From Defense to Venture: Dr. Reginald Turner on Tech, Investment, and Inclusion

In this episode of The Global Signal Podcast, we sit down with Dr. Reginald Turner, a PhD-powered strategist, venture investor, and former defense technologist, to explore the intersection of national security, frontier technology, and venture capital.

With over 30 years of experience spanning the Air Force Research Laboratory, the National Security Agency, and beyond, Dr. Turner brings a rare perspective shaped by translating cutting-edge research into real-world impact. Today, as a Venture Partner at Venture University and through QoCo Ventures, he evaluates emerging technologies, dual-use systems, and the next generation of disruptive startups.

We dive into:

•  How defense experience shapes strategic thinking in venture capital 
•  What investors look for in frontier tech and dual-use startups 
•  The future of autonomous systems, optical research, and war-gaming 
•  Key opportunities for founders building in deep tech 
•  Expanding access and increasing HBCU participation in venture capital 

This conversation bridges engineering, investing, and leadership, offering insights for founders, investors, and anyone navigating the future of innovation.

Tune in to hear how Dr. Turner is helping shape the next wave of technology and economic empowerment.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Global Signal, a podcast exploring how emerging technologies, international policy, and financial markets are reshaping global power. I'm Joshua Charles.

SPEAKER_01 0:13

And I'm Benjamin Fields. Each episode we move beyond the headlines to examine the strategic dynamics that would matter not just this year, but decades from now.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

How innovation drives competition, how capital flows influence geopolitics, and where cooperation remains possible in a rapidly changing world. Let's get started. Dr. Reginald J. Turner, welcome to the Global Signal. Dr. Reginald J. Turner is a PhD-powered strategist and venture investor with over 30 years of experience in defense technology and emerging systems. He has worked with the Air Force Research Laboratory, National Security Agency, and other defense organizations, leading programs in optical systems, autonomous ground vehicles, remote sensing, and wargaming simulations. Today, he leverages that expertise as a venture partner at Venture University and through Coco Ventures, evaluating frontier tech, W systems, and innovative startups, while also mentoring the next generation of investors and entrepreneurs. Dr. Turner is also passionate about increasing participation from HBCUs and their students in venture capital, helping connect talented founders and investors to opportunities that grow endowment and foster economic empowerment. He brings a unique perspective at the intersection of defense, technology, investment, and inclusion, thinking like an engineer, moving like a VC, and leading like a visionary. Dr. Reginald Turner, thank you for participating in today's episode.

SPEAKER_00 2:10

It is my pleasure. Glad to be here. Thank you both for thinking of me.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

I'm super excited for this episode because you have an engineering background. I think a lot of times we assume that people with MBAs have the best training, but if you look at a lot of the world's top CEOs and the way the world's most efficient governments work, a lot of those people are actually engineering trained. And you have the technical knowledge that you bring to the VC element that I think is absent in a lot of things that I see that are similar to this podcast. And so I'm super excited for this perspective to come out. Um, the first question um we referenced your career in defense technology and your work spans, the NSA, and a bunch of other organizations that give you a unique perspective. And so, how has the experience that you've had up until this moment with your engineering training, the agencies you work for, and then your current engagements helped shape the way you approach problem solving and strategic decision making?

SPEAKER_00 3:05

Yeah, that that is a great thorough question, actually. And I I I think in the in the broadest sense, it it has to do with uh the whole uh notion of systems engineering or taking a systems approach uh to problem solving, holistic problem solving, where you you you consider all stakeholders, uh, all phases of the product development. Uh you think about the users, the customers, uh the operators, um, suppliers, OEMs, uh, maintainers, all the decision makers. Uh, all of these stakeholders have a point of view or perspective. And that perspective matters and helps you uh move towards success. Um, they should be considered, they must be considered in building a strategy, building uh a maintenance plan, building an execution plan, uh, growth plans, a full roadmap. Um, and that needs to be as robust as possible. Um, and and uh another aspect, or to that same same point with systems engineering, what you're doing is you're considering all these stakeholders and you're taking a complex problem uh or complex challenge and breaking it into smaller and smaller and smaller components. So, number one, understand and bound the problem of the challenge, and then analyze it, assess it, and uh prescribe solutions for it in a very, very systematic way. Uh, then you can reassemble those constituent parts all while still consulting your end user, your customer, um, to make sure that you arrive at something uh that is is of benefit, of value to everyone that's involved.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

I appreciate that. Um, I recently did some work in public health, and it's funny because a lot of different disciplines are actually shifting towards this systems approach, and engineering did a great job of bringing it kind of to the forefront.

SPEAKER_02 5:03

So, really, and this is an interesting perspective when we think about you know these technical dimensions results or translate to operational capabilities. And so a lot of the work that you've done touches upon translating this really cutting-edge research into operational capabilities. What lessons from that process are most applicable to leaders in venture capital and emerging tech markets?

SPEAKER_00 5:34

Uh, one of the things that I definitely picked up on as part of the defense, Department of Defense is uh the DOD acquisitions process, uh, which is a milestone-based process, much like the VC funding process, where funding is released or raised in stages as risk is removed. Um as you're meeting goals, as you're gaining traction, as you're testing, as you're proving things out, you're you're removing risk. You're mitigating some of that risk or trying to address as much of that risk as possible. That's whether you're building a multi-billion dollar weapon system or you're trying to raise funding for your startup that will eventually become a multi-billion dollar company. Uh, and in in this process, in the DOD acquisitions process, you have the milestone decision authority, who is the person who signs off and says, yes, this particular program is ready to receive the next tranche of funding, in the same way that an investor committee meeting uh occurs to determine if the the VC will write a check or will write another check, uh, depending on what stage you're in. Um so those are two parallel things, and that those skill sets are directly transferable. With respect to uh the actual technology, which is often used, um, and we're building around tech, whether it's new tech or a legacy tech that's used in a different way. Um, as part of that acquisitions process, we do technology readiness assessments. Is this tech mature enough to enter the next phase of development? And uh during my time with the Air Force, um, I was asked by the Secretary of the Air Force to create a technology readiness assessment level, a TRL, technology readiness level assignment rubric. Um, I'm sure you've heard of TRLs. They usually go from TRL one, where you're doing really, really basic science, up to TRL9, where the tech is ready to be a part of a full-on operational system. This is a metric that's used to help uh let others know, stakeholders know where we are in the development process. And I created a rubric that the Air Force used and still uses to assign TRLs to new technology. Um, and this is mandatory for programs that are over half a billion dollars in value. Uh I taught this rubric uh to scientists and engineers and acquisitions professional professionals across the Air Force for about four years. Um and it was very well received, and several defense contractors would have loved to have been in that class, but it was only for Air Force personnel at the time. And I still use that now when I'm talking to founders, trying to understand their tech and where they are and where they are going. And that helps me make an assessment as to whether or not uh they are, in fact, as far along as they say that they are. And so, really, this this isn't to present a checklist, not you check the box outside you have a TRO. Uh, good decision making is still needed, experience is still needed because ultimately it's all a gamble, but you use these tools to help you through that decision-making process.

SPEAKER_01 9:04

But that sparks a really quick comment from me and then a follow-up question that tries to understand different levels of technology. And so, really quickly, I'm I do research on like informal settings and how people make sure that they manage their projects properly. And the idea of funding is actually what comes up a lot, and making sure that you're releasing funding at reasonable points. And the mechanisms that you use here seems like they're much uh more developed than they would be in a civilian application or in a different application. Um, one question I have for you is that you talked about this system of taking technology from basic science down to full deployment. And then, of course, there's checks and balances. And so, how would this process look? What would be the difference in the process for a technology that is useful but not necessarily super important versus something that's extremely important? An example I could give is let's say we were talking about a new drone technology company that was able to make drones that have slightly better cameras and allow you to fly at higher altitudes, for example, versus nuclear technology that will have to do with whether or not we can deploy a missile if needed. You need your technology, your nuclear technology to work 100% of the time. And that's a completely different context than a drone technology that's convenient and useful but not necessary. And so, how would that process look different between these two levels or levels of importance of technology?

SPEAKER_00 10:31

Are you talking about the process of developing that particular capability?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Or yeah, would the process look a little bit different, or would there be more time allocated, or would there be different monetary components, or is the process pretty standard on all technologies?

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Sure, yeah. Um I would say um the the process, it depends on where it is. If if we're talking about something that is uh basic science, uh that's going to be handled by the quote basic science um uh people or the basic science unit, which would be the Air Force Research Laboratory in the Air Force or the Army Research Laboratory or Naval Research Laboratory. Um so that's where this is this this RD, this basic research is going on all the time, and it gets funded at a certain level. Um, and I I used to manage uh actually uh the corporate investment strategy for uh one of the tech directorates in AFRL. Um, and that's what we did. We we would go through, look at all the programs, I don't know, maybe two, three hundred or so, maybe even more, and we look at our budget, we look at what critical need they're meeting. Uh we would get requirements from operators, from uh combatant commanders, those are the three stars who are in the field, four stars in the field, who are actually um on the front line, if you will. These are the requirements. These is it would these are the it would be nice to have types of things. We would look at those requirements, look at all of the research we're doing. We'd rack and stack them, give everyone a chance to pitch, if you will, uh to keep funding coming for their particular projects, and we would, you know, draw a line, a metaphorical line. Everything before that line, we can't fund now, so it might be shelved. All the other things we had to fund now because it was a need from a customer. I would imagine, I would argue rather, not imagine, I would argue this is the same type of uh process that is happening when we're talking about funding a company. Um, and I want to make sure I'm answering your question correctly. Um, you were talking about something that's more critical than is not as critical. Um, those things that aren't necessarily as critical, whether it did not match a mission, it did not match a requirement, or in the commercial side, there was no real customer, there was no traction. Um, if it did not rise to that level, it probably is not going to be funded because on the mission side, the money on the Air Force side, the DOD side, the public side, that money can be used somewhere else to do something that's more uh mission critical that we need to address right now, whether it was pushing a program forward, um uh supplying something else that was needed, or uh uh researching another area that is an emergent area. And on the private side, it's all about what's going to yield the most value that will eventually yield the highest return. So um that same process applies, whether it's something uh in the public sector or the private sector, we're talking about value/slash mission criticality. I would equate those two things, and that's how that decision is going to usually be made.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

The next set of questions are on venture capital thesis and deal flow. And so, question number three will be you focus on frontier tech and dual-use systems through Cocoa Ventures and Venture University. What key criteria do you use when evaluating startups or technologies for investment? And you already previously just talked about one criteria, and so it'll be useful to know the others that you like to use.

SPEAKER_00 14:34

Sure. Um, one of the the our senior colleagues, uh, he he has three main questions that he has drilled into us uh that we all ask of any founder that we're evaluating. Uh, number one, what do you do? Why would anyone care? And how do you make money? So, what do you do? What problem are you solving? What are the pain points that the customers have communicated to you is something that needs to be addressed? Uh, why would anyone care? How big is this problem? How big is the order of magnitude of improvement that your solution is providing? Um, and and what can your customer do after your solution has been implemented that they could not do before? Who's clamoring for this solution? Uh that's that's why would anyone care? And uh lastly, how do you make money? Um, what is your business model? Is it a one-time purchase, a one-time recurring purchase where it needs to be replenished periodically? Is it a subscription? Is it something else? Is it some new model uh of revenue? Um, but how how do you make money? Where does the money come from? So those those three questions are the first things that we're thinking of, and we ask in one way or another to get that information out of a particular founder. And then I do something that I call value network mapping, which is a little bit more of a deeper dive, not full-on due diligence just yet, but trying to better understand uh where the founder is coming from. And this is based on the work uh by Patrick Vernon, who's a um a professor at um Duke University. Um, so there's this product market fit. Uh, what is the value proposition uh that you're presenting to me as a founder with respect to the market? How big is that market? Uh, what percentage of that market do you think you can realistically garner? And what is your go-to-market strategy? What's your plan for going after that market? So, product market fit is the first part of the value network mapping. The next part is the founder industry fit. The team. Can this team execute? One of the things that I I personally look for in a founder or a team is I I call it CPR. Are they cultureable? Are they passionate? Are they resilient? Uh, not every founder is coachable. Some folks don't want to be told anything, and that's fine. Hey, you you you go do you, I'm more than likely not going to invest in you. Entrepreneurs are generally passionate. Uh, so that passionate part is there. If you're an entrepreneur and you're still doing it, you are passionate. Uh, and you are more than likely resilient because you have had a lot of downtimes, and all you need is one uptime to keep you going. And so that that CPR is what I'm looking for. Um, and that's a part of that founder industry uh fit. Uh, what's your secret sauce? What have you figured out as a founder that no one else has? Um, and how are you gonna leverage that to create value and also uh make money off of that? That goes back to the business model again. So that's product market fit, founder industry fit, and then there's the fund fit. What are your growth milestones? What is your exit strategy? What is your return analysis? Uh, and is that a fit for my fund? Can I afford to fund you one time, two times, three times? How many different stages of funding uh can I participate in? And how diluted am I going to get as I'm doing that? If I don't do that rather, and ultimately, will your exit, your your um um either being uh your your exit moment, whether you're um acquired or you have an IPO, will that return my fund by how many times? So those are the things that I'm I'm processing while I go through uh the interview and the post-interview discussion with colleagues and just looking through the slide deck and other um information regarding the fund.

SPEAKER_02 18:59

So it's quite informative, Dr. Turner. I believe that so much of entrepreneurship is just about resilience and it's about showing up with sometimes you just don't see the signs, or you may see a sniff of signs, but it's up to you to pursue any type of positive reference of okay, this might be the most optimal direction for me to go in, or otherwise, maybe this doesn't make sense, and I think it's really a matter of kind of that also that founder, founder fit, just breaking things down a bit more and looking at okay, if I am looking to go into a different you know, industry, perhaps I may not have the expertise in terms of the technical aspects, but I have perhaps more so go-to-market strengths, research strengths, and those types of things, then I'd want someone competent in probably the technical side of things, as well as the let's say the industry side of things. And so I've I've explored different partnerships where there was not necessarily a strong founder fit, as well as equally so uh the the product market fit. And I think the sooner people learn about how to establish a quick product market fit, avoiding a high burden rate, and to generate positive cash flow, or demonstrate to investors that hey, within you know 27 months, 38 months, or or what have you, I will arrive at a point where I generate a positive cash flow, or this will be the month that I generate revenue because it's such a huge gamble that you all take in the VC investment space.

SPEAKER_00 20:48

It is definitely it's a risk. I mean, there there are no guarantees. Um, you just have to figure out how much risk you can uh live with.

SPEAKER_02 20:59

The people who will listen to this podcast, they will range from you know people in the policy making space, defense space, also people in the venture capital space. And so for our audience members who are early stage founders, what trends or areas of opportunity and defense related or deep tech ventures would you tell them are the most promising over the next five to ten years that they should potentially focus on?

SPEAKER_00 21:29

So um autonomy is definitely something that's that's being heavily invested in from definitely from the Air Force and the Army side, and for that matter, from from the Navy too. Um autonomy and collaborative systems, where we're talking about swarms, whether they're in air, uh airborne swarms, ground swarms, swarms at sea, um that is definitely something uh that is hot right now. We we've seen demonstrations of how drone swarms can cause damage and wreak a lot of. We've seen that in Ukraine and in Russia. That's where we're going in the near term, in the immediate future. Looking at 300 to 500 drones at about 2K each, that's not science fiction anymore. That's going to be the next step. And that's much, much more efficient than using one exquisite system that may cost$3 million. Or even using that one exquisite system as a countermeasure towards those 300 drones. So drone swarms are going to be used and they're going to be of all sizes. I recently saw a 60 Minutes piece that talked about putting a control system. This is not science fiction. There's a company that's putting electronic controls on cockroaches and using them for surveillance. And they showed a demonstration that the C a 60 Minutes anchor had a joint game controller and was controlling the direction that the roach was walking. This roach was fitted with a printed circuit board and electronics that was tethered to it, and he was guiding where it was going. So that's that's going to happen. So using drone swarmed in warfare, logistics, whether it's uh commercial or private, transportation, whether it's commercial or private, uh, that's gonna happen. And what's gonna be important in that is interoperability and integration layers. So that is going to absolutely be something that is a must. And trust. Um, trust for these, for example, that cockroach. That cockroach system has to be able to trust the inputs it's getting from the controller uh so that it knows it hadn't been hacked and won't do something that's more destructive. Um so that though uh interoperability integration layers, uh swarms of drones, um, they're gonna need to be standards and APIs and architectures and frameworks and um some type of infrastructure to make sure all of that can be supported. Um I alluded to this a bit. You have these drones, they're gonna have to be counter-drone attack, full stacks that can protect us from enemy drones that are coming in. Um optical communications. This is really going to be something uh that I think is going to uh grow uh a good bit because you have the potential of much more secure communications with optical communications than you do with RF. RF is acceptable to jamming, um, it's not as easy to control as optical uh communications or optical data links. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that optical data links are the silver bullet, if you will, but it does have its advantages over RF. Um, so that's something else that will continue to grow, particularly in space. Uh we we are in the process of evaluating a company now that has a free space office communication uh data lake capability. And um, whoever is able to design the infrastructure, the framework, the standards uh for a space mesh net or communications net will do extremely well because that's what's needed. Standards. Uh, what types of optical communications will be used, what types of um uh control terminals, uh, what's the format, what's the sequencing? Whoever does that is gonna do very, very well. With with respect to optical comms, uh, space resilience. Um, we're gonna have these uh um um spaceports, these commercial and and and public spaceports. Those will need to be protected. We're gonna be into space a whole lot. Uh SpaceX is about to open uh a can of worms in a positive way uh that's going to give access to space, and we're gonna be doing a lot of space operations. We need to protect those ground assets that we are um that we're gonna have. I'm working with uh another founder right now. She's a um a young sister uh from uh from Kenya. She's an astronaut candidate and a PhD candidate. She wants to build a the first commercial uh uh spaceport in Kenya, um, Equatorial Spaceport. And uh she she's done her and her co-founder have done a lot of work in making that happen, and it's a wonderful idea. And I'm just excited to see where it goes. Um, there are several other things, but I know we we don't want to uh go on for too long, but um several, several other one more key area is advanced materials. Definitely advanced materials for hypersonics, for communications, um, metamaterials. Uh, that is absolutely something that is is is um in that top 10 or the top five areas that will be uh significant in the coming years.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

That was a really exciting answer. I love this stuff. I'm actually um learning right now about the space economy. You kind of answered our next question because we're moving into autonomous systems, optical research, and war gaming. Um the next question really was gonna ask you from your perspective what are the most impactful developments and that we can have for national security and um commercial applications. I wanted to ask you a really quick follow-up question. Um, I've heard a lot about what's going down in space and how big the space economy is gonna be. Have you seen any companies that are working on, for example, universal landing ports for satellites? Because I've heard that these new companies are gonna come up that actually service satellites that are already in orbit. Um there's also gonna be much more commercial, there's gonna be much more availability for like commercial launches because even now a student team has the capability to build a small enough satellite that can do something but needs launch services. And so could you give a few more opportunities that you see relative to the space economy and then talk about which particular technologies you think will have the most implications for national security and commercial applications?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Absolutely. And the short answer is yes. Uh the sister that I mentioned who's building the commercial spaceport, that's one of the that's one of who her potential customers will be, just the the the quote unquote average person who's building a satellite that needs to put it on orbit. That's that's one of her potential customers. But uh yes, there are there are also companies, we've talked to at least three uh different companies that are doing what we would call on orbit uh servicing. Um prime example, uh let's say uh uh SpaceX launches a huge payload of satellites to low Earth orbit to LEO, but some of those satellites are um should be much higher in their orbit. And so there are companies putting space tugs in orbit that will take those LEO satellites to a geosynchronous orbit, which is much, much higher. And then those space tugs are parked in orbit and they can be used on demand. Um I I also mentioned that that's uh optical uh comms mesh that would be in space. Think of it as uh a 10G system in space so you can access whatever is plugged into that network that may be orbiting in space, regardless of who put that particular um satellite in space, who put that particular asset in space, you can access it through that entire mesh network. Again, standards will need to be created to make all those things interoperable, just like you can put an Android phone, uh an iPhone, a Mac computer, a television, a refrigerator, a microwave, all of that can be put on the internet right now. Well, think about the same types of different assets in space, all interconnected. It's only a matter of time before we we get there. Uh, some additional uh space um um capabilities that we'll have. We've talked to a company that is uh it's called Made in Space. They're actually building uh it's a 3D printing uh um capability that's in space. Instead of building things here on Earth and taking them to space, which costs a whole lot more, you you launch into space and you get materials that you need to print uh structures in space while you're in space. It's much, much more affordable. Um, and that company is one of the portfolio companies that we've invested in uh that is doing that. Now, around all of these companies that are going to be operating in space, there will be secondary and tertiary industries that form around them to support them, whether it's maintenance, whether it's um business services or consulting, um supply companies, whether it's fuel, um whether it's materials, whether it's components, there would be sub-industries that are created to support those primary um industries. One other company that is really, really fascinating. This company is, and this is another one of our portfolio companies called Star Catcher. They're basically catching the energy from the sun, the planets to catch the energy from the sun and beam it around the planet so you can harvest it on demand wherever you are, uh, day or night. Uh, that is a really, really interesting company, really interesting concept. And um I'm excited about seeing where it goes.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

I wish we could have an entire separate episode on this because it's super interesting. I saw a diagram about how when you look at all these satellites that are up in the air, and you talked a lot about optical systems, those take up a lot of data and they have to constantly transmit it to the ground. And I have a big appreciation for it because when you look at the scale of the amount of data that it is, we don't even have the capabilities of even harnessing that. And like you said, we need some type of system in order to maintain it. It's the same thing, kind of like with SQL and these large databases that companies work with. There's no way they can hold all these data sets until they created a way to store it and then access information as needed. And so it's super interesting. I've heard about them building semiconductor chips in space because of how technical the actual manufacturing facilities are on the ground. So I hope that one day we can do another episode on this and we can bring a couple more people and have a panel, it'd be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 33:19

And I think right now, when it comes to the movements in capital that are supportive of some of these directions that we've talked about. And so, even as we touch upon these advances in autonomous systems and wargiving simulations, how do you believe, Dr. Turner, that this should inform investment decisions, risk assessment, or policy development in the private sector? When I consider the private sector in particular, what comes to mind particularly is uh procurement efficiency, as well as to some extent, some synergy with or recognition and synergistic recognition, let's say, of these developments in the private sector and the overarching themes of policy developments.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Yeah, that's that's an interesting question. Uh um uh Ben Ben had had mentioned Benjamin mentioned that he's he's done some some war gaming himself, and so I'm I'm sure he'll appreciate this. War gaming is is modeling. Um and and there's a a saying that uh all models are wrong, some are useful. And that's that's kind of the approach um I think we should take with war gaming. Um it it um it helps us think through things before reality forces us uh to accept uh the lesson that it has for us. Um with with war gaming, we can ask, what happens if um if I'm able to to build this this uh teleporter and I plug this into this war game, how does the outcome change? If I'm able to have this this uh drone of 5,000 or this swarm of 5,000 drones, and they're all stealth and they're able to get inside um and complete their mission, what happens to the scenario? Do we recrease, uh decrease the amount of time uh to a victory? Do we decrease the cost to a victory, or do we, in trying to create this weapon system, do we break the American economy? So it it allows us to look at scenarios in a reasonably safe environment and just wonder what would happen. Um, I was listening to a podcast a while back, and there were some uh some people reflecting on a war game that was actually conducted at the Pentagon, and the the question or a question was posed. How can we end this conflict as quickly as possible? Uh the AI that was uh being used in that war game uh told the the operators bomb this target and the war will end instantly. Well, as it stood to reason, that target was where they were sitting, which is uh very, very interesting. So as you're doing a war game, you had to be prepared and accepting of the information that it gives you. So I I just thought that was a very, very interesting um uh result. But so this is this could be useful. War gaming modeling um could be useful for investing in other applications because it really allows us to have a broader perspective for the decision making. And I I alluded to this a little bit before. All of this this future prognostication, war gaming, venture investing, weapon system development, policy development, forecasting, it's all risk. And and and and you really can't eliminate risk, but you don't have to blindly accept it either. Uh what we actually do is choose which risks we're willing to live with, be those technical, market, regulatory, human, or the unknown unknowns. Um we can shape uh uh as best we can the risk to to try to minimize it using you know tools, techniques, and and and practices appropriately to get our arms around that risk to minimize it, whether that's in contracts or tranches of funding or um spiral development, if you will. But at some point, you have to either accept that that that irreducible remainder or move on to something else. Um so that's that's about as best we can do with with any of these war games, any of these models. Uh the simulation, of course, doesn't replace our judgment. We still have to rely on experiences um and and the work that we've done before, uh, but it can help us. Uh, and it may be one of our uh most valuable advantages, whether it's private sector or in the public sector, in making a decision.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

I have a really, really big appreciation for your answer and war gaming in general. And we know that you have former military experience, and it's great that you can bring that. And I do think that there's corporate applications. Um, one of the things that kind of shocked me in the war gaming situations that I participated in is how differently that everyone thinks, how differently everyone comes to consensus on decisions, how differently everyone measures risk. Um, what things are some people willing to deal with, and what things are other people not willing to deal with? And, you know, a lot of these things, like we do try to measure these technologies and see how would that affect the outcome. And they do matter a lot, but a lot of times it's the human element or the human factor that causes the biggest issue in a war game compared to the actual technology itself. And so just really quickly, could you give a brief like rundown? Like, what do these war games look like? Who's participating? Do we assign certain roles to people? Um, is there an objective? How kind of bounded are these different situations? And then how can we apply this if we think about it commercially? Because I think it's easier to think about it from a military standpoint or an intelligence standpoint, but not necessarily commercial. Could you maybe create like an example um war game?

SPEAKER_00 39:52

Oh, that's that's an interesting. So um hmm. So typically in in a war gaming scenario, you're gonna have someone from from each of the um involved areas. You'll have an operator, you have someone, you'll have a senior person, uh, you'll have an operator like a pilot or someone who's on the field, or or that that uh capability will be represented. You'll have someone from the tech space, the acquisition space, from the the maintenance space. So you you'll have all the constituent parts, and and they're monitoring, they're providing inputs into uh what can realistically happen. Uh whether it's a tabletop war game or it's an actual simulation where you're using AI or some other uh software to help um with the the the actual campaign, if you will. Uh now, how how would that translate into uh uh a commercial sector? I guess if you're looking at it from the standpoint of a founder, you would have um all of your key teammates uh being a part of the development process of your particular widget. You know, if if if you're looking at um uh how best to iterate, we've we've built this thing, we've gotten these inputs from beta testing from our customers. Now, what do we do with that? That would be a great time to start quote war gaming, putting together scenarios to see if we do this, can we expect this to happen? If we do this, can we expect this to happen? And you're just running all of these scenarios as you're iterating so that you can do your next test to get further inputs from your customers. The idea for doing that is to uh train or tune your model so that it starts to become more and more and more accurate, if you will. Maybe uh what is being called now is creating a digital twin. So your your real widget matches your digital twin. And as things happen in the real world, you can feed it back into your model, into your war gaming um uh simulation, so that you can begin to predict what will happen when you make certain changes, which essentially is all the war game is. Um now, of course, the question that begs to be asked will a small founding team have the resources to do all of that, have the funding, the personnel, the capability? Um, in the ideal scenario, if they could do that, I believe they would, because there that could be a tremendous value add. And that's data you can use when you're pitching, uh, when you're uh talking to other partners to bring them on board or what have you. Uh, but realistically, would they have the resources to do that? I don't know, maybe, maybe not, depending on how well funded they are uh and how far along they are in their development. So does that answer your question sufficiently?

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Yes, definitely. It makes a lot of sense because I could imagine that, you know, if you're a company, you would want to know if I roll out of technology three different ways, you know, how would the public react to this? How would investors react to it? How would the government react? And if they have the resources where they could simulate, hey, this geopolitical event happened or this administration is in power or this particular market should change, it'd be a much better way to reduce the risk and push them in the correct direction based on what we expect to happen in the future. So, yeah, I think it's a phenomenal answer. Um, I'm learning a lot more.

SPEAKER_02 43:46

Dr. Turner, you are quite passionate about increasing HBC participation within the space, both as investors and founders. We have Have all talked about how impactful these organizations can be with respect to HBCUs and driving positive change. So, from your vantage point, what strategies do you believe are most effective in building pipelines that connect talents from these institutions to the startup and VC ecosystem? And even something that you can touch upon is how within the VC ecosystem, a lot of black folks, or let's say HBC students, which generally are black individuals, tend not to receive the most amount of capital. And there are reasons for that that I think you are working on to create a more robust pipeline.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Yeah, absolutely. This is another one of those that could be its own uh episode. But so my my fundamental belief is that everybody can win. Everybody can win. Um and and uh pitch pitchbook, pitchbook did a ranking of universities by the number of of alumni uh entrepreneurs who've raised VC in the last decade. And um I don't remember the order necessarily, but I know some of those those top schools were Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Penn for undergraduate and graduate students. And and some of the traits of all of those schools mentioned, they had strong entrepreneurial education programs. Um there was space for students to practice and fail, and practice and fail without there being uh such a negative cloud placed over them. Um, but I think most importantly, they promoted uh a creative mindset, the creative mindset. And I I I took a class here recently on what the creative mindsets were. It included curiosity, uh embracing ambiguity, divergent thinking, having a bias towards action, uh iteration, um, being collaborative, and several other things. But but I don't think there's enough of this, enough of those principles at HBCUs for whatever reason. It just doesn't appear that there's enough of that. And that's what's needed, as we can see from the ranking from those schools that are successful at doing that. Now, now, in addition to that, there was a 2022 study that was released by the National Academy of Sciences that was focused, uh several scholars uh from all walks of life, they the National Academy of Sciences pulled them together to focus on building research capability at HBCUs. Um, one of the conclusions that came out of that was there needs to be a strategic commitment by DOD to advance the research at HBCUs. So just make a decision to fund HBCU research. So um those those first qualities of entrepreneurial program, where you can practice and fail, uh, where there's a creative mindset, having the support of the government, um providing funding for basic research in the same way that it was done for predominantly white institutions like Lincoln Laboratory and Aerospace Corporation and other federally funded research and development companies. This has been done before, it's not new. So, in the same way that that was done in the past, it should be done for HBCUs as well. Um, and so in response to that, I created a conference in 2022 also called the HBCU Digital Literacy Summit. And that conference was done to bring together um folks from the HBCU community, whether it was leadership faculty, students, as well as from the Air Force, uh, minority businesses, um, um, top brass from the Air Force and program managers and scientists and engineers. We had about 350 people that we brought together right here at Central State University in Wilma Force, Ohio, for two days, and we talked about meaningful ways to build capacity and capability at HBCU. Um, we focused on digital literacy. How can we improve uh the research that's happening at HBCUs? And so, what I'm saying now, the primary strategy is making an intentional effort to build venture capital investing knowledge and experience and expertise at HBCUs and within Black communities. This will not only benefit schools, the industrial base, the national security, but it will also benefit the American economy because right now we don't have enough entrepreneurs involved in the American economy to sustain it long term. And I'm doing my part to make sure we have more African Americans in that economy because that's what it's going to take.

SPEAKER_01 49:31

I don't think that people understand the scale and the amount of talent and then subsequent outcomes that we can gain from doing the types of initiatives that you're mentioning. And so this kind of takes us into the last question. Um, unfortunately, we're coming to an end, but this was a pretty fun podcast. Looking forward, how can greater HBCU engagement and venture capital help institutional endowments and then create long-term economic empowerment for their communities? And since we care about America, how could that impact America overall as well?

SPEAKER_00 50:02

Um, so what we do, we we teach uh principles of ownership and equity financing through venture investing. That's that's kind of our tagline. We want to make sure people understand how to be entrepreneurs and owners and not just employees. Uh, and I'm not knocking employee. I was an employee for the uh Department of Defense for over 30 years. Um but uh that shouldn't have it shouldn't be the only option that we have is being employees. We need to be owners um and take ownership of not just our communities but this country. One way of doing that is to have the the wealth, the resources in our communities to begin to start doing that. And so that's what I want to make sure we're doing. We're teaching people these principles. Whether you become a VC or not is irrelevant, but you have the knowledge to be a VC, to raise funds, to deploy capital. Um also, we need to have these corporate venture capital funds at HBCUs. So these students who've just finished these VC programs can now hone their skills and help the school benefit by helping manage investments, helping to raise more capital, helping to deploy more capital. This will secure the future of our historic institutions. And what needs to happen is to normalize raising capital, deploying capital in our communities. That should not be something that we have no idea how to do or no familiarity with. Um pockets of black angel investors everywhere we live, pockets of private equity investors who happen to be black everywhere we live. And yes, we will have some VC funds that are black-owned and black run everywhere we live. Uh, then we can decide who gets funded and determine our futures without being subjected uh to the whims or dependent upon the goodwill of others. Uh, that's how you take ownership, that's how you change communities, that's how you uh help a people thrive.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

It truly requires, I think, when it comes to the advancement of a group that is continuing to unlock its potential of being black people, but similar arguments can be made to you know Latin exphobes or other demographics, indigenous populations and and the likes. It's it's the the fact that one we are capable of doing wonderful things, and I think the representation of all of us on this podcast recording is reflective of that. Uh, my hats off to you for being a powerful force in the space, and and and thank you so much for engaging with this episode.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

It's it's been my pleasure. Pleasure meeting you guys. Uh, like I said, I look forward to a long relationship, a long, powerful, fruitful relationship for all of us. Like I said before, we can all win. Um, I want to do my part to help you win, uh, because your win is my win. When when you guys win, we all win. And that's that's what I'm I'm in this for right now. Uh, the rest will take care of itself. Uh, so thank you for having me uh be a part of this podcast. And uh I look forward to to future uh discussions, whether it's recorded or not, man. This has been a great discussion. So thank you.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.