the people. A lot of the stuff comes in and it's an engineer who's like this has been their life work. They're going to keep working on it, we're going to keep polishing this thing before we let it out. And it's kind of like get your mvp, get out the door and like let it iterate and keep it going. And that's not like a, a high value cycle that's been created for whatever reason because I don't know what the number is, but there's some like, you know, travesty in terms of why they're doing a patent holiday right now because they're trying to figure out how to get all of this stuff out of the labs and like it. That's the challenge is you uh, how do you design the teams? And I'll give an unsolicited plug to Fed Tech. I mean that's something that they have been pretty good at where they can assemble, you know, kind of the right people around technology IP that exists somewhere and that off it goes. But more of that needs to be done. And it's almost like the universities need to be structured to be thinking that way. Like how do you. Great, you hit a threshold now. Commercialize.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's Uh, a, it's a whole culture breakdown too. Like we, we partner with a, like a precision rapid prototyping manufacturing company here that they focus all of their efforts partnering with early stage startups that are building hardware quickly. And one of their biggest like talent, like pet peeves is like I don't want, I don't want a guy coming out of Northrop. I don't want a guy coming out lucky that's been working on this one thing and it's taken 12 months to ship this thing or the guy that's in the lab doing R and D for years. Nothing against that. There's, there's a place for that. But we talk about like shipping quickly and rapid prototyping. They want the folks that have done this in a university maker space and can quickly iterate and like that, that culture breakdown is, it is tough to adjust in a fast pace. I mean it's just like startup versus you know, you know, bigger corporations. So um, I think that that translate transfers in so many different verticals. Um, well, cool. I want to put a bow on uh, the main conversation, but I don't want to end without daring. Just kind of, you know, we have a lot of listeners here that you know, are founders that are maybe on that commercial front looking to maybe break in. Um, but also just want to hear more about Fuse. You know, what, what can, what can these folks kind of expect, you know, coming out of your all's world in the next, you know, few years that they can be excited about.

Speaker C: Yeah, I think, I think one of the fundamental challenges in this space is uh, like you said earlier, if you're a defense company, you call it dual use so you can get some more funding. But if you're a commercial company, a lot of those companies never even think about it. I can't tell you how many calls I'm on of things that are just inherently dual use. Things that have demand signals that they've never even thought of going to defense and they may be doing 4 million, 10 million. Like I have multiple companies that are coming to the top of my mind and they're like eh, do I need to like things are going really well and I think it's sort of convincing them in some cases that like hey, these are capabilities that we need as a country. Um, so I think where we specialize sort of seed to series a couple hundred thousand, do a few million in revenue post seed round, um, companies that are really ready to, really ready to scale and integrate with major players and they're at the Right point in time. Um, I think, uh, I don't know. What am I most excited about? Um,

Speaker D: the circuit.

Speaker C: We can talk about the circuit. All right.

Speaker D: All right, hit it buddy.

Speaker A: All right.

Speaker C: Let it rip. Let it rip. You guys are getting something right off the press. Uh, nobody knows about this yet, but um, we're standing up what we're calling the circuit. Um, and it's essentially what happens for post Series A companies. You have all these incubators, accelerators that like the pre seed, seed Series A, like all these things that exist, but then it's kind of like you get to Series A and everyone's like, yeah, nice, good luck, keep going. And then so many companies die off from there. Like how do you get to Series B? It's a big gap there. And so I think the lowest graduation rates from C to Series A and the second lowest is C to Series B. And so what happens to those companies? And so we wanted to stand up something that creates this uh, ability for these dual use scaling technology companies that are developing critical technologies for what, what, what we need in this country. Um, and so we're calling it the circuit. So post Series A, 25 companies, three month roadshow. Basically one week of every month we're going to go one week to DC, one week to Arizona, one week to Silicon Valley and kind of showcase with all the tier one funds, showcase with Congress, Senate policymakers, um, in D.C. get them out in the field and actually let them blow things up, do whatever they got to do. Right. Like out in the field, do real things, prove uh, that it works. And so integrating uh, with all the primes. And so that is probably what we're most excited about. I didn't know if we were going to tease it here, uh, but yeah, I think that's in my mind be the first to really ever do it at this scale. Um, and I think make really meaningful impact on those companies.

Speaker A: Good thing we are live streaming too, so anybody wants to check it out? That's awesome. I've never heard of anything quite like that. But that roadshow mentality of physically getting them in front of the partners and the people that matter, I think that's super creative.

Speaker B: That's get in the game. There's not a lot of other organizations that would be willing to do that. So I definitely commend you on, on putting it out there. That's a fantastic, fantastic idea.

Speaker C: Like, like you said earlier, you gotta be, you gotta be foolish enough just to go do it. Like if you knew everything, just go try, just get it done never do anything. But, um, I do think of it as, like, how do you do it with speed? And I think it's getting them in front of the right people at the right moment in time, at pace. Um, how do you get all the tier one funds, all the major funders all in one place at one time to see the next wave? Um, ultimately kind of creating the future 50 of technology. Right. And so how do you. How do you know what's coming next? Uh, it's curation.

Speaker A: That's cool. Yeah. The circuit's a sick name, too. I like that. It's buzzy.

Speaker C: You hear that?

Speaker A: Reminds me of. There's.

Speaker D: Yeah.

Speaker A: Drew messaged me, actually, on the side and told me to say that, um, there's a venture firm out here, revolution, that has, um, called the Rise of the Rest, which you all may have heard of, but they used to take a bus and just go tour the, you know, middle of the country. You know, they. They try to avoid, like, the coast, um, and just stopping off at these little, you know, kind of cities that kind of feel like towns and just hearing out some amazing ideas that never get attention because they're not California or New York. Um, so I dig that. Um, cool. All right, well, let's, uh. Yeah, let's put a bill on the. The main discussion and close out with a fun segment we call the five Second scramble. Just Rapid fire Q A. Try to say the first thing that comes to mind. Um, Sean, how about you lead off with Drew, and then I'll close with, uh, with Darian.

Speaker B: All right, Drew, um, first off, what's something about the culture at the Mac that you want potential, uh, either new hires or partners or founders to know about?

Speaker D: Mission driven? I mean, like, in every sense. I mean, it seems like, um, very obvious in the namesake, but for us, it's just a matter of like. Like, it's both, like, understanding exactly why you're doing this if theoretically the balloon goes up in 27. Like, what are we doing to position ourselves to be in the best, you know, possible standing, uh, so that we can actually create a response? And then within the team, like, what are we focusing on? And making sure that you have that very narrow focus on what the outcomes are and delivering value back to the customer, whether that's government or industry.

Speaker B: Uh, and in terms of your team, uh, are there any open roles or hiring plans over the next, you know, 60, 90 days that you want to have, uh, blast it out there to our dozens of listeners?

Speaker D: Yes. I don't have them posted yet, but we're going to be actually hiring a bunch of people. Um, so we've been doing well, and so we're about to go into a growth mode. And so we'll post those. We'll make sure I link up with you guys to make sure you can put them out there.

Speaker A: Hell yeah.

Speaker B: Outstanding. Um, all right, what's the most surprising skill you've had to learn in your career, either current career or back in the military?

Speaker D: Anytime I tease, uh, first thing that popped my head is sham.

Speaker B: Wow.

Speaker D: Uh, and so for. For me, it's. It's being able. I think one of the things that it do really well is being able to understand something that could be complex. Complex, like these things that you're crazy enough to try and being willing to try that, but then being able to articulate it and sell it back to the folks that need buy in for them to be able to understand the value proposition. Right. Like, that's the storytelling that I think is important. Then they give me something that I needed, and I figured it out kind of early on in the career, and it's, uh, that ability to kind of of help people, want to be part of that same mission and want to kind of drive towards that same outcome with you.

Speaker C: I would echo that for Drew. I always. I think it's funny if you ever need, like a last minute keynote speaker, you just walk up to him, be like, hey, you're in. He's like, you want me to go sham. Wow. These guys.

Speaker A: Sham.

Speaker D: Wow.

Speaker B: All right. Those are the hard questions, Drew. Get a little easier now. Um, what was your dream job as a kid?

Speaker D: Center fielder for the White Sox. And then that didn't. That didn't pan out. Yeah, jumping out of too many army helicopters and bouncing my knee off the ground. Um, but, yeah, is that. And then I. I mean, my entire family is military. Uh, like my mom, my brother, like, like, literally my dad.

Speaker A: Every.

Speaker D: Everyone in my family that immigrated here served in the military in every major conflict since World War I. So, like, the military was always something that was very akin to me. And then I think as a kid, just generally, I mean, like, the, uh, I like to draw. And so architecture seemed really cool. And so, I mean, and maybe in some way, like the complex system, you know, re engineering, it's like the military decision making process or whatever you want to call that, keep some of that in you, but you take it into your, like, later in career. But I like that idea of being able to, like, maneuver complex things around.

Speaker B: Awesome. Uh, so same topic. What Was your first job. I mean, very first job.

Speaker D: Uh, oh, man. I think that I can. Shut up. I think that I can remember. I actually, uh, I worked for a dude. Uh, we did decorative curbing. So I would get up super early in the morning in Arizona before it was sunrise, because it gets too hot. And so we would go get, um, like, seven or eight tons of abc. We go get, you know, a ton of, um, Portland concrete. And we would literally go to these job sites or, like, people's houses or whatever it was and like, like mix all this stuff up. So I'm moving wheelbarrows around as, like, a young kid and trying to figure out how to move six or like three or four hundred pounds worth of concrete and then shove it in this machine and lay the decorative curving that you see around trees and around people's yards. And it, uh, very clearly reminded me that I did not want to continue doing that very much longer. So then I went to school.

Speaker B: Um, what's your most controversial food opinion?

Speaker A: End

Speaker D: that. I'm not lactose intolerant. Uh, my wife reminds me all the time. She's like, why did you eat that ice cream and think that this wasn't going to happen?

Speaker A: Sounds like my wife.

Speaker B: Mind over matter. Where there's a will, there's a way.

Speaker D: That's what I keep saying. I'm going to beat this lactose out of me.

Speaker B: I'm just.

Speaker D: I'm a. Yeah.

Speaker C: Microdosing latches.

Speaker B: You show that sour cream. Whose boss? Drew. Um, and then our, uh, our traditional ending question here, uh, on the Pair program, ah, is there a corporate philanthropy or charitable organization that you. That's close to your heart that you want our listeners to know about?

Speaker D: Um, it's local, so I would say college, um, bound. Ah, it is actually kind of a long story. I'll be really quick. My mom started this, um, she adopted, like, two girls when they were in high school, uh, for a variety of reasons. And one of them was an astronaut. Like, she's super smart, 4.0, and she's like, what are you gonna do in school? And she was like, school? And, uh, what she ended up doing was figuring out how to kind of like, do this complex problem solving. How do you go through fafsa? How do you do all these things? So I think she's gotten something like 3,000 kids in a college, uh, that were all just like, great students. So I was plugged for that. So it's college bound, uh, in Arizona.

Speaker B: So it's for all of Arizona or specific to Phoenix area. All of Arizona.

Speaker D: It's all of Arizona.

Speaker B: Okay. All right. And we'll be sure to plug that in the show notes. But, Drew, you've successfully completed the five second scramble. Maybe, uh, not as fun as decorative, um, concrete mixing, but still pretty good.

Speaker A: I dig that hard hat mentality. That's. That's great. Ah, all right, cool. Um, Darren, you ready?

Speaker C: Ready.

Speaker A: All right. If, ah, Fuse were a restaurant, what would be its signature dish?

Speaker D: Don't say canes.

Speaker C: First thing that came to mind was Canes. Uh, what would be its signature dish? I, uh, would say probably like a steak dinner, like I think we. But not at a fancy place. Right. Like, we're gonna get down and gritty, but also like it's gonna be. There's gonna be substance.

Speaker B: There's.

Speaker D: There.

Speaker A: But how's it cooked?

Speaker C: Uh, probably like medium rare. Like never be too. Never be too prepared. Right. Just let it ride.

Speaker A: Yeah, you don't want it bleeding though. Yeah, just straight. Still. Still moing. Uh, what's a common trait that you see in every standout founder that you

Speaker C: guys back high give a damn?

Speaker A: Nice. What's the boldest piece of startup advice that you've, uh, ever been given?

Speaker C: Uh, I'll give you what sort of I live by. Um, So I was 18 years old and I met Warren Buffett. I played basketball at Creighton University my, uh, first year. And, uh, I met Warren Buffett. I didn't know who he was, um, but he totally changed my life. And, uh, kind of what he always said was like, someday you'll work for a big company, you'll realize that nobody knows what they're doing, so you might as well just do it. And so basically from that moment on, at 18 years old, I was like, I might as well just go try. And so every time I've ever felt like going for it, I just go do it. And I always joked that if you knew what you were getting into, you'd never do it. So just don't think too hard.

Speaker A: That's awesome story. Um, so you've founded multiple companies. Which one kind of taught you the toughest lesson?

Speaker C: Toughest lesson? Um, I'd say probably the first one. Just trying to figure it out as a financial education platform. Um, hence the sort of Warren Buffett piece. Uh, how do we teach young people to get involved in public markets? Right around the time that fractional shares became a thing. So I had a huge market tailwind, um, but bootstrapped it kind of from the beginning. Never took an outside dollar and just Tried to figure it out as we went. And so I think, um, you just learn all the lessons of you think it's going to be this, like, oh, I'm going to go do what I want. I'm going to work for myself. But in all of the backlog of, like, how do you figure out taxes and how do you do the accounting? Like, all the things behind the scenes, you're like, oh, I probably need to build a team. And so I think it's probably the first one. And then hiring, you know, trying to figure out, like, hiring practices and how do you put a team together? Um, I've gotten much better at it over time, but I was really bad at it at the beginning. It's like, oh, you're my friend. Come on.

Speaker A: Yeah. Super. In early stage, um, do you have a favorite kind of, like, business or leadership kind of book or podcast that you recommend to, um, some of the early stage founders? Uh, where is it? Here it is.

Speaker C: Good to great. Jim Collins.

Speaker A: Uh, hell. Ah.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: So Drew's smiling because we just had a guy that is one of Jim Collins good friends. He's editing his next book. Um, and he came into the office and took our team through a internal strategy session of, like, how do we go from good to great and how do we put all the different pieces together? Um, and I think we all learned a lot from that. Like, um, I think it was meaningful. And I. So the cohort that's coming in in two weeks doesn't know this yet, but we, every one of them is going to get the book and it's going to be an expectation that they go through it.

Speaker A: Hell, yeah. That's awesome. What was your very first job?

Speaker C: Uh, very first job, I got paid in pizza. Uh, and my dad owned a sports complex, like a local sports complex in Arkansas. And we had, like, six basketball courts, soccer fields, and all these different things all in one, under one roof. And so I was sort of, every night would be dragging mops across the courts to clean them, doing all the different things. So I, I didn't get paid. I was about 12 years old, but I, uh, got paid in pizza. And it was, uh, Domino's, so I guess I could be pretty happy about that.

Speaker A: Dude, Domino's was my first job too, man.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker A: Yeah, I love it. Yeah. Awesome. Passing out flyers, driving a moped to the, uh, to the shop. It is awesome.

Speaker B: And actually, Tim still pays me and pizza for co hosting the podcast.

Speaker A: That's right. Yeah.

Speaker C: That's a great job.

Speaker A: Yeah. But only two toppings. Sean, you don't ever exceed. We got you on a budget.

Speaker C: 50 cents on the third topping will get you.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah, you better have a coupon. Um, what's, uh, what's your go to airport drink of choice?

Speaker C: Oh, man. Uh, Drew is going to laugh at me on every comment I say on this whole thing, but root beer? Um, I love root beer. Like, Drew would go a different direction with this, but everybody that knows me knows that. Just have root beer stocked, and I'm good.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Uh, all right. Uh, actually, who's a person that we should have on our podcast out of the. Maybe the greater defense tech ecosystem he think would be a good addition to our podcast?

Speaker D: I was looking at you, Darren.

Speaker C: You're looking at me. Um, somebody that would be good on the podcast. Uh, I'll give a plug to, uh, Donovan Moss. Uh, he's an outlander, but their general is vc, but he comes from Space Force. Um, so he's got kind of a cool perspective. Worked on the Stratify Tac fight team, um, but also now invests generalist investing. So he's got kind of a nice way to navigate through all the different pieces, but. But also just a cool dude. Nice.

Speaker A: Donovan Moss. We'll look it up.

Speaker D: Uh, I'm gonna give you one, too. Uh, just because I want to put a plugin for those guys out in Kansas, in Wichita. Um, Steve Cyrus, I think, could be a really interesting guy. Um, and I always plug for, uh, Witchita. Uh, and I tease this, but, like, you talk about academic institutions, if you've ever seen what happens out of Witchita, ah, you wouldn't think this, because imagine in your mind what an academic lab looks like. And then the first time I walked in, I walked into a hangar, and there was five 737s that were being ripped apart by 2,000 people being re air certified into other airframes that they were going to become. The next hanger had a KC135 that they're stripping all the avionics out and rewiring the harnesses. The next hangar, uh, B21, came rolling out. They put the skins on, and I went into one of the other facilities they had, and they're 3D printing replacement Apache helicopter blades that are like, like 47ft long. And I'm just, like, mind boggled. So when you think about. I tease them. It's like they're a defense contractor that happens to deliver education, but that is a super impressive team. And I had the fortune when I was in D.C. to get to work with Senator Moran. He's a great guy and has put a lot of focus on, like, what that market looks like. And so, uh, anyone out of that market, I think it'd be good just to highlight, like, the amazing capabilities that they have there, which was. It's one of our partners. Uh, it's just a huge, huge engine that's out there that most people just overlook because it's in the middle of the country.

Speaker A: Nice.

Speaker C: Yes, It's. It's absolutely remarkable. Like, if you guys ever get a chance to go check it out, like, change your whole view on what's going

Speaker A: on around there, that's it. Yeah, we'll, uh, we'll sync after this, Drew, and get. Get that, uh, info for Steve. Um, all right, last two. Uh, what's, uh, what's an activity, uh, that you kind of lean into to completely unplug from startup world? Skiing?

Speaker C: Uh, I think it's, like, the only thing, like, I don't love going to the beach or doing like that because, like, I just sit there and work the whole time. Like, I love working, I love what I do. And so I just always want to be doing it. And I feel like skiing is one of the few things that's, like, you know, I try not to die along the way, so I can't be thinking about other things.

Speaker A: You have to be, like, fully into it. You can't be doing anything else.

Speaker D: You meant to say enjoying all the memes I sent you. That's what you meant to say? I got it.

Speaker C: That is what I do with about 20% of my day. Yeah.

Speaker A: Darian's got, like, 80 text messages waiting.

Speaker C: You know, make them feel good.

Speaker D: They're great, buddy.

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

Speaker C: Yeah, I. I'll go. Merging vets and players. Mvp. Uh, group that started in Seattle, but they've got, I think, now 11 chapters. Um, but I've been a part of it for the last few years. Love what they do, and I think it ties really well into kind of what we do. Like, I'm a former athlete, didn't come from the military. Great. Like, Drew's military. Um, and he claims to be an athlete, but, like, whatever. Uh, but, um, what they've done is, like, they take a lot of former NFL players and, uh, veterans, and they put them all in sort of one room. Every week they do a workout, two hour session. One hour's a workout, one hour's a mental Health session. And so they just do really cool work and I think make meaningful impact because I think what, you know, you lose that locker room feel when you leave sports or the military. You lose that sort of camaraderie. And so I. I think they've done some really meaningful work.

Speaker A: That's awesome. Yeah, we'll plug both of those in the show notes when the episode goes live. Um, and I gotta ask it now because name dropped Creighton. But is Creighton your squad? Is that who you're rooting for? College, uh, hoops. I just saw a pretty epic, um, stunned Yukon.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah, yeah, UConn's terrible. So I went to Creighton and Oru, uh, Oral Roberts in Oklahoma. So I root for those two. Uh, and one quick final story I'll give you, uh, so we were at one of the merging vets and players, like, annual summits down in Dallas at the Cowboys practice facility, and Mike McCarthy was still the head coach there. And so, uh, I brought my dad. My dad's a lifelong Cowboys fan. I'm a lifelong Cowboys fan. Don't hold it against me. We don't threaten anybody because we don't win. Anyways, um, so we walk up to Mike McCarthy, and I brought my dad with me, and we were one of the sponsors for the event. And I'm like, mike, thank you so much for being a part of this. Like, having guys like you makes a really big difference. Like, you know, he's a keynote speaker and everything. And so, like, I'm like, dad, meet Mike McCarthy, like the head football coach of your favorite team your entire life. And my dad's like, hey, Mike. So my m. At the time, I think I was like, 27 or something. He's like, so my son's 27 years old, and, uh, you guys haven't won since he was born. And so it'd be really nice if we could get a Super Bowl. And. And I'm like, dad, what. What do you. He goes, no, he. We need winners. He should be winning. So Mike's like, give me just a second. Somebody's calling me. I'll be right back. And he walks away and never comes back. And so, uh, if you want to know how I was raised, it was, uh, there's winning and there's nothing else.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was gonna say your dad sounds like a hard ass, man. What a. What a. What a brutal opener for. For McCarthy. But, uh, that's a, Ah, that's an epic story.

Speaker C: It was a.

Speaker A: Awesome, uh, awesome.

Speaker C: Well, we'll.

Speaker A: We'll uh, we'll wrap on that. Drew, Darian, thank you guys for. For joining us. Awesome conversation and, uh, appreciate all you guys are doing to. To fuel the. Yeah. The next wave of innovation across defense. So thanks for hanging out with us on the podcast.

Speaker D: All right, back at you. Thanks for having us. Yeah.

Speaker C: Thank you, guys.