Shaping the Future of Defense Technology with Startups and Army Futures Command with Andy Yakulis

Episode Summary:
Host Callye Keen converses with Andy Yakulis, expert in defense innovation, discussing how startups can navigate and leverage the defense industry's complex contracting vehicles. They delve into the concept of Other Transaction Authority (OTA), its potential for startups, and how the defense industry is encouraging and fostering innovation.

Topic Highlights:

00:00 - Understanding the Defense Ecosystem
The defense industry is emphasized as a relationship business. Understanding various contracting vehicles, problem domains, and the industry's landscape can significantly benefit startups aiming for growth.

07:21 - Unlocking Defense Funding
Keen and Yakulis discuss the potential of various funding methods, including SBIR programs, OTAs, and other alternative contracting vehicles, to give startups the financial boost they need to thrive.

15:31 - The Innovation in Defense Industry
Yakulis details the unique role of startups in bringing innovation to the defense sector, how they fill a gap that traditional defense primes may not focus on due to their focus on large system developments.

21:46 - The Power of OTA
Yakulis explains the advantage of Other Transaction Authority (OTA), a contract method that may be friendlier to startups. While every contracting officer has the ability to use OTA, certain defense innovation organizations specialize in this method, offering startups a potential pathway into the defense industry.

22:25 - Strategy of OTA
Startups should understand the distinction between prototype OTAs, production OTAs, and FAR-based contracts. A well-planned approach can prove beneficial in winning defense contracts.

26:02 - Importance of Defense Expos
Keen and Yakulis highlight the value of attending defense shows, where startups can connect with industry veterans, learn about the latest tech, and gain insights into community and innovation programs within defense.

29:43 - Facilitating Startups
Yakulis expresses that the DOD understands that startups are key to innovation. Hence, the department is working on breaking barriers and simplifying processes to make it easier for startups to demonstrate their technology.

Parting Thought
"We understand that startups are where innovation happens... We want new innovative technology. We want new businesses to apply and get involved." - Andy Yakulis

Callye Keen - Kform
https://kform.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/callyekeen/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxJE64JgFTUAzDS3m-56FtA
https://twitter.com/CallyeKeen

Andy Yakulis
https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyyakulis/
https://twitter.com/AndrewYakulis 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

because we realize that startups are the key to innovation. We want to work with you.

Speaker 2: 0:06

Welcome to the startup defense. Today I have Andy Yacoulos. Andy, i got it. Andy, this is just a fun aside for our audience. We already bonded over the mutual love of people butchering our names throughout our whole life. So, andy, you're at Army Applications Lab, you're at Army Futures Command. Can you give us a background of who you are, what you do and what you're passionate about before we jump in? I ask you a bunch of questions about AAL.

Speaker 1: 0:36

Yeah, absolutely, callie. First, thank you for having me. I've been listening to the podcast ever since you guys launched it, i guess earlier this year, and I'm definitely a fan, so excited to be here with you today. I'll talk a little bit about AAL, but maybe let me tell you about how I got here. So I started out as a operational warfighter.

Speaker 1: 0:57

My background is very different than most in defense innovation and defense acquisitions in that I have zero acquisitions strain. All my background has been focused on deploying overseas into combat roles. I started out as a Kyle Warrior pilot, flying helicopters and leading teams into combat on reconnaissance missions in Iraq and did that for about seven years and then assessed for the Special Operations Community. So I flew more in the Special Operations Community, but I had a chance to do a lot of things outside the cockpit as well, one of them being I served as sort of like our tech integrator for my special ops unit And I had a chance to find technologies and leverage different contracting vehicles and contracting authorities to get technology into the hands of the warfighter And I really, really enjoyed that process. I really enjoyed the concept of finding technologies And I went to Silicon Valley and attended the Stanford Graduate School of Business and devoted my time to entrepreneurship, defense innovation, tech integration and how to leverage venture capital to invest more in defense.

Speaker 1: 2:00

That all led me to sort of mapping out the UDX innovation ecosystem, which is not an easy task if you ever try to understand who fits where. But I found the Army Applications Lab, which is a support of the command to Army Peatress Command, and was able to get an assignment down here in Austin Texas. So my current role is the director of corporate ventures for the Army Applications Lab. What that means is I lead our industry engagement for AAL. I do all of our industry outreach. I also lead the team that does all the business due diligence and the technical due diligence on the companies that we are looking to put contracts on, and we do that through the use of small business innovation, research or CIPRA grants. Aal is the subordinate command to Army Peatress Command, which is actually also here in Austin Texas.

Speaker 2: 2:46

I find that a lot of the entrepreneurs that we end up working with people, i end up knowing the ones that really get in there and move quickly. I find out that they were former operators. Because they have such a detailed knowledge of problems that need to be solved or ways that it would be solved more elegantly for their former life and then their future life as a technologist or a solution provider, they're able to just have more pointed solutions or a higher level of granularity. Do you feel like that background as an operations person versus an acquisition person serves you as well today as finding this dual use innovation?

Speaker 1: 3:30

I would say yes, mostly yes, with a little bit of no, and I'll explain what I mean there. I have a theory that some of the best entrepreneurs are actually former special operations officers, because they were NCOs, because they're very accustomed to ambiguity, they're very accustomed to unique challenges and they're very accustomed to finding ways to find solutions in unique ways. That's kind of like bred into you in the special operations community and it's very synonymous with how entrepreneurs need to run their companies in order to be successful. So I think in that context it fits well in industry. For me in this role. I think it fits well because, again, in special operations community you're always looking for unique ways to achieve that mission with the mission kind of first mentality.

Speaker 1: 4:20

Because I have zero acquisition training and everything I know is just like learn or I believe, on a lot of acquisition professionals I'm fortunate enough to work with now, it's not a dig on acquisition professionals. The way that we teach acquisitions in the military, especially in the army, it's a very in the box thinking, do things a certain way, and there's a reason for that. But if you were to take that same mentality to defense innovation, which is very closely tied to acquisitions, you wouldn't be able to think in innovative new ways, to find unique ways to either get after the same old problems and that applies to different technologies you're looking for but also different processes that are within the same regulations, but different processes that maybe are more efficient or in some ways, better at achieving the same result.

Speaker 2: 5:09

Well put how big of a culture shock was Silicon Valley and Stanford from your background?

Speaker 1: 5:15

It was big, it was really big. I came from a unique organization prior to Silicon Valley, but I actually went to a military academy for my undergrad. so my entire adult life, ever since I was 18 prior to stepping foot on Campus Air at Stanford, was 100% with other military service members. Now I'm thrown into a room with civilians and talking about things that I'd never been exposed to, like marketing and accounting and things like that. So it definitely was a culture shock. I'm a lifelong learner so I enjoy learning new things. I was also able to lean on a lot of the things that I brought to the table, which was like real world experience, life experiences, leadership experience, and that really allowed me to contribute to that ecosystem in a meaningful way, while leaning on my classmates to kind of explain finance and accounting and things like that to me.

Speaker 2: 6:07

It's nice to bridge those two worlds because I do a lot of community building in the tech startup space.

Speaker 2: 6:15

My background is in manufacturing and product, so I like to go out, i like to make interesting new things, so it's kind of a selfish behavior, but that's led to running a clean tech accelerator, running some hard tech and impact accelerators, and the mentality coming out of the startup world is so different than what I grew up in, which is defense contracting, and what my day-to-day work is.

Speaker 2: 6:43

The needs are still there And so turning people on in the commercial world is, say, you're beating your head up over, competing with everyone else, competing against big companies for big crazy salaries and you're solving a problem that's probably smaller than you think. But if you just come over to my world and just check this out, like we have contracts that you can get for prototyping money, we have different vehicles, we have innovation challenges, sbirs, we have ways of bringing new tech in, we have new contracting, we have the ways of teaming with other research institutions, colleges, and it's so different than idea get VC funding maybe when It's so wild and it's changing pretty quickly. You talk about dual use innovation and I'm not sold on the premise that you can be two different people, but I am sold on the premise that commercial technology is directly applicable and can be a huge force multiplier for what we're trying to do over in the defense industry.

Speaker 1: 7:48

Yeah, you're hitting a lot of points that are near dear to my heart. Well, one on the ecosystem development totally agree with you there. I mean, this is a people business at the end of the day, and innovation, in my mind, is a people business. It's all about relationships, and I think me spending some time in Silicon Valley and then bringing it back to the defense world has helped bridge a little bit of that and establish relationships and keep relationships alive that you wouldn't normally see. Two you kind of touched on it a little bit about the mission and purpose behind building for defense, and I really love the double click on that because I believe that is one of the most important things that an entrepreneur can work on or investor can invest in and really can't be overstated enough.

Speaker 1: 8:32

I think this new generation is very interested in working on things that matter and looking for a mission and a purpose behind what they're working on and in building products for the military, and I'm not talking about building weapons, i'm talking about building products that benefit our national security. There's a lot there and there's a lot to work on, and this kind of dovetails into maybe the last part of your question there, which is dual use technology. When I talk about building for defense, there is so much dual use technology. There is so much in current investors' portfolios or current companies that they are dual use. They don't even realize they're dual use yet. And that's my favorite company to work with. Actually, in AAL, i think it's something about 64% of the companies in our portfolio have never touched the DOD before, so I get to be the first person they've ever talked to in the military, which is a very humbling and honorable experience. There's a little bit of pressure there because I want to make a good impression serving that ambassador. But in my opinion and seeing what I've seen over the past couple of years working in this industry in order to hedge your bets, you are going to mitigate risk as a startup if you're dual use more than if you just try to focus and just go straight to the DOD, and there's a couple of reasons for that.

Speaker 1: 9:48

You look at a startup's funding life cycle. Every 12 to 15 months you're roughly raising a new round, give or take maybe six-ish months, and so you're looking for that new influx of capital. I'm talking startup, not small business, and there's a clear delineation If you're looking to have an investor help offset that R&D costs venture capital spending. You need that constant influx of venture capital money to keep pilling your milestones and prove out whatever prototype that you're building If you're trying to solely focus on the DOD and not take or not go down the commercial path and also augment your cash influx with revenue. Now you're 100% focused on the DOD to write to your contracts on time and send the money to you on time, knowing what's gonna happen with budgets getting delayed, possible continued resolutions, the palm changing from year to year. You're really beholden to the government contracting process to ensure that you're keeping your company alive. If we, the DOD, aren't careful, we will kill small companies.

Speaker 1: 10:53

And if startups aren't careful and if they don't hedge their bets and go to use and try to take in revenue and blend that with venture capital funding, very real chance that you could get crushed by the DOD. Not because it's bad to try to sell to the DOD, but just because it's very hard.

Speaker 2: 11:08

Traditionally, getting a full-fledged bar contract can take two, three years for it to exist.

Speaker 1: 11:17

Maybe longer.

Speaker 2: 11:18

Yeah, so yeah, that definitely resonates with me. We had a strategic initiative at K-Form where I said let's take a certain section of what we do and let's go find commercial applications for it, because we are sick of potentially getting things on hold. We wanna grow, we wanna figure out how can we integrate with really great technology companies so we can learn even better applications to bring back to our customers. So we wanna drive that conversation versus being driven in that conversation. So we became dual use but I had to use another company that sells commercially, because that's not really our world. It doesn't matter how long it takes to get a contract. If you've been doing that for a long time, that your pipeline is your pipeline.

Speaker 2: 12:05

Yeah, working with CleanTech companies this has been the most direct parallel. I have yet to find a good CleanTech company that's gone through our accelerator where there isn't a direct one-to-one application for a five or 10x value implementation of their technology in DOD. It's wild. I think the only other area that is so direct is in anybody that's working around a logistics. As I talk to them there like how do I talk to UPS, how do I talk to this? I'm like you know who the biggest logistics company on earth is They're like I don't know, fedex, like the US Army, right That's right.

Speaker 2: 12:43

They're hands down, they're probably the best because they're at the edge. They have crazy problems And so just take a look. Take a look at what your software would solve or what your solution would solve over in this other space, And that's always been really interesting to me.

Speaker 1: 13:01

And I'm glad that you're helping there. A big passion of mine, like we kind of said, is trying to convince startup founders that wouldn't normally do business with a DOD to do that. Like this concept of like Go to the army if you're doing something in logistics, like the army is actually looking for ways to reduce the strain on supply chain, and that's everything from You know different material solutions to munitions and predictive analytics, and there's a whole ecosystem around what the army is looking for to help in this bin, what we call contested logistics. And again, you don't have to be building weapons to sell to the government. You can do a lot of other things.

Speaker 1: 13:44

Personally, like, i think it's just a super exciting time for defense innovation and do use technology, because there's so many Startups that historically would never have done business with you that are now interested in. There's so many venture capitalists that would never have invested in a company. I used to be like the lingo in the lingo in suck up all the way down. We would never invest in a company, that's especially in a company that relies solely on defense contracts. Net language is starting to change a lot just in the last few years And i just think it's a super exciting and interesting time.

Speaker 1: 14:19

Ukraine has changed a lot of the conflict between ukraine and russia. The markets and what's happening right now with the markets have changed that a lot. But we are at a very interesting time and i kind of feel like a responsibility on the government side is we need to be a good partner Because the interest is there from industry that logistics company that you talked about their interest that we need to be a good partner To them. That doesn't mean give them you know free contracts. That means be a good partner and be a good advocate to give them a chance to play their technology, to take advantage of this energy that's happening in the ecosystem right now.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Yeah, certainly. with the success of andrew shield a, i and previously palantir and that suite of defense focused companies think that they capital on the investment side. that conversation has begun to shift in a meaningful way. That means that the startup conversation will shift to where the money is. that's just the nature of the beast is if money is going to an area It brews interest and then there will be more applications specific to that area of interest. The big question i ask almost everybody that's on the show some flavor of this question is if i'm a startup and i don't have this burden of experience of this, is what i do work with? do the entities and primes? If i think that you're right, how do i get involved? what's a what's a good way to crack into this opportunity?

Speaker 1: 15:52

Yeah, great, great question, and i get this one a lot. The best way to do it if you're a startup you want to get involved is to go after a small business innovation research grant. There's a lot that's been written about cyber, about what it's good for and what it's not good for. Cyber is not good for recurring revenue, isn't? it is not recurring revenue. Never treat it like that. Never think that it is. Think of it as a way to showcase your abilities to the government. Think of it as a way to get on the playing field and show what you can do. And think of it as a way, as you're on the playing field, for the, for the coaches of the scouts that are watching you, to now See that you're a player in the ecosystem. You also get away to work on our deep projects. That is is in the form of non dilutive grant money. If you're weighing cyber versus, should i raise another dc round cyber? i mean, we're not taking equity at all. The dd doesn't take equity in company, so it's a way to get non dilutive money Into your company.

Speaker 1: 16:51

The thing you have to be careful of is with with cyber, is you're gonna go through a contracting process because the other day. It's a contract You're gonna have to build according to that contract, that cycle to go through the contracting process. We at the applications lab oversells to stand over, trying to do it as fast as we can and faster than most, but it's still a process And you still could be on a multi year contract and develop something out that may or may not be a part of your court business model. I would advise a company use cyber to get involved in the dd, get involved in the military industrial complex, build that prototype. But also use that knowledge you gain, that Capital is giving you without any dilution, to develop out other products that you might be working on on the commercial market and you can do that very strategically.

Speaker 1: 17:43

The other way to get involved If you're new is don't pitch me the government, pitch a prime, pitch somebody else that's already on contract and go get on this sub. That's a really easy way. It's not easy that the efficient way for a new company to get involved And sort of get handheld through the process, because your prime contractor is doing all The contract negotiations. They have all the certifications that neither they're subbing to you and they can sort of take you with them through the process. I know a lot of companies that are almost a hundred percent defense focus that I've never had their own prime contract and they're super successful but Don't even need to raise venture capital. They're bringing in recurring revenues that they get subcontract after subcontract and they've learned a lot of as they've gone And they haven't taken the risk that's involved after going after that large prime contract themselves.

Speaker 2: 18:36

So two ways silver sub, teaming is great because the burden of the management and paperwork is much less to so if you're a small company, writing those proposals isn't the easiest thing in the world, so teaming is a great way to get past performance in place. For people that aren't going into the DOD, so they're going after an NSF CBER, we see the same kind of thing. So partnering with research institutions is usually how we do it. It's like partnering with a local college and their research department, and so you get free interns, free research, and you don't have as much management overhead on the grant. But teaming is a fantastic way in DoD. If you have something unique, somebody can add it to their proposal and it's a huge differentiator for them. So they're more likely to win. Yeah, and then you can build a relationship. They have lots of other projects, go work for a prime. This is all that they do. So that's been really good to me. I love that point.

Speaker 1: 19:32

The other delineator that I'll say, if you have the money as a startup, the best defense focus or dual use companies that are selling to the DoD are the ones that have the best federal sales teams. I mean it sounds obvious but knowing one spending the money to get to hire those really competent federal sales individuals and the cream of team around it is the delineator And it's the type of individual you hire. Not everyone in the military. And take for me, for example, 15 year operational guy with special operations experience, zero knowledge on the acquisition system. So I would not have been a good hire into a startup to run the Fed sales team because you just don't know the ins and outs of you know writing the super proposal when contracts to go after. So hiring a Fed sales team that's like acquisition savvy and understanding the procurement process, the contracting process. Those companies that I work with that I've seen that are super successful have invested in the right sort of talent to get after selling to the DoD.

Speaker 2: 20:32

I couldn't agree more. The defense industry is a relationship business. You need someone who knows the business to maneuver through it and somebody that has experience with the different contracting vehicles. They have past performance. They have more knowledge of the different problem domains that are going after. It can really shortcut that growth. If they have already worked for you know a prime right, they've come from there or they have a decade of experience working through that, they know even simple things like figuring out which show to go to. It's very nebulous from the outside, but it's very obvious from the inside of where to go. How do you see the changes and how do you see the OTA consortia and the whole idea of alternative contracting vehicles impacting startup innovation?

Speaker 1: 21:27

Great question. I think OTA is such a great resource And if you're a startup that doesn't understand the difference between other transaction authorities and far-based contracts, you definitely need to. And then you need to understand which entities should I go to that are very well equipped to get after OTAs. Ota is an authority that was granted in, i think, the 1994 NDAA, so it's an authority that every contracting officer essentially has. They can do an OTA, but different innovation organizations specialize in OTAs And really this comes down to the risk and the comfort level On the military side to write that OTA contract.

Speaker 1: 22:08

The DIU Defense Innovation Unit. It's fantastic and probably the leader in the Defense Innovation Organization of writing OTAs, both prototype OTAs and production OTAs, and there's a lot that goes into the difference in the strategy on production or prototype OTAs. All that to say. If you're a startup, this is a great resource for you because it's not a large far-based contract. There's a lot of special authorities that are granted under OTA versus FAR And this I think, in my opinion, and really because of the DIU championing this effort to write more OTAs, they did about $200 million in OTAs and FY22. That is a difference maker for a lot of startups and have gotten them started.

Speaker 1: 22:56

I would like to raise a little bit of caution. For a startup that's looking to use OTA not a far-based contract, not a program of record OTA gets you maybe a foot in the door. It's probably a step up from Ciber. But you also have to be careful when you look at ceiling of contract versus how much you're actually going to get versus a program of record, and you have to understand how all that is different and strategically than which programs, which contracts you're going to go after, based off of the contract vehicle that's being used. So a long way of saying is that the startup founder is given an advantage with the OTA. Ota is a great resource for them, but you still have a lot of homework that needs to be done to make sure you know what you're getting involved.

Speaker 2: 23:40

And DIU will pick on DIU because you mentioned them, I just responded to a CSO, that's on their commercial solicitation opening. It's 15 slides. Apply to this with a white paper or 15 slides And then if you get to the next round, obviously there'll be more work that needs to get done. But if you have past performance or you've gone through a phase one Sibir and you've exited that, so you have some past performance where you've done the thing that you said you were going to do. There's other things other than knocking on every door or going to every show.

Speaker 2: 24:16

And if we can put the funding in a roadmap, I think it looks a lot like your pre-seed seed series A, series B kind of funding. If we can put that federal roadmap of funding on a line and say, okay, phase one's 250, it's not enough money to go into a hard tech product, but it is enough for us to bolster what we're already doing so we can get it over the line or give us another six months of runway. So that's great. Maybe we're going to do phase two or maybe we're going to go after and look at what DIU or one of the Defense X DODX entities are putting out for a potential OTA and then get another X funding, And then I believe that this is getting more and more friendly for commercial companies to go through this route.

Speaker 1: 25:08

I think we on the DOD side still need to do a better job of making it easier for companies like the DIU example you gave 15 slides, that's all we need and making it easier to display your technology. It's probably much more economical for a startup to display your technology on a deck or a white paper or applying to a Ciber than it is going to a show. You can only imagine how much it costs to get a booth at a USA or a soft week.

Speaker 2: 25:34

I know exactly how much it costs. So yeah if we were a startup, we wouldn't be there. I'll just say that.

Speaker 1: 25:39

So yeah, i know it's not cheap, i might give you advice on go or not go to those conferences. I'm just saying if you're hedging your bets and you're looking to where to spend your time and money, the route that you're talking about makes sense. I think there's a lot that we can do on the DOD side better just to continue to make it easier, to continue to break down barriers so that companies that are want to do business with a DOD have a chance to sort of explain and showcase their tech. A lot of great programs that exist XTech is one of them that just comes to mind. I know that they've got a sort of like a pitch competition going this week where the companies are actually gifted money and then invited to apply for a phase one after that. So a lot of great programs out there, hard to navigate, but there's people within the DOD, myself included, that are willing to help.

Speaker 2: 26:25

An interesting point about the show because we were at soft week is if you're looking at this space, i urge you to go. AUSA is phenomenal. That's local. soft week is in Tampa Great excuse to get to Florida and enjoy the weather Right.

Speaker 2: 26:40

But you can see the coolest tech that is available in the entire world and you can walk and talk to people to answer any question that you have, because they're sales and technical people. So you can just answer like why do you have this, what does it do, what's the purpose of this? Who uses this? And they'll just endlessly answer these questions. So the amount of granularity that you'll get on the solution side is really unparalleled in one place. But on the community side softworks, navalx, every single organization from community to innovation they have a booth there and you can just talk to the program officer and say what's going on at NavalX. How can I get involved with the Navy Ciber program? How can I get involved with what? can I go visit this office that you have down the street And so very quickly you could probably do the business development that would take you two years to do. You could probably do in a couple of days. But also you get to see cool stuff.

Speaker 1: 27:40

It's inspiring Like I was like there for like 48 hours but it's super inspiring to see, like, all the cool latest emerging tech. I think what Softweek does well and this is part of the SOCOM community special operations community which is really its own service with its own acquisition authorities. They have like the PMRO there And so you can hit the different PMs that are relevant to your technology, that it gets talked to them. For a startup, not just being able to showcase your technology to other business partners, but actually talking to the procurers in SOCOM and warfighters all in the same ecosystem, all the same building. I thought it was a good event, really good event.

Speaker 2: 28:19

So I will say, from an investment of time and money standpoint, if you're looking at dual use, go to one of those major shows, walk the show, make some friends, and everybody's there for that same purpose And this is a common misnomer about SBIR programs or other innovation related programs The person that runs that program, their job, is to find people like you and get them funded, like that's. They're not there to reject you, they're there to foster you and actually walk you through that process and get you funded. It's. They're not a goalie. If you can start that personal relationship with them, there's a lot of things that can happen downstream, but really just the paperwork is not as scary when somebody's rooting for you and reviewing it and telling you okay, we actually have a template, right, you know, you can just fill out the template for SBIR. This is what. This is why you're not eligible for direct to phase two Like you think. You think so, but hey, i really advocate Doing this and then doing that. All the information is there.

Speaker 1: 29:20

It's just a little Obscure yeah, i think this is like a really good point You're making about we're not the goalie, they're not the goalie, but like if you come up a level. Like the doD, from sect f down, has Very clearly articulated that we understand that Startups are where innovation happens. Like the primes are great for what we need them for, which is, like large systems Meet the requirement to the specification that we need, the requirement built to. We don't incentivize the primes to innovate, so they don't. So we need small businesses, startups, to innovate, to develop new technologies for the doD. We're we, the doD aren't trying to goal-keep and only service the primes. It's just because those large systems are so expensive.

Speaker 1: 30:05

A lot of funding goes there, but in order to innovate and find that new technology that's going to integrate in those larger systems Or might be a smaller system that needs to go in the hands of a warfighter, we know that needs to happen with startups and so, as much as it may be, at times it seems like it's a super complex process and it's impossible to break in, while I I know the doD can be a challenging partner and hard to break into. Like we want new innovative technology, we want new businesses to apply and get involved. If you've been paying attention really for the last 60 years, from 2015, when DIU established a lot, these different organizations, these innovation organizations that the doD has established is because we realize that Startups are the key to innovation. We want to work with you. That's from the second step down. Like we are, we are here to hear what you have to offer.

Speaker 2: 30:59

That's a fantastic way of wrapping this conversation of Andy. I really appreciate the time You taking to. You know, share with me and share with the audience. Before we go. What's next for Andy? What are you? what do you see Moving forward?

Speaker 1: 31:15

what my passion will always be in national security and things that are Trying to get technology better technology to support our national security. I've had this amazing opportunity to work underneath Army features command and for Army application lab And I've enjoyed it immensely. I was asked to serve as the Army service lead for the office of strategic capital, so I'll be, if you understand, military, like all the PCFC, and I'll be permanently changing station to the DC area To work with the, the office of strategic capital. They're in the Pentagon. So I'm super honored and humbled and excited for that new opportunity. Wow, it's phenomenal.

Speaker 2: 31:52

Thank you so much for being on the show.

Speaker 1: 31:54

Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2: 31:55

This has been the startup defense I.