The Startup Defense

Streamlining DoD Innovation, Breaking Bureaucratic Barriers, and NSIN with David Schiff

• Callye Keen • Season 1 • Episode 42

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In this episode of The Startup Defense, host Callye Keen talks with David Schiff from the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN). They explore David's extensive work in defense innovation and discuss the crucial programs and opportunities available for innovators looking to contribute to national security. David shares insights on fostering collaboration across different sectors, the significance of human-centered design, and the role of NSIN in accelerating defense-related technologies from early stages to commercialization. This episode provides valuable information for anyone interested in navigating the defense innovation landscape.

[00:01:00] David Schiff’s Passion and Background David shares his passion for connecting people and ideas across ecosystems, highlighting his journey from joining the Navy to working in defense innovation. He discusses his experiences in both military and civilian roles, which have shaped his approach to fostering collaboration in defense.

[00:06:00] Role and Impact of NSIN David provides an overview of NSIN’s mission and various programs. He emphasizes the importance of student involvement and tech transfer in driving defense innovation and supporting startups through different stages of technology readiness.

[00:08:00] Programs and Opportunities at NSIN Details on NSIN’s initiatives, from early-stage technology readiness programs to supporting dual-use innovation. David explains how NSIN helps startups transition to defense applications and the value of these programs in fostering innovation.

[00:12:00] Challenges and Solutions in Defense Innovation David discusses common obstacles faced by startups in the defense sector, including the complex facility clearance process. He shares examples of successful initiatives and process improvements that NSIN and other organizations are implementing to address these challenges.

[00:17:00] Future of Defense Innovation David shares his thoughts on the increased budget for DIU and its implications for the future of defense innovation. He talks about the impact of international partnerships, upcoming programs, and his optimism for continued growth and collaboration in the sector.

Key Takeaways

  • Connecting Ecosystems: Collaboration across different sectors is crucial for accelerating innovation in defense.
  • Human-Centered Design: Incorporating user-centered approaches can significantly improve defense solutions.
  • Importance of Networking: Building connections and finding mentors are essential for navigating the defense innovation landscape.
  • Efficiency and Innovation: Streamlining processes and leveraging disruptive technologies can enhance efficiency in defense spending and logistics.
  • Opportunities at NSIN: NSIN offers various programs for early-stage technologies, dual-use innovation, and student involvement in defense projects.

Resources Mentioned:

Guest Bio: David Schiff is a key figure at NSIN, with a rich background in defense innovation, including his time at NavalX and Defense Entrepreneurs Forum. His work focuses on connecting innovators with defense opportunities, streamlining processes, and fostering collaboration across various sectors. 

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Startup Defense. My name is Kali Keene. Today I have David Schiff. David has really been working in innovation and defense in a number of different ways and facets over the years and I'm really excited to break down what he's doing with NSYN and other programs right now that you, if you're an innovator and you're thinking about jumping into defense or you have an amazing idea, how you can participate into the ecosystem and get involved. But, david, before we jump into all that fun conversation, same question. I ask everyone what are you passionate about right now?

Speaker 2:

I would say that connecting people and ideas across different ecosystems is my main objective in most of the last few jobs I've done, and I'm very passionate about that because I see a lot of really smart people working hard to make our country safer and democracy safer and more secure for our kids and their kids. And I feel like sometimes those smart and really well-meaning people are working in silos and we hear this all the time. People are kind of working independently of others, companies are working independently of others, federal agencies are working independently of others and some of that is really good, right, like people off doing their own thing, trying to come up with solutions to big problems. But what I've also seen is a lot of inefficiency and kind of a scarcity of collaboration across places where it would really move things forward faster.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I think we both share the sentiment that working in national security or defense is an impact innovation area and it's a really helpful way of framing it because it's not the easiest space to innovate in, but certainly one of the most impactful. That at least in my opinion. So that's really fantastic and I think for me your name first popped up with Naval X and so we share a few friends, neighbors in common, kind of, in that space. And then we met through Defense Entrepreneur Forum, DEF, which we've had Trish on. We've had a number of people associated with DEF on the show. But can you speak a little bit to your background and where did David come from and how did you get sucked into this innovation thing and how has that worked out for you and for the ecosystem?

Speaker 2:

It's always interesting talking about yourself, right it's very difficult yeah.

Speaker 2:

You kind of package this story, but it definitely was not a linear path. I wanted to I've always wanted to help the United States continue to lead and make a positive impact on the earth and as a kid I thought I'd be in kind of the intelligence community, the military, the law. Those arenas always fascinated me and I was inspired in college to join the Navy. I heard some really impressive senior leaders speak at my undergrad and I was a newspaper editor and had a chance to listen to and speak with some of these amazing folks like Colin Powell and Robert Gates, and I was just thinking you know, these are great leaders and inspirational people and I want to be like these guys when I grow up. So I joined the Navy. I was in two different ship classes a submarine and aircraft carrier. You know I saw a lot in the fleet about what we can do better, both for the sailors, for the weapon systems, for logistics efficiencies, things like that, and also for software and that's. All of those continue to kind of impact the way I look at defense, ecosystem support, impact the way I look at defense, ecosystem support. And when I went from the military side of the Navy to the civilian acquisition workforce. I was in that for a long time as well, and I got to be privy to things like contracts and budget, which is important to know how the Defense Department does its job, but also I was part of things like procuring virtual and augmented reality training systems for littoral combat ships, where they were going to have an operational tempo so high that they needed something really realistic to allow the sailors to train in port, because maybe the ship they needed to go to wasn't available at the time or maybe they were working so hard at sea that they didn't actually have time to train. Just all of those things kind of led me into the defense innovation space.

Speaker 2:

I got into a Navy fellowship back in 2017 that gave me the opportunity to rotate to several different parts of the Navy and DOD, and my second rotation in that fellowship was Defense Innovation Unit Experimental. So there I got exposed to both the new concept of it was a new concept for the DoD of other transaction authority, high-speed prototype contracts or agreements, and then also the mindset of human-centered and user-centered design, and I got exposed to Defense Entrepreneur's Forum there. So all those things really helped me kind of congeal all of the things I cared about into one kind of arena and about. I want to say, five or six months after my DIUX rotation I got a call from a mentor of mine at the Pentagon who said we're starting a Navy innovation unit called Naval X and would you like to kind of leave the charge as the deputy director? And I said yes and I got to be.

Speaker 2:

It was kind of like starting a new company, it was like a startup we. One big difference is we weren't as concerned about funding, right, we knew we had some money but pretend like that was our friends and family money. We then had to prove that the concept was going to be scalable and usable and functional. I pulled in a lot of the things I'd learned as a naval officer, as a Navy acquisition person, the human-centered design things I'd learned at DIUX, and kind of got me to Ensign, where I am now at the Secretary of Defense level, which is now kind of merged with DIU.

Speaker 1:

Now let's talk about Ensign, because the organization is involved in a number of interesting different programs and projects. I see Ensign Forge, I see the work with FedTech, I see I would say from early early stage startup or all the way to commercialization. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Speaker 2:

We often describe the capabilities as kind of early technology readiness level up through kind of an advanced technology readiness level.

Speaker 2:

I'm going to use TRL from now on, but kind of low TRL entrance to mid and high level entrance.

Speaker 2:

And we also are looking at talents and getting the right expertise into the departments in legitimate ways that are supported.

Speaker 2:

Some of those ways are like getting students helping us with research on difficult problems for a semester or a summer. Create a dual-use company that serves both the commercial and the military interests, a product or a service, or trying to get startups to consider moving from only commercial to dual use. So these programs are funded and they're intended to help move things along in the right direction. And then we even have a transition cell, a group of folks on our team who help those companies or those students find the path forward from where they are. Let's say they win a competition with us, a prize challenge, a hackathon, or let's say that the student team just really is interested in finding what's the next capability. Either someone in my role, the regional engagement principal in that region or the folks who they work with in the DOD or our transition cell give them opportunities to either continue with us or to find other things in DOD that would be challenging for them and fulfilling.

Speaker 1:

I love these programs because it's an unexplored area for a lot of people that are thinking about what my next piece is or I have a really great idea, or I have a really great skill set and then to unpack these programs really, when you're talking about bringing students in or the tech transfer components of some of these programs, it's very early stage.

Speaker 1:

But in a broader kind of long-term perspective, this is much less explored than creating a new delivery app or new social media network. And if someone is interested in defense or interested in national security, this is a fast way to build a network right. Just become involved and start participating. This is an entry point to start learning the acronyms, what the process looks like. Find a mentor, really, just get in there. It's really about the connections and people think about. They think about these programs too linearly, but they want to get involved and it's about meeting the right group of people. So I just want to put that in perspective. Is that the programs have a lot more value than just linear value of hey, here's this thing, it's six months long or three months long and I'm going to go through this education process or this program or I'm going to submit myself to this prize.

Speaker 2:

That's our mission is to get things to be more durable and more resilient and less transactional. It is important for a small business to earn money. It's also important for them to get the feedback they need, which we help with, to find additional opportunities, which I think is helpful to get the kind of context around the problems that we have in DOD, which are obviously globally relevant. So instead of just saying, hey, there's a prize for this and if you win, you get money, Like you said, we want to introduce you to the people with the problem and see if we can either kind of almost create a new field or a new industry out of this because some of these things are very new or solve something in a completely new way, or bring in folks who have never been exposed to Defense department problems before and get them excited about those problems, meeting additional subject matter experts who might be from multiple fields. So, yeah, it's really a strategic win for us. It's not just about the $100,000 or $50,000 prize.

Speaker 1:

Is that for you, the most rewarding piece of it, the interactions, the engagement, or what part of this do you find fun? I know, at the end of the day it's work and it's under the hood, is not easy, but what's the really rewarding piece of this? Or the fun piece for David?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think that hearing back from especially, it's not just hearing back from the military units, but it's also it's hearing back from the faculty or administrators at a university, the student teams, a startup team hearing back from them that we not only move the needle for them as far as learning or revenue growth or getting a new idea, but that they have a relationship with an organization that they didn't know and that that relationship is either leading to new things or better things. I've had students who have gotten hired into DoD within just a few months of finishing a capstone project. That's very fulfilling. We've had startups who have gone on to make some serious money, and some of those went from an incident program to a defense innovation unit agreement and then have gone on to real wins with the commercial market as well.

Speaker 1:

I'm curious about how the work that you did with Naval X really contributed experience and background and maybe patience even with then going in and working with startups.

Speaker 2:

We were trying to create programming that was useful to both our Navy and Marine Corps partners and also to the industry side. That was kind of the two focus areas there back in 2019 through 2021. And I learned a lot about the small business perspective on the difficulty of working with DoD, from both new entrants who had never worked with us before to folks who had submitted worked with us before, to folks who had submitted for SIBR's small business research grants and not won, and others who had won multiple times but wanted to do other work with DoD. That resulted in something like a program of record.

Speaker 2:

Hearing a lot of people's, I'd say, frustrations was really informative.

Speaker 2:

Gave me a lot of empathy for why we need to streamline processes and I'll give you one example that's actually crossed from my Naval X experience and even prior to that, navsea all the way to my Instant experience is a lot of companies are going to tell you that working with DoD one of the hardest parts is the facility clearance process and we've heard this for years.

Speaker 2:

Right, and it's probably just one of those aggregation of red tape kind of things not anyone's bad intent and about a year and a half ago, one of my colleagues at Defense Innovation Unit sponsored a project with me as the liaison and Navy Postgrad School as the kind of executor of this capstone project.

Speaker 2:

It was about seven or eight months of research and the student team consisting of Naval officers and an Army officer did a lot of research and basically value stream mapped the facility clearance process, interviewed everyone from DCSA and OSD INS all the way to a bunch of companies that are trying to create SCIF as a service, opportunities and mobile SCIFs and then they brought recommendations, really specific recommendations, about Path Forward to the folks who own that process. And now we're working with some folks at DARPA and folks the same people at DCSA to actually implement some of those recommendations, if we can, hopefully this year. So what the bottom line of that is is that it's telling industry. We're telegraphing to them, we hear you that this is difficult and we want to make it better. Give us some feedback on how we might do that and we will work with our capstone research teams and our mission partners to try to actually reduce the red tape, streamline a process and maybe even create new software that makes that whole thing easier.

Speaker 1:

That is a massive problem. You see people going after a contract, and how do I get it? How do I talk about it? How do I talk? On both sides? Right, it's like, hey, here's people that have technology that may be applicable to this project or program, but then they're going to have to go through these hoops, especially getting into the conversation around dual-use technology, which keeps getting hotter and hotter and hotter. I think it's become almost a meme already where it's like, hey, here's this technology, I have this application in defense, I'm going to be able to go A to B, jump here to there, but then the whole company transformation has to happen, not just the technology transformation, and so I think that's equally frustrating on both sides. So it's probably have a lot of advocates that are cheering for you.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, I was kind of surprised at the attendance at this final capstone that was actually just November of last year and how many organizations were interested in both the process and the outcomes, and then several organizations from the Office of Small Business Programs at the DoD and Navy levels all the way through DARPA Bridges the DoD and Navy levels, all the way through DARPA bridges. We've had a bunch of folks trying to help us figure out next steps on that, and I bring that one up because, yes, it's a process improvement that helps DoD but it also helps industry, and making these processes easier and clearer is pretty key to us getting the right market entrance into DOD to support big and small programs right, and I think that if the healthcare sector and the DMV can modernize, then I think we can do it too. That's hilarious.

Speaker 1:

It would be a big win, because there is all this conversation around bringing industry or broad commercial tech to defense. But then the practicality, the actual grassroots boots on the ground reality of this is it's not just the contracting issue or hey, you need to have a capture person that understands this or a contract person that understands FAR. It's really straightforward or basic things like it might take you 18 months to get a cleared facility in place and you want the technology next month. It sounds crazy, but that's the way things are right now. That's a really, really good example.

Speaker 2:

You asked me what I'm passionate about and what I enjoy. Those are the things where I feel really excited, because people do lose hope at work Everywhere, every sector. It's not just unique to federal or DOD or working with DOD. Everybody gets to a place where they're like is this, is the juice worth the squeeze? Is you know all these frustrations with bureaucracy? I try to look at it both from the practical perspective and the inspirational one. Right, it's like we need to get this work done and we need people to go to work and be somewhat fulfilled, if not very fulfilled, otherwise they're not giving it their best and there's an enormous amount of waste in that. And something I saw when we were doing human-centered design facilitation at Naval X and still at Ensign, is that there are a lot of people who we write off because they just seem so burnt out and so frustrated. And if you can help unlock some things for them, you can get them back in the game, get them off the bench and back in the game.

Speaker 1:

What are your thoughts about the increased budget and how that's going to impact DIU and programs like Ensign?

Speaker 2:

Are you referring just to the DIU increase? Yeah One, I'm probably not the best person to talk about their plans, diu leadership's plans with the budget, but I can say that it seems like a great thing for DIU and for Defense Innovation writ large that they're plussing us up. I do think that there were some pretty specific programs that they wanted us to execute with that, including international partnership programs like AUKUS and IndusX. Challenges with that we want to, you know, prize challenges we want to do with India, australia, the UK, the replicator effort, which I think we inherited from OSD. So some of these programs came with funding. So I think that is you know, just to caveat that, that there were some. Some of that budget increase came with programs that are specific to other organizations.

Speaker 1:

Significant carve outs already on that increased budget.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and then there were other things that were already in our wheelhouse, a little bit like the on-ramp hubs. So we have five defense innovation on-ramp hubs, which used to be called mission acceleration centers, which you could think of a little bit like the Naval X tech bridges, and those are in Seattle. There's one in Ohio, Arizona, Hawaii and Kansas, and then we're looking at two more in the next fiscal cycle. So those are kind of a way to accelerate public-private partnership between DOD, industry and academia in those regions, and I think that some of our budget increases to support that kind of activity.

Speaker 2:

So I hope that DIU and Ensign's core programming and work continues to get support, both funding so that we can get more people to do the work that we have to do and then funding for more prize challenges and other competitions.

Speaker 2:

Also funding to make sure that the programs or sorry, the projects that we start land in programs of record or where they need to, because that actually costs a lot of time and money as well. So but I will also address the fact that, like, there's a top line on the defense budget and we may have hit kind of the peak right. So we have to be really efficient with the money we spend. We should always have been and we should be in the future. I hope DIU and Ensign can help the department find efficiencies and reduce waste and improve maintenance costs, improve logistics. I think a lot of the things that we do are actually helping with those things. I think you kind of have to zoom out a little bit to see how a small project, a DIU or INSEN, might actually affect the entire DoD and thus the federal budget.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack there in that answer, so a lot of good things. In general, I'm of the opinion that where the funding goes, the energy goes and the attention goes. We've seen this with Department of Energy with 10x, and then almost 100x in funding go to that space, and I remember when they just kicked off the Solar Prize Challenge and then all of these programs have proliferated around this space as that sector and as the venture funds really flowed into this, into the area, and it was interesting to see Defense is kind of the hot thing in conjunction with energy right now. But in general, I see there's been progressively more innovation challenges, more funding since 2016, 2017. And there's been progressively more interest even away from innovators, so funded startups, mid-market companies focused on producing more innovative products. Just because there's a tension, there's energy in the space, and so I'm hoping that we'll see not a logarithmic increase but like a sensible increase in energy towards defense, with that increased budget and proportionally, a billion dollars is not really that much. It sounds like this huge number but it's really not that much. When you look at R&D spending, say in health, it dwarfs what is spent through SBIR or spent through in-defense in general. But I have a lot of thoughts I want to really unpack and focus on one thing that really hit me hard on.

Speaker 1:

What you said is oftentimes innovation. We think of it as this additive component, but disruptive innovation means that we can change the whole sustainment tail of the ecosystem and the bulk of defense spending. People who are outside of defense don't understand that most of the defense spending is isn't just like free for all, making fighter jets and making cool stuff. It's spent on people's you know, healthcare. It's spent on sustainment of things that we already have, and so these long-term rocks in the stream. And innovation isn't just an expense right now, but it has the opportunity to maybe make logistics more efficient or make something else more efficient and actually free up capital inside the budget, just like a little pushback or your experience there, because I think the temptation is to think of this spending or innovation as like a net new thing, a new capability or new capacity, versus a disruptive technology. And in commercial tech we think of this as disruptive technology like a hundredth of the price or a thousand times faster.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think it's a both. I think that we do need to. I just helped OSD's Office of Strategic Intelligence Analysis host a quantum roundtable obviously cutting edge and going to change the game in computing and sensing, and I think that that was one very informative for me to hear industry perspectives with DoD experts in the room. And we do need to pursue these new things because they can improve the old things. But, like you said, there's also some amount of inefficiency that we have to improve on workforce investments, that we need to do. Better software, better computers. You've probably heard Michael Kanin's. You know we're seeing his LinkedIn posts which I think got an enormous amount of traction, because DoD computer refresh rates are pretty slow.

Speaker 2:

And I remember even our cell phones when we had them. You know I had an iPhone 7 in the Navy, but it was about four years after that phone came out. So we were dealing with kind of old iOS, old systems, old software, and that's not exactly what a college graduate who's excited to come work in DoD is hoping to see. And then same thing with UX, ui, with weapon systems right, you want to see something that looks like it was developed in the last five years and not 50 years ago, right. Even if there's a reliability that you're proud of which I think is a fact with weapon systems, like, we care about reliability, right.

Speaker 2:

But if it's not easy to use or if it's frustrating to use, then it's hard to keep people in the service. That includes both the military, the reserves and also the civilian workforce. So, yeah, I think it's kind of we've got to do. To get, for example, to AI, you have to fix foundational problems with data management and that's not fun, so it's you know. We do have to invest in some basic things. That will take a lot of time and effort. But to get to AI, ml, you have to first have large language models and secure systems and data management. I do know the branches of service and the DOD are working on these things, but I don't know about the speed.

Speaker 1:

Are you saying we have to have good data to make good AI decisions?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, especially especially when you're talking about weapons. Right Like you can't, you can't be like, well, good enough, right Like it's gotta be like extremely precise. So, um, the data that we rely on and you know so I have a friend who used to be part of that Advana Jupiter effort, kind of modernizing data for financial systems, and I know that they pulled in all the general ledgers and really that was a great first step for the DoD because it's something that's pretty accessible, unclassified in most cases, you know, and something you can aggregate, and then we could experiment with that data set and I'm really happy to see those kinds of efforts. I want to see that leave not leave, but financial and logistics are the obvious entry points, but we do need to use those experiments to get into the more tactical and sensitive areas as well.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree, I think capital efficiency is going to play a huge role coming up here, especially as DoD at large becomes more interested in edge capabilities and innovation.

Speaker 1:

Looking at, we want to make sure that these five different groups aren't funding the five same efforts and that they're all cross-commercializing things.

Speaker 1:

And how can we transport a user story across multiple different use cases so we can invest more wisely and use money and contracts a little bit more quickly, because somebody might want something in two years, somebody might want something in two weeks, and how can we all work together across agencies, across organizations? A lot of that is kind of bubbling up in my opinion and right now, if you look at the capital efficiency or just requests of, like it doesn't matter if we're pushing out that data or we're having somebody work on that data or a problem which is really just an abstraction of a accumulation of experiences and data. It's like the efficiency working on these problem sets has a lot of evolution to go in and of itself, like on a meta problem basis. But I'm really extremely bullish on this in general. But I'd like your take on what does this look like, not next year, but in the next couple of years? Where's this going and what are you excited about?

Speaker 2:

Are you just talking about defense, innovation or?

Speaker 1:

Just defense innovation. In general, you could characterize this as dual use or getting industry involved, but I think defense innovation is a good stake in the ground for that question.

Speaker 2:

I'm bullish on it because I see what my colleagues are working on and what I'm working on and what we're doing with our military organizations, the increasing flexibility and interest from academic institutions that are not just the ones we've always worked with, the excitement of the students to support our projects, you know, and those things are really encouraging to me. One thing we have a few newsletters at Ensign. Newsletters are not exciting, but one of the newsletters is about funding opportunities and Olivia on my team helps pull together all of the different parts of DOD's upcoming events and challenges that result in cash awards or contract awards and or agreements. And I just I'm really glad that we have these things starting to come together. The way that a fortune 100 company would right Like if, if Amazon or Google were running 25 different competitions, they would have it in one place and it would be really clear what the difference was between them. Even if they were for different parts of Google, right Like, or different parts of Amazon, they would say like hey, gmail is offering this and slides is offering this and photos is offering this, like it's, you know, and here's the deadline and here are the requirements. It'd be really clear DOD, whether it's SAMgov or any other parts of how we announce things.

Speaker 2:

It's not always clear what we actually need and, understandably, some of the things we do are really sensitive, so we can't just say what we really need on a public website and we can't just have anyone work on things. That's challenging sometimes, but I'm excited about us coming together better, like, for instance, naval X. Tech Bridges and Naval X are working closely with Ensign now, so we do sometimes combined prize challenges or combined competitions, and that's really exciting, especially if there's a way for us to, like you said, if it's about jet engines and it applies to both the Air Force and the Navy, then maybe it makes more sense to do it together. Weapon systems we've done that with missiles and other things for a while. Right, ordnance is something we shared, so we could do that joint pretty easily. I think we can do a lot more together. And what I was saying a little bit earlier in the podcast about I'm okay with a bunch of different organizations doing their own thing, as long as they know about what the other ones are doing, right.

Speaker 2:

So it's kind of like the concept of A-B testing, like I want to see if this works versus this. Oh, that's a strategic decision, whereas sometimes the way we compete things and the way that we assess things is it should be done that way, but we're really just doing it in multiple vacuums. So, like you said, we're paying 10 times for the same two things.

Speaker 1:

Yep, well, I was going to ask you where people could get information about Ensign and get involved, and you really hit that a home run on that. So I have to thank Olivia as well because, seriously, that newsletter whether somebody goes to LinkedIn and subscribes to it or they get the actual email newsletter is incredibly helpful.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, oh, by the way, I'll put in a plug for an organization that's name continues to change, but the website seems to be stable. It's ctoinnovationmil. I love it. It was part of something called the Innovation Steering Group. I'm double checking. Yeah, I have the right website. It's ctoinnovationmil. So diumil, ensignmil and then this website, ctoinnovationmil, will get most people where they need to go. For instance, on the CTO website, they have all the different organizations that either are trying to help with onboarding companies or creating some kind of competition or things like that, and then all the critical tech areas that OSD's research and engineering department is kind of focused on lots of news and updates and documents and ways to work with us. So I would use our website definitely to look at upcoming competitions and then our newsletter and then that ctoinnovationmil is just it's one of the better aggregators I've seen in a while.

Speaker 1:

It's very helpful to startups because they want to know does somebody care about this area that I'm working in or I have an idea, who's funding ideas in this space? And if somebody's spent a quarter million or a couple million dollars researching this space or funding ideas in this space, it's a pretty good market signal that there is a there. There there's somebody that is a problem owner and usually you can figure out who it is or what group. It was so really important to look at Ensign and we'll put links in the show notes for ctoinnovationmil and for the Ensign site to make sure that people can connect with that. There's a couple of people. Andrew Glenn has a great blog on Medium and he does a good job of aggregating these things as well. Great, it's really important and it's really great information for innovators that are listening to this show.

Speaker 2:

I want to add that one of the diagrams that's kind of the defense innovation ecosystem map that's on CTU Innovation's website came from a Defense Entrepreneurs Forum conference in 2018. So we were in Denver for our annual symposium and that's where we whiteboarded out the original of this and then a guy named Andres Lazo put it into Kumu I think it's k-u-m-u dot i-o. And that is actually what they're using on the innovation website now and they've enhanced it. They may have even replaced it, but it's basically the same thing, and the reason I bring that up is sometimes to get things started. You just need a bunch of like-minded hard chargers in the room together who are passionate about getting things done, and that is why I'm still a member of Defense Entrepreneurs Forum.

Speaker 2:

I also run a kind of invite only meetup every month. It's at the federal level, not just the defense level. It's called the Federal Innovators Salon and that's just an hour and a half a month. It's usually kind of more professional development, but the intent is actually to get people across the executive branch to talk to each other, to make friendships across agencies so that when you think that you've hit a wall in contracts or funding, you may not be able to get direct support from another agency, but you can get inspiration and ideas and feedback. And then I do want to see people go from one part of the executive branch to another and to go from industry back to the government and vice versa. I really do think that cross-pollination is hugely valuable. Some of the best people I know and work with are people who have done some time in each right In the federal space and in the private sector and they usually just think differently and usually really inspirational people.

Speaker 1:

Agreed, David. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the show.

Speaker 2:

Thanks so much for having me. It's always great talking with great podcast hosts and it was great meeting you at the last Deaf Agora meeting.

Speaker 1:

My name is Callie Keene and this has been the Startup Defense.

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Head Shot

Callye Keen

Host