Redefining Autonomy, Sibling Co-Founders, and Shield AI with Brandon Tseng

On this episode of The Startup Defense, Callye Keen speaks with Brandon Tseng, former Navy SEAL and co-founder of Shield AI, a company at the forefront of defense technology, specializing in AI-driven autonomous systems. In this episode, we delve into the remarkable journey of AI from concept to implementation in military aviation, including autonomous F-16 dogfights and the broader implications for future warfare.

Brandon shares his transition from Navy SEAL to tech entrepreneur, driven by a deep passion for enhancing national security and global stability through advanced technology. He discusses the inception of Shield AI with his brother Ryan, their challenges, and the vision that propels their innovations.

Key highlights of this episode include:

• AI in Aviation vs. Autonomous Vehicles: Brandon outlines why AI in aviation presents a technically simpler challenge compared to autonomous driving, despite high stakes.
• From SEAL to CEO: Explore Brandon's journey from the military to co-founding a leading AI firm, including the challenges of aligning a start-up with defense sector needs.
• Autonomous F-16s: Insights into Shield AI's groundbreaking work in fully autonomous dogfighting with F-16s, showcasing the advanced capabilities and potential of AI in combat scenarios.
• The Path to Autonomy: Brandon discusses "climbing the aviation food chain," a strategy to integrate AI across various military platforms, starting with simpler systems and moving towards more complex applications.
• Working with Family: The dynamics and benefits of founding and scaling a high-stakes tech startup with a sibling.
• Future of Shield AI: Brandon touches on upcoming initiatives and the strategic focus on expanding AI applications across different military domains, reinforcing their mission to protect service members and civilians effectively.

Brandon's insights are not just about the evolution of military tech but also about the perseverance required to innovate within the tightly regulated defense sector. His reflections on working alongside his brother, the iterative process of securing funding, and navigating the complexities of defense acquisitions provide a compelling roadmap for any entrepreneur looking to make an impact.

For anyone fascinated by the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and defense, this episode is a must-listen, offering a deep dive into the future of warfare where AI pilots are no longer the stuff of science fiction but a rapidly approaching reality. Tune in to explore how Shield AI is shaping the future of defense technology through innovation and strategic execution.

About Brandon Tseng
Brandon Tseng is Shield AI’s Co-Founder, President, and Chief Growth Officer. Previously, Brandon proudly served in the Navy for seven years as a SEAL and Surface Warfare Officer aboard USS Pearl Harbor (LSD 52). He founded Shield AI – with the mission to protect service members and civilians with intelligent systems – driven by firsthand experiences during deployments to Afghanistan (x2), the Pacific Theater, and the Arabian Gulf. At Shield AI, he leads all aspects of growth – business development, corporate development, strategy, marketing, and government relations – to help Shield AI achieve its mission at a global scale. Brandon earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and his MBA from Harvard Business School.

Learn More
https://shield.ai/

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to the Startup Defense. My name is Callie Keene. Today we're speaking with Brandon Tsang. Brandon is a former Navy SEAL and the co-founder of Shield AI, which is something of a darling in this defense tech startup space. We're going to talk about a lot of things. I've got a lot of questions for Brandon. We're going to talk about the future of autonomy and we're going to talk about an AI flying an F-16. We're going to talk about his brother being his co-founder. But before we dive into it, brandon, same question I ask everyone what are you passionate about right now?

Speaker 1: 0:54

It's a great question. I'm thinking about what I'm passionate about. I'm passionate about building winning teams and winning cultures. And then I'm passionate about our mission at Shield AI, which is to protect service members and civilians with artificially intelligent systems. Those are the two things that I am passionate about.

Speaker 2: 1:11

I really like this tagline from Shield AI because it's the big, bold bet and you're really coming through in this promise is we're building the world's best AI pilot. What do you go from being a Navy SEAL to jumping into the drone? There's so many drone companies too, and so to go from service to drones to making that big bet and where you are today, I really can you help us unpack some of that journey. Can you help?

Speaker 1: 1:43

us unpack some of that journey? Yeah, absolutely. I'll say the journey started in 2014 after I had been accepted into business school and knew that I was going to make a transition out of the military, trying to figure out what I want to do next. My brother Ryan, who is an engineer I'm an engineer he had me on this AI kick and he was like, hey, read about AI. This is going to be world changing.

Speaker 1: 2:15

And I spent a lot of my time reading about AI books, articles, whatever I could get my hands on during that last deployment. I decided I wanted to. After reading all those books, decided I wanted to do something with AI, decided I wanted to do something entrepreneurial, and typical entrepreneur story was just trying to figure out what problems I could solve and just kept coming back to the problems I had faced, which were problems of national security, global stability, and I decided you know, these are actually problems that I care about, that I'm passionate about. They're important problems, and I asked myself what is the role AI play in the military 20 years from now? Right, this is 2015. So what's the military of 2035 look like?

Speaker 1: 2:50

I decided AI should be piloting, commanding, maneuvering all of our military assets, because it could do so at superhuman speeds. It could do it better than any human pilot or human commander could. That was blatantly obvious to me. Any human pilot or human commander could. That was blatantly obvious to me, and it was just a matter of how to get there and could you get there. And that thinking was great. Okay, we've got the end goal. 20 years from now, AI should be piloting everything, commanding everything. But how do you get there? From nothing? And that was the start of it, but essentially allowed us to formulate a strategy, which we now call climbing the aviation food chain and building an AI backbone that can be leveraged across all platforms, aviation platforms. But that's how it got started. That was kind of the spark and the thinking behind it.

Speaker 2: 3:40

What's really mind-blowing is to watch the videos of your AI flying F-16s. So when to people about autonomy and UAVs, they think quads or maybe a fixed wing and you are working in that space. So you have VBAT has an official designation, which is amazing. I see you're producing more and more of those, but it's mind blowing to watch it be that next level of autonomy, because people have been flying, flying planes remotely for quite some time. But then to layer AI on it and you speak a little bit about the challenges or the wins with that F-16, like getting it to dogfight using AI.

Speaker 1: 4:23

Yeah, incredible challenges, incredible wins along the journey. I think about it and where we are. This is nine years after we started the company and we're flying fighter jets completely autonomously in real world dogfighting training scenarios. And just for a second, before I actually talk about some of those challenges, is like and just for a second, before I actually talk about some of those challenges, is like right, that's not far off from AI. If I were to extrapolate, it took us nine years to get our AI flying fighter jets. And then, if I think about where we're going to be 11 years from now, it should be flying everything and that's the journey we're on. It is cool to see that actually, this was in 2022. We first flew the.

Speaker 1: 5:02

F-16s completely autonomously. Actually, this was in 2022. We first flew the F-16s completely autonomously, but I don't think for us at this stage of the game, it's a matter of applying that AI pilot the same motion that we did to put it on quadcopters, to put it on our VBAT, now to put it on fighter jets, across all aircraft and really scaling the heck out of it In terms of the challenges there are. So, aviation if I could just draw a distinction between, like aviation, autonomy and self-driving car autonomy and maybe this will help for the audiences.

Speaker 1: 5:31

Elon Musk talks about nine nines of reliability for self-driving cars. That's 99.999999, lost track of my nines 9% reliability. And this is required because one. It's what consumers expect and what they will accept, right? The alternative to having a fully autonomous self-driving car is that I take responsibility for driving that car. I take responsibility for my actions. You need nine nines of reliability. It's also right if I think about the number of edge cases in the self-driving car world. There are millions of edge cases, right? Whether that's a pedestrian jumping out on the road, a bicyclist, like decisions that cars need to make. There are many, many, many edge cases. And then you think about the different terrains, the different environments. It's a very, very complex problem where companies have spent billions doing investing in it.

Speaker 1: 6:25

I think Tesla is probably the closest to having a viable, scalable solution. I have a Tesla and so I play around with self-driving a lot and it's just a really hard problem. In aviation. It's actually a far simpler technical challenge as it relates to the edge cases. Right, you're flying in one fluid environment, it's in the air. Your sensors you actually often have better sensors than self-driving cars. Right, when we're talking about an F-16, like we did self-driving quadcopters, where you're swap constrained and have perhaps the worst sensors available to any aircraft. And then you go to the F-16 where you've got an $11 million camera pod, $15 million radar systems Like it's the best sensors that any perception engineer could ask for. So your sensors are a lot better. There are far fewer things flying in the world. There are far fewer obstacles. The edge cases are much, much less. Sometimes I have customers say, well, yeah, but now you have to go up against adversaries. You know what happens when someone shoots three surface-to-air missiles at you. I was like well, in a self-driving car is going up against thousands of adversaries every single day. They're just other drivers, they're other pedestrians, cyclists on the road, and so again, it's just a far simpler technical problem and in that sense, it's a lot more tractable. The one area where we have had to invest significant energy and time is actually around safety of flight, and this is perhaps the major difference between self-driving cars and self-driving aircraft. Safety of flight is a very important it's just a very important focus area or area of expertise in aviation that I think a lot of people don't spend a lot of time on, and it's how it's basically. You have to be able to certify to the FAA to the government in certain cases, or foreign FAA agencies EASA in Europe, casa in Australia that your AI pilot is safe to fly, and in order to be able to do this, you have to get down to the unit level of code and explain exactly how your AI pilot is going to affect or impact safety of flight and what it's actually going to do to that aircraft, and that's a really, really hard thing to do. Where it's also a non-obvious thing to do in terms of like areas for ai companies to invest in and spend time on, is being able to articulate exactly what your system is doing to a certified autopilot um. But that's an area of focus of ours and for that we have been able to safely fly f-16 completely autonomously, the mqM-168 fire jet autonomously, and we'll just continue to.

Speaker 1: 9:07

You know our VBAT, our quadcopters less important in terms of like the impact if something goes wrong, but that investment in focusing on AI as it relates to safety of flight is a reason why Shield AI is, I would claim, making a lot of headway in this area. It's also the fun fact, like why we were named the Shield AI and the DARPA ACE team, why we were finalists for the Collier Trophy. It wasn't actually about getting 16s to dogfight completely autonomously. It was to being able to do that with non-deterministic AI in a safe manner. That is why we were a finalist for the Collier Trophy, which is awarded to companies for the greatest achievement in aeronautics and astronautics, and NASA won that award in the finalist election. I tell people look, it was great recognition. I'm happy to be a finalist. I'm not about winning trophies, I'm about providing value to the warfighter at the end of the day, and I think Shield AI is doing that and will continue to do that.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Sorry, long answer. Well, I like to lead with the F-16 example because, talking to founders, especially in hard tech and especially in defense hard tech, people have a hard time of saying here's our North Star. Right, we have this big idea, big mission, big possibilities, but I need to be able to break this down into manageable but still large and impressive chunks, because I need to build something, deliver it, get some traction in the market, get more funding and you're on, if I'm right, series F now. So you've kind of successfully.

Speaker 1: 10:44

Yeah, yeah so from.

Speaker 2: 10:48

From that perspective, you've been able to take where you are and we can kind of look where you started and deliver in I won't say incrementally, but like increasingly more complex challenges or promises to the market and and receive funding and growth from there, which it's like I think everybody can have a wild idea or say wouldn't it be cool if you could fly an F-16 or you could fly a fighter jet and it was all AI and we've seen I think we've seen that movie right.

Speaker 2: 11:21

But to then break it down and work over a timeline to get there and then keep in mind your I like what you said about 2035, like hey, by 2035, our assumption or big bet is that it will all be autonomous. So what does that roadmap look like? But can you help break that down? Because it's really defeatist for people to see where you are now and say like, oh, I can't compete against what Brandon's doing. Or like if I, if I can't get permission to fly a fighter jet, I'm not even going to try. But it's, it's all a process, right, it's a process towards a bigger goal.

Speaker 1: 12:01

Yeah, yeah and and look, I think you, you, you nailed it kind of from the get go is it's about breaking down something into a step-by-step manner, and in the SEAL teams they would teach you in buds or like even in the SEAL teams it's like, look, take it one step at a time. If you try to take it all at once, you're not going to be successful and I think you actually have to right. There's an element of, yes, you have to plan, you have to think ahead, you have to be cognizant about the future and what's going on in the marketplace as you're building a company.

Speaker 1: 12:36

But it's so important to break things down to the smallest size chunks and focus on that problem or that challenge right and that's true of building companies, that's true of the SEAL teams, that was true of engineering problems that I had to tackle as an undergraduate. It's like, okay, we've got this massive thermo problem, all right, let's break it down into part by part, by part. And when you break it down to parts, it does make the problem more tractable. And then the other thing that I think about is you're not going to get there all at once. To your point, I tell aspiring entrepreneurs that you earn the right to more capital, and that's why the venture capital ecosystem works. They're not giving you a billion dollars on day one. You have to break it down in terms of chunks for them and show you that they will invest in you.

Speaker 1: 13:24

And I tell them yeah, you're earning the right to more capital, they're earning the right to more money. The same with customers in the DOD also. Right, You're not going in on day one without a product saying, hey, we need $30 million for this. They'd say, well, you haven't proven yourself, you haven't shown me. Let's start with something small and move forward from there. And so I think it's just really important, as you are building a company and I would claim this is true whether it's in defense, tech or not. But to break the problems down into smaller problems. Focus on those problems, deliver on that and then you'll earn the right to larger problems and more capital and more opportunities with customers to show them that you can deliver value.

Speaker 2: 14:05

Yeah, I love the way that you put that. Another interesting question that, just reading your backstory and maybe roping your brother into this a little bit, is I run a family business, so I work with my brother every day. I do more of this, I do the engineering piece, but my brother does the operations. He makes the things. I designed the things. If you could look at bifurcating it like that, but I don't know, like, how do you like working with your brother? How does that, how does that dynamic play out? Because I and and your brother's on shark tank too right, so he had another yeah, he has I just.

Speaker 1: 14:43

I just had a friend of mine.

Speaker 2: 14:44

do a deal with Mark Cuban the other day, but uh it's it's. It's like that's Because you're doing something really, really hard, but you get to do it with your brother.

Speaker 1: 14:54

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My fun side note is, like I remember in 2017, one of our investors was like saw a rerun of Shark Tank and was worried that Ryan was doing like something with Shark.

Speaker 2: 15:06

Tank he's supposed to be all in.

Speaker 1: 15:08

He's like no that was, yeah, that was five years ago. No, look, I'm smiling because you work with your brother, so you know what that's like. There's pros and cons to it. Right, the pros are chances are. This is true of Ryan and I. You have very common values, and this is by virtue of being brought up by the same parents and having shared experiences, and that's a plus. I think another plus is you can communicate really well, and I have complete trust in him, he has complete trust in me, and that goes a long way in terms of actually moving the needle forward also, and then we have very different specialties and what we're passionate about. Similar to you, and your brother, like Ryan, is incredibly passionate about engineering, loves engineering, which is fantastic. I really appreciate how things work, I understand engineering, but that's not what I'm passionate about at the end of the day.

Speaker 1: 16:04

I really enjoy the other aspects of the business, but whether it's sales, marketing, corporate development, growth, you name it, that's like some product management. I enjoy those aspects of it. Finance I really enjoy that aspect of running a business. But we have this non-overlapping set of specialities but then, at the same time, like we see the world the same way and certain things that matter, which is like leadership, like we think about. You know, we're both, I would say, students of leadership. We think about just problem solving from an engineering standpoint. We think about just problem solving from an engineering standpoint, from a first principle standpoint, the same way, and so that is beneficial too.

Speaker 1: 16:39

I often do get surprised how different we are, though, in terms of just how we see the world and perceive the world and look. That can lead to friction at times, but that's things that we work through. Yeah, I'd say, all in all, I recommend it, if you have a high performing sibling, to work with them, and yeah, that's how I think about it. Another side note like I have had friends that work with their spouses, and that's something I could never do or recommend and that would be like at the complete end of the spectrum. I was like, you know, I asked my friend. He asked me. I was like how's it going? I explained it the same way. He's like well, at least you, you know you get to go home to someone else at the end of the night. And I started laughing. I was like yeah that's absolutely true.

Speaker 1: 17:21

Like I so love my wife, I could not work with her, you know in terms of finding a co-founder is so difficult for many, many people.

Speaker 2: 17:39

So him having run and sold businesses in the past and you're a Navy SEAL with a lot of specific mission experiences like two high performance people coming together with seemingly, like you said, shared values but non-overlapping skill sets is kind of that's the holy grail of co-founders anyways. But you kind of get it's a little cheat mode right. It's like hey, I already know this person. I don't have to like onboard and build this. You know this trusted relationship.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Yeah, no, that was my thought process was like God, our problem, like probabilities of success go up a lot If I can recruit Ryan to do this. And then brought the idea to him. He said, hey, sounds like a really noble mission, sounds like a crappy business idea. But I'll help you understand. It's a crappy business. He's like go talk to 100 people. It's called market discovery. And I was like fine, if this is what it's going to take to get you. Brought him along for a number of those conversations, got him on board. Then we went up to raise money, went 30 for 30. No's Investors said, hey, sounds like a noble mission but a crappy business. And to which Ryan said I told you so, but no, we kept at it.

Speaker 2: 18:39

Yeah, I think I saw in one write-up he was like, yeah, it sounded good, but it was my little brother's idea, and I was like, wow, this is a really honest guy, but that's funny.

Speaker 2: 18:50

No, the reason that I bring that up is there's an aversion for people doing this, and take it with a grain of salt. I'm obviously biased in this situation, but finding a co-founder is hard and there's this perception, especially in the venture community, that family businesses don't scale. But there's so many examples where that's not the case. There's multiple billion-dollar companies that run their family businesses.

Speaker 1: 19:19

No, I remember actually maybe it was self-affirming but one of my Harvard Business School strategy professors who studied a lot of businesses, is like sibling businesses are. You find that often, in terms of the non, like there's a lot of success in it. Whether and you look at like some of the large businesses of the time, a there's a lot of success in it. Whether and you look at like some of the large businesses of the time, a lot of them are family owned and you have a set of siblings you know running them or working on them, but I think the one he used was Disney was the example.

Speaker 1: 19:45

He had a very creative person and then a very operationally focused person in terms of the two Disney brothers.

Speaker 2: 19:51

What is next for you and for Shield, ai, uav or autonomy world is going or?

Speaker 1: 20:02

yeah, yeah, um, you talked about like that, that kind of like north star idea, to add some like clarity around the north star problem that we're solving. Uh, I want to enable shield AI. Our objective is to enable combatant commanders whether it's into paycom, you come south, com, centcom, you name it um, the ability to find, fix and put at risk targets of interest 24 hours a day, seven days a week, without GPS, without communications, without a human pilot, over large geographic areas 30,000 square miles to 50,000 square miles and to do so without breaking the bank. And you know if, like, that's our North Star problem, the solution that we've come up with is that looks a lot like AI piloted mass, or what we call intelligent, affordable mass, and so for us, the name of the game is one, swarming VVATs is definitely part of that, that'll be a piece of that. But two, it's get the AI pilot on other aircraft to enable swarming, to enable these other aircraft to contribute to that mission. Set to that problem. Set and Shield AI.

Speaker 1: 21:12

We made the decision long ago. We can't accomplish our mission of protecting service members and civilians with artificially intelligent systems by ourselves. Right, we can't build all the world's hardware, but what we can build. Because of the beauty of software is you can build that AI pilot that enables the capabilities for this new generation of hardware to provide meaningful capability. And so we want to work with primes, we want to work with drone providers to enable them, with these capabilities, with these AI pilots, to get after that North Star problem set. And so yeah, simply yes.

Speaker 1: 21:48

Swarming VBATs they're coming, they're coming fast. And then we will continue to put the AI pilot on more and more aircraft. We've done six aircraft to date three quadcopters, the VBAT, the F-16, the MQM-178 fire jet. We'll do two to three more aircraft in the next 12 months MQ-58, valkyrie BQM-177, which is a target drone for the Navy, and then we are figuring out who that third aircraft is going to be or what that third aircraft is going to be. But again, if you think you know, goal vision is AI should be piloting and commanding and maneuvering every asset by 2035. And so, to the extent that we can make that possible, that's what we're going after.

Speaker 2: 22:28

It makes a lot of sense because you're a software hardware company, but if you think of the total addressable market, the total problem, there's a lot more to explore in the software versus just the systems market. So it's kind of leading me into feel free to gloss over this question. But right now you're focused on aviation, but there's so much push in maritime right now and all forms of autonomy and as you move more into software and going onto systems and becoming an AI pilot, what does that look like? I see this and I think the VBAT's really cool. I love the one that can deploy a quad.

Speaker 2: 23:11

It's just like wow, that's smart. A lot of interesting things there. But as you become more of a software company, what are the thoughts there?

Speaker 1: 23:19

Yeah, no, no. Look, autonomy can provide value in lots of domains and we are thinking about how can we best enable autonomy across all domains and how can we deliver this value to enable the customer to solve that North Star problem and I'm not going to directly comment on it because it has a bit to do with product strategy and I don't want to talk through some specifics there, but I am excited about it.

Speaker 1: 23:45

There will be, you know, some cool announcements happening later this year and I think people will start to see, like, how we're getting after that.

Speaker 2: 23:53

It's just nice to see the discussion go from hey, let's use these drone things to autonomous systems and detail operations and doing a smaller like a tradable systems and really get part of the language of how missions are executed or planned or thought of. But then that conversations moved over into a lot of maritime stuff and I think the cycle there of change will be much faster, where it's like you could build drone kits 10 years ago right and fly them around and have a headset.

Speaker 1: 24:30

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:30

And that whole market took a really long time to actually mature and see operationalize, I guess outside of like the geek community, right, because if you dial back in 2015 and said, hey, have you seen a drone? I'd be like, yeah, my friends are making these in a maker space, like we're building odd sensor systems and strapping them to stuff right now Everybody's doing it. But they really weren't right, they weren't operationalized. Then, from a startup perspective, you kind of move how fast the entire thought process of that market works across all those other domains as well, because it's like, hey, we're solving it for air, like maybe we can solve this for for land or for I'm seeing software really go into everything ai and software we, you know, in our sensor systems yeah, a hundred percent.

Speaker 1: 25:17

no, I I think it's like look, I I actually don't. When I look at our drones or other people's drones or aircraft, I actually don't even look at it as like an aircraft or a drone. I say, oh, that's a body that a computer could go into. Right, it's just that I think about these things as computers with sensors and they just happen to fly. Maybe, if you talk about USBs like, they'll happen to like skim beyond the surface of the ocean. They're just.

Speaker 1: 25:41

But at the end of the day, it's a computer with sensors, with some motors to actuate things, and that's how I think about it. They will become ubiquitous. In the same way, mobile computing like everybody's got a cell phone and compute is ubiquitous in everyday consumer lives like compute will become ubiquitous on the battlefield and it's just going to take the form of a lot of different shapes, whether that's an aerial drone, a undersea drone or even like, whether it's just compute in the form of, like, yeah, a mobile operations center. There's just going to be lots and lots of compute on the battlefield and that will open up the way that battlefield commanders actually operate on the battlefield. In the same way, mobile computers have opened up the way that we operate in our everyday lives.

Speaker 2: 26:23

We're on the same page there. A lot of my background has been making rugged computers, ruggedizing COTS and then being able to put software on it and putting it out in the field. And a really simple way of looking at that is somebody wants, say, a cross-domain solution, cybersecurity software, but they want it on a helicopter. It's like, realistically, the product is just a place for software to live on. What they really want is the capability of moving data across network security levels. Right, but you can't just slap a Mac and put it on a helicopter and be fine. We have to deal with special types of information and gather and move it.

Speaker 1: 27:02

Yeah, 100%. I think the analogy I would make is like in in the way that SpaceX opened up a number of different applications and products and use cases in space. Now, by making it accessible, right Drones are opening up the battlefield for a number of software applications and that is, you know, something exciting to see that you're focused on software in the military space.

Speaker 2: 27:39

So you see a software company win a prime on a hardware platform and because there's so much capabilities that Palantir with their software can bring. But they're teamed with a bunch of hardware companies Andrel and et cetera, et cetera and it's really because what they need is the capability. The hardware is just, it's a literal vehicle, but it's also a metaphorical vehicle for allowing a capability into the field, which is amazing. So I'm more of a hardware guy, but we're in the business of facilitating software. So I just I really like this interplay of like what kind of company are you? And at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, you're fulfilling a mission requirement right.

Speaker 1: 28:20

Yeah, one of the cool things actually just from the acquisition side of things and we're seeing this more and more is the customer is thinking about the bifurcation of acquisition of software autonomy and the acquisition of hardware. And that's fundamentally because the prime subcontractor model yes, there are benefits to it and it can work in some cases, but in many cases what that prime does is obfuscate the value that's being delivered from the software, and the government has recognized that and they're saying you know what? There's got to be a better way to get our software onto these platforms and one of the solutions which I'm excited about is that they've bifurcated programs between hardware and software, Because it should be more of an interoperable peer model versus some hierarchical vendor lock model right.

Speaker 1: 29:08

Yeah, exactly, exactly yeah.

Speaker 2: 29:10

Yeah, Don't be afraid to get too acquisition or defense nerdy on the show, because that's what the show is about. But honestly, understanding things like that are very helpful for the listeners who are like, hey, I want to start a company or like, hey, I'm struggling in finding commercial product market fit. But I see these challenges being talked about in defense. There's things to pay attention to and keywords to listen for to understand what's happening because it is moving quite quickly. There's the way that acquisitions are occurring and the even just the way that the DOD is just being a little bit more transparent. Hey, I want this thing or I want this capability is changing quite a bit. So I really like when guests come on and say, hey, this is something to look for and it's a little in the weeds because it's going to help somebody that's listening to the show.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Yeah, no, no, no, no for sure. I say the defense market is not for the faint of heart, or it's not for tourists. It is a deliberate motion if you're going to go after this market, and you just have to be prepared to go through a lot of challenges, figure a lot of things out. It's not easy, but I think obviously there are companies that have shown that you can do it if you are, you know, dogged enough, hard-headed enough just to keep at it. So, um, but yeah, it shouldn't be a hey, I'm going to try this thing out. Necessarily, it tends to be more than that what's interesting.

Speaker 2: 30:37

What I like about defense tech is if I wanted to build vbat, I was like I'm going to use it for bridge inspection. It would be very difficult to actually get the funding together, find product market fit and really make that from a cost-to-cost work. And my personal mission is just make cool stuff with cool people. Make cool stuff work with interesting people. Solve interesting problems. That's really what I'm focused on. And in the commercial market, sure, bridge inspection or infrastructure inspection is great, but it's also like a very competitive problem and getting a hold of some initial capital that's non-dilutive would be almost impossible to solve that problem at any meaningful level. But with DefenseTech you can build something interesting. So I don't know. You get to make cool stuff.

Speaker 1: 31:28

So yeah, you just have to be.

Speaker 2: 31:30

I guess a little bit more patient and the market is slower. There's a process to everything, a little bit more paperwork to everything, but at the end of the day, hard tech is already fairly hard. I just don't see another market, even medical, where they're like hey, if you have a great idea, we'll help you fund it and get it going.

Speaker 1: 31:49

Yeah, no, I think defense is attractive in that standpoint and there is one of the things that is just like it's important work, it's meaningful work, and I tell people it's like our government, our military. They will only be successful if there are world class people that are helping them out and helping them solve problems. So I welcome smart, talented people to tackle these problems, because no single company, no single government agency is going to get it done all on their own. They need a lot of help.

Speaker 2: 32:18

From your perspective, being one of the startup darlings that people list is like hey, here's one of the unicorns of the market, no offense, but you're in the bubble of defense tech. Have you seen the increase in popularity of defense tech as a market? What I'm saying for bubble is it's hard to separate that from your success through the interest of the market growing itself. But in general, what is your perception from the inside out?

Speaker 1: 32:49

Yeah, no, I think there's been a tremendous amount of progress in the space and like I'm excited. Right, that's what? Again? You want a lot of companies, you want investors to try and solve these national security problems. It is going to be challenging. It's like just in any market there's no guarantees of success and it's going to be hard for companies. It is going to be challenging. It's like just in any market there's no guarantees of success and it's going to be hard for companies. It's going to be hard for investors, but I think it's all positive in the long run. But certainly there has been a shift in mindset and I share a quick story with you.

Speaker 1: 33:18

Our Series A investor, peter Levine, from Antares and Horowitz. They had just invested in Shield AI in 2017. And Peter is a Stanford professor and he was giving a guest lecture on venture investing at Harvard, to which a bunch of my classmates went when I was there and I didn't get to go. But I asked oh, how was it? He said, oh, peter just invested in dumb ideas. He invested in the dumbest one yet he said which was Shield AI.

Speaker 1: 33:47

So I called Peter up and Peter's got a great sense of humor. He's like that's not what I said. He's like look, I was talking about contrarian investing, right. He's like it's a dumb idea to get into a car with a stranger, right. He's like that's Uber. He's like it's a dumb idea to stay at a stranger's house. Oh, that's Airbnb. Right, it's this contrarian thinking. He's like your contrarian idea is like let's build an AI autonomy company in defense right, everybody knows defense is not where you build companies or build businesses. He's like now your job is to go prove the world wrong and show that this was actually like a clever, thoughtful idea. And if you guys are successful in doing that, you'll see more excitement in the space, just as you saw a bunch of mobility companies, a bunch of Airbnb companies and the whatnot.

Speaker 1: 34:32

And so, look, I think, shield AI I'm proud that we have played a role in terms of energizing and getting people excited about the defense tech space. Oh yeah, I give a lot of credit to Palantir and SpaceX really being the trailblazers in this area and excited for, like, what the next generation of companies can do, whether it's, you know, shield AI, andro, you name it. You need companies to have a strong national security. You need, you know, companies contributing to this problem set to have global stability in the world. So, yeah, it's exciting.

Speaker 2: 35:05

That's fantastic, brandon, before we go, can you give us some words of wisdom, a golden nugget to get us out of here?

Speaker 1: 35:22

Yeah, let's see. This one is one I've been using lately a lot. It's a quote from Vince Lombardi, but he says we chase perfection to capture excellence, and so I fundamentally believe it's like you got to be as perfect as possible and right, imperfection is unattainable, but if you chase perfection like, you're going to land at something excellent, and that's what I tried to hold myself. That's similar, too. I try to hold my teammates, our, our shield AI teams, to uh, be as close to perfect as possible, and you're going to mess up um a hundred times over, but it's that mentality to you know, keep at it and keep pursuing perfection that matters. So, uh, hopefully that's helpful.

Speaker 2: 36:00

Hey, thank you so much for being on the show.