The Startup Defense
The Startup Defense explores the intersection of commercial technology and defense innovation. Callye Keen (Kform) talks with expert guests about the latest needs and trends in the defense industry and how startup companies are driving innovation and change. From concept to field, The Startup Defense covers artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, mission computing, autonomous systems, and the manufacturing necessary to make technology real.
The Startup Defense
Collaboration, Intelligence, and Overwatch Imaging with Greg Davis
Greg Davis, founder of Overwatch Imaging, shares insights into his journey from working in large aerospace companies to starting his own venture. He discusses the importance of community, collaboration, and partnerships in the defense tech industry, as well as the innovative solutions Overwatch is developing to automate overhead intelligence collection. Greg emphasizes the challenges of building a startup in a complex market and offers advice for aspiring entrepreneurs.
Takeaways
- Greg is passionate about making a big impact through Overwatch Imaging.
- The journey from corporate to startup is driven by market opportunities and personal challenges.
- Community and collaboration are essential for startup growth.
- Navigating the defense tech landscape requires understanding complex ecosystems.
- Partnerships with larger companies can accelerate growth and innovation.
- Overwatch focuses on automating overhead intelligence to improve efficiency.
- The bottleneck in intelligence collection is often human resources, not technology.
- Teamwork and shared values are crucial for startup success.
- Entrepreneurship is challenging but rewarding, requiring focus on impactful solutions.
- Aspiring entrepreneurs should embrace the startup experience for personal and professional growth.
About Greg Davis
Founder and CEO of Overwatch, a cutting-edge company specializing in advanced defense technologies. With a background in military operations and technology development, Greg has spent over two decades leading innovations that bridge the gap between commercial and defense sectors. Overwatch focuses on enhancing operational capabilities through autonomous systems, AI-driven solutions, and data analytics, empowering defense forces to maintain superior strategic advantage. Greg's leadership and vision have positioned Overwatch as a key player in the evolving landscape of defense innovation.
Website
https://www.overwatchimaging.com/
Welcome to the Startup Defense. My name is Kali Keene. Today I have Greg Davis from Overwatch Imaging. Now Overwatch makes some pretty fancy sensor and imaging software hardware. I really like this mix because we're playing on all the interesting AI developments in the industry, but we're also touching physical things, which makes me happy. Greg, what Overwatch has been able to do is very impressive, and I know you have some recent wins. But I initially heard your name and learned about you from David at Shield Capital when he was on the show, so I'm really excited to get you on here and learn a little bit more about Overwatch. But before we get started, same question I ask everybody what are you passionate about right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm passionate about a couple things. Kelly, thanks for having me on Shoot right now, like lately a couple years into my kind of founder journey here. I'm passionate about the work that we do at Overwatch making a big impact. That's kind of like my North Star for my work now. So I mean I'm like technically I'm passionate about imagery intelligence. I've worked in imagery intelligence my whole career and I just like I have a kind of technical love for that kind of work. But you know more as I guess I've, you know, worked with lots of different customers and seen lots of different applications. I'm really passionate about the work we do. It's making a big impact in lots of different areas to include defense and intelligence and also civil and law enforcement and emergency response applications. I want Overwatch to be a company that's contributing to better outcomes. So that's really like that's the focus of my kind of daily work.
Speaker 1:That's a phenomenal answer. You worked for some of the larger primes in aerospace and I always find this fascinating because there's different flavors of startup founders. There's like hey, I graduated and I'm a 20 something. We work with a lot of people that have come out of the service. But then another one of my favorite founder stories is I actually worked in industry. I know a lot about this space and then I decided to do this kind of madness, do this crazy thing and start a startup. So people do it for different motivations, but I'd love to learn yours like why jump ship from Lockheed or in situ and create your own thing?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean a few different reasons. I think sort of specific reasons were around. I saw an opportunity in the market as kind of the tides were changing in the industry and ecosystem. You know, around a decade ago there was both like new technology rise and also a change in kind of the demand for overhead intelligence, demand for drones and the kind of missions they were supporting, and so I saw this kind of technical opportunity.
Speaker 2:Also, I've been really fortunate to be part of the Gorge, the Columbia River Gorge technology community.
Speaker 2:Is this really just exciting passionate group of generally drone tech companies and individuals professionals here and I've enjoyed a lot of great role models over 20 years working in this area.
Speaker 2:We're about an hour outside of Portland, oregon, along the Columbia River that separates Oregon and Washington state, and there's a lot of really exciting drone tech that happens here and it's all built in this really entrepreneurial community where you know everyone believes in this kind of work hard, play hard, let's, you know, let's develop the next best thing, let's make sure we get it into the hands of those that need it right away.
Speaker 2:So I've been lucky to be part of that environment and that environment has kind of always supported entrepreneurism and so, you know, I've kind of had that interest for a long time and then, you know, finally I just thought it'd be a really exciting challenge you know I've heard some jokes like you know, get to work 80 hours a week so that I don't have to work 40 hours a week or something like that. You know, it's a really exciting challenge, kind of proving to myself that, you know, we can build something special here that makes a big impact. And, you know, I think kind of my passion for that mission has allowed me to find others who share that passion. And it's really exciting to work with a team that you know, where everybody just shares this passion for the mission. So, yeah, it's been great to get to build a team like that and build a company where that's the main thing we talk about is like okay, how can we make sure that really played in the role of how you've grown.
Speaker 1:Overwatch, I know that you're in a really great community for specifically that, but other companies in the market they've decided to make a quadcopter, like we're going to. So well, but you seem to not really be going down that path. Can you talk about how that's played into your growth strategy or how you think about landing deals, partnerships or structuring your team? Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think we've um, you know this probably reflects like something that's just core to my personality or my way of working, but I've always wanted to be the only one in the space that we're working in. I enjoy describing Overwatch as a company that doesn't really have any competitors. We're building a new market In the process of simultaneously creating a new technology, a new product, a new market and a new company all at the same time. It definitely takes a village to do that. It takes teammates who are excited about that. That's one of the first kind of interview and screening questions we talk about with new candidates is like how comfortably are you in a totally dynamic environment? Like you know, how comfortably are you in a totally dynamic environment? How are you going to do when you discover that we have never done this process before and we need to make it up urgently? It's those kinds of questions. But I love the you know, the kind of group dynamic that comes out of that, the teamwork that comes out of that.
Speaker 2:I, you know, I think it's really fun. I guess you know to your point about, like you know, building another quad, copper or something. I think if there are other companies that are working on a problem, I just kind of naturally find it less appealing. I'd rather sort of start at the beginning and say like, hey, what's a real big need that nobody's working on right now that isn't solved yet? And then that's a kind of a fun rallying idea for a company that, like we don't really have to talk about getting 10% more efficient or, you know, shaving costs here or improving this metric by a little bit, like we're talking about making a market, we're talking about inventing a technology that doesn't really exist, and so we can always have pretty big thoughts and big goals, because, you know, we're kind of going for something pretty, pretty, pretty big.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that makes sense. Kind of going for something pretty, pretty, pretty big yeah, that makes sense. You build a team that's reflective of your values, but also creating a startup. You kind of want to do hard things and want a team that is interested in doing that. So optimizing, like a current solution that's already on the market is probably attracting, say, less interesting teammates and somebody's like I'll invent this from scratch and figure it out and let's go yeah, that's exactly right.
Speaker 2:I think you know back to you had started with David from Shield Capital. I think Shield Capital and our other lead financial investors Squadra Ventures, shield and Squadra both are great partners with us as well at kind of injecting or supporting that kind of thinking of just like, hey, what's the biggest new market we could take our expertise and go address and like let's do that. You know. So I think that's a really helpful part of our story too that you know we kind of have this encouragement or backing to try to work on solving a big problem that can make a big impact rather than kind of optimizing for the near term. So I appreciate that. You know.
Speaker 2:I think kind of my unique path here has been to see a lot of the existing overhead intelligence ecosystem and you know both see the gaps in that that would benefit from our work. You know generally like automation and kind of modern software approach, but also appreciate you know generally like automation and kind of modern software approach but also appreciate you know all that rich history that's come from. You know both the kind of the government and user side as well as industry creating amazing capabilities over the past. You know 20 or 50 years or whatever creating amazing overhead intelligence capabilities that you know, I hope to just sort of stand on the shoulders of and add a little bit to that kind of rich capability that already exists. So I think that the team that we bring together and the community that we work in all has to have an appreciation for that. Like no, we're not, you know, this kind of like fresh out of school, 22 year old who's, like you know, just revolutionize the world with this bold new idea.
Speaker 2:I think everybody here has been, you know, either directly supporting or themselves working in emergency situations or working in uniform, working downrange, and I think you know has seen, hey, you know there's definitely a lot of things that could improve, but there's also a lot of things that are really good, and so let's not kind of throw all that good stuff out, let's see if we can add to that and, you know, make what's good even better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's right. I think it's a misunderstood fact. But most founders are in their 40s. The average startup founder is like 43, 44. I think defense it's going to lean a little bit north of that as well. But we kind of think, as a fresh Stanford grad, nothing wrong with that. I deal with a lot of Stanford grads. I think you went to Stanford as well, but there have a couple decades of experience on top of that graduate.
Speaker 2:I definitely appreciate all flavors of Stanford grads, but but yeah, I mean I think it's important to kind of balance the you know, I think what we're kind of representing there is this idea of like big new ideas, you know, and lots of enthusiasm, and I think that's really important. So I think, you know, building a startup is really really hard and I think introducing new capability into the defense intelligence generally, like government markets, is really really hard. It's slow, there's like infrequent and need the enthusiasm. But also it's really important to understand how the ecosystem works and who all the players are and have the ability to kind of make pretty good guesses about what is changeable in the near term versus just what isn't changeable. And you know, kind of picking your battles between those kind of bookends those, those kind of bookends.
Speaker 1:There's, um, there's a lot of momentum behind defense tech investment and some, some people are like, hey, you know there's this big bubble around this, but I look at a company like overwatch and I I would love your opinion on this. Isn't it's very difficult to successfully create a company like yours? But is it even possible, without partners like Shield Capital or Squadra, to be able to build something that's this robust and intricate, right Like without an investment or, you know, previous money coming in to bootstrap this? Is that even possible?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question and I mean just this morning I was talking to a different founder and was encouraging that other founder to like really consider bootstrapping, you know, before you kind of dive into the next step. And you know, make sure that if you're going down the venture backed path like, you're doing it because that's the right step for your business and not just because it's kind of popular or, you know, trendy these days, but because it's the right step For Overwatch. Yeah, I mean, I think that we are a we're a big business, we're, you know, we're an employer of thousands of people. That just hasn't gotten there yet. But you know the capabilities that we are developing have the market potential and have the kind of the technology and development need that you know we need to be a big company to make our vision come true. And so, yeah, I mean we do need capital partners who agree with our vision of the future. We do need the defense primes who kind of see what we're doing and kind of foster our introduction into the space. We do need the innovation labs within DoD, within the government, that are, you know, helping to slowly but surely bring new technologies along, like all those things are part of the equation, because, yeah, it's, it's, but defense tech it's it's, it's complicated, you know the number of different aspects that need to work is just really high, you know.
Speaker 2:So we have to make a software app that's really good and compelling and sort of gets compared or will get compared with other software apps that are commercially available, that all of our users will have access to. But we also have to do it with ruggedized hardware. We also have to do it in an environment where all of our data has to be protected and secured. We also have to do it under export restrictions. We also have to do it with customers who have at least one year and maybe five year out funding cycles, complexity that we have to work through. And so, yeah, it really helps to have teammates who understand all those different aspects of the challenge and it helps to have capital partners who kind of understand that those elements are all required. And so, you know, additional capital might be required to get from here to there, even though you know we're already demonstrating great compelling technology. It's like the path to market for that. Compelling technology has a lot of twists and turns on it.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, yeah, I think it's really easy to sit on the sidelines and pick a side and say, hey, there's a VC bubble and this is silly, or everybody should take VC because they can move quickly. You know, you hear all these opinions. I think it's better to just ask people like yourself who are founders and say, hey, this worked for me and this is why and this is why it makes sense, because the best answer to any of these growth strategies or paths that people are listening to think to take is like it's always it depends. This is like my favorite engineering answer as well is like you know, is it this or is this? And it's like context is really much more important than anything else.
Speaker 2:So I really appreciate that. I think that's right. It always depends, you know, it depends on what the goal is, depends kind of on, like what the right fit for the idea or the technology or product is. And you know, venture has its goals and like sometimes those feel good and sometimes those those don't feel good, but like they are real and I think, appreciating that as part of the, you know, as part of the equation, like I think you know, to have a meaningful chance with venture capital, like we have to be able to describe 100x growth trajectory. That's an audacious goal, but I understand that's part of the equation. I think we're working hard to to develop a technology that has that kind of capability. So, you know, for us that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:But you know, I I talked to other founders sometimes who just say like oh, that's ridiculous. Like you know, is there like ever a historical precedent of that ever happening? It was like, well, you know there's not a lot, no, but like you know, but we're going to be one of them, so you know. So, anyways, it's, it's. Yeah, I think you're exactly right. It depends and I think ultimately, like the way through that is to keep focused on making an impact with one's work, to keep focused on like what's the, what's the real mission that we're trying to achieve here, and you know, that kind of helps me to see through the various options and you know the timelines and the, you know the challenges that come along the way and like hey, what's going to allow us to make the biggest impact with our work. As long as we keep focusing on that, keep choosing the best answer along that trajectory, like I think we'll do fine.
Speaker 1:Can we talk a little bit about what Overwatch is and does? Just so, people are listening and I love to do my little LinkedIn, google stalking, my little research, but people are listening in their car or they're walking on a treadmill or something. So can you tell us a little bit about the capabilities that you were able to see that were missing and then be able to develop through Overwatch, because I think that see and solve process is very it's very different for everyone, but it is very helpful. So people don't build, you know.
Speaker 2:know we kind of have a running joke here like yet another quadcopter, yeah, we don't need yet another quadcopter, but you know we can stand to make all the existing quadcopters like more efficient, more effective. Overwatch imaging our primary mission is delivering critical intelligence faster through automation. So I come from a background developing and deploying mid-sized UAS uncrewed aircraft systems into war zones, onto Navy ships, into some civil applications. Came from a background of supplying autopilots to 100 different drone companies that are building their own quadcopters and whatnot, and so I had this access to see there are an awful lot of drones out on the market. You know before that there's lots of traditional kind of special mission aircraft available. But one thing they all have in common is the intelligence collected from aircraft is kind of hard to collect and process and communicate effectively. It's a very human in the loop system.
Speaker 2:So Overwatch primarily focuses on this idea of bringing automation to the job of overhead intelligence. So you can think about that in two ways. One is computers just got better than humans, maybe five or 10 years ago, at spotting small anomalies in image-based data. I think that's like just plain true. That maybe doesn't match with everybody's experience but like I think kind of you know scientifically or like in research papers, you can kind of see that to be true. So that was one of the kind of foundational principles that Overwatch believes in. It's just like well, hey, if we could harness the power of computer vision, we might be able to find more in an imagery intelligence stream than a human observer could find. So, you know, we could enable a team to have kind of this superhuman capability of seeing more than they normally could and you know, just in, like what's in front of you on your monitor. So that was kind of one enabling idea or foundational principle of what we do.
Speaker 2:And the other idea is just this idea that there aren't enough people to do all of the looking at screens that we want to do. So we create this thing we call the automated sensor operator. The automated sensor operator is software that does the role of a human operating an overhead intelligence sensor. So using computer vision, using artificial intelligence and automation, we're able to control where a data collection system is looking, capture the data from it, do a first pass, look through it to pull out the most important parts, respond intelligently to the findings and then efficiently communicate that data to users. So if we can effectively do that, if we can take the human user out of the real time in the loop.
Speaker 2:Then we can enable all these quadcopters that are, you know, trying to get to market. We can enable all these special mission aircraft that are already in the market. We can enable aircraft that are doing other roles to be great imagery intelligence collectors without needing to add more people into the equation. So that's kind of the vision that we're pursuing here is, like you know, the biggest bottleneck in overhead intelligence isn't the imaging sensor itself and it isn't even the platform that carries the imaging sensor. It's the conversion of data collection into intelligence, and so we're working to automate kind of that conversion process so that there can be more intelligence collected and, you know, better, faster, more efficient response to all these situations.
Speaker 1:It's a recurrent theme here. Whether it's signal collection or it's sensor collection, you know, we consistently see that the bottleneck, regardless of how large that team is, is always just people.
Speaker 2:right, you can't have infinity perfect people working around the clock to do things perfect people working around the clock to do things, and yeah, and then you know that creates all these demands of you know, if you can't have all the people that you need, then you can't use all the assets that you want, can't collect all the data. If you do put people into more dangerous situations, then you know that's a safety risk. You have to protect those people. That creates like a whole bunch of additional logistics around intelligence collection that then gets in the way of getting that intelligence collected. Yeah, if we can automate that part of the puzzle, we can both make intel better and scale it up dramatically so that everything becomes this great automated intel collector, and in doing so we'll allow faster, safer, more efficient response.
Speaker 1:And no insult to the quadcopter makers, but some of my best friends are working on autonomous platforms, and I'll give them a hard time when they come on the show too. But my point being is that we deal with complex problems that involve people, sensors, logistical issues. There it's so much more than what people think, which is, hey, I'm going to build a robot or I'm going to build a little particle in this ecosystem and it's going to solve all these problems.
Speaker 1:So as I say not yet another quadcopter is because we work with kids that build, you know, quadcopters for fun. And then it's like the difference between that and doing a multimodal, multi-mission data sensor fusion ecosystem is like pretty astounding.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean you know you had mentioned Stanford, you know earlier. Yeah, yeah, I mean you had mentioned Stanford earlier. I was fortunate in the very early dozens, when I was at Stanford to build as part of a course to build a UAV that kind of flew on its own during like an eight-week course, turned out. The teaching assistant for that class went on to be one of my bosses at In-Situ and went on to be the chief engineer at Boeing, so it was a pretty good setup for success. But, yeah, 20-some years ago that was what we were doing in the school, not even after school In the school that was what we were working on. So, yeah, that problem, I feel like, is pretty well solved. The problem that's not solved is like so what do you do with? You know, if you could create all of these assets that could be on top of every problem that we cared about, like how would we turn that into an advantage? And so, yeah, that's where kind of the Overwatch automation software is our now.
Speaker 1:That's amazing.
Speaker 1:I want to touch on something that I found in talking to you and in research is and I think this will really drive the point home for people listening there's this illusion of the lone inventor or like the cowboy entrepreneur to do this, but the reality and we touch on this on the show over and over again the most likely growth partner is going to be somebody that already works with your customer, and so partnerships every single big company that's ever existed it uses partnerships as part of their growth strategy. Or like I'm not, I'm never going to work with XYZ Prime, or get your feelings on that perspective of partnering with a very large or one of the largest companies in the entire space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So really exciting recent announcement from L3 Harris. L3 Harris has kind of taken, tested, demonstrated and accepted our automated sensor operator software and is making it available with their Westcam airborne imaging systems. So Westcam makes the MX-20, mx-15, mx-10, kind of the gold standard in airborne EOIR video, and they are now offering our automation software, our automated sensor operator software, with their sensors. So yeah, it's a really big deal for us. I think it's a great deal for missions that matter around the world, because users get access to this kind of gold standard imaging equipment that already is produced at scale and is super high quality and just proven to work and users get the benefit of this new automation that's coming out of our shop. I think it's a really, really great deal.
Speaker 2:I've loved getting to work with L3Harris. I think they've taken this great approach where they are fostering some of their own innovation initiatives by way of venture capital and VC-backed defense tech companies like Overwatch. So I think that's a great approach for a big prime like that. It's hard for big primes to move at the speed of startups, and so I think they kind of just bypass that problem by just having us move at the speed of startups, and that's kind of what we know how to do effectively. So, yeah, they're a great group. I appreciate kind of the trust they put in the startup ecosystem.
Speaker 2:At the same time, they have such giant scale that, you know, like if we were to think about oh, maybe we could tackle that problem ourselves like where we would start.
Speaker 2:You know, they have a global sales team that's kind of out selling this kind of proven, best in class product all around the world. We can't even begin to, you know, think about competing against that. It's so great that we can partner with that and kind of get the advantage of their scale, get the advantage of the kind of proven history of high quality that they've been delivering, and then we can bring them this innovative new piece that they are not working on. So we can be the answer to when users say, hey, we need to get more done with less, the L3 team can say, hey, we've got a great answer for that. We've got this partner that is kind of venture backed and we stand behind what they do and so they're able to bring this innovative solution to all their customers. We get that kind of teamwork and that reach and that scale from working with them. So yeah, it's a really great partnership.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic, Greg. I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the startup defense. Before we cut out of here, do you have any words of wisdom for our listeners, for people that want to jump into a startup or at a startup and looking to grow?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd encourage anyone who's thinking about jumping into a startup to do it. You know, I think it's such a great experience when you get to strip away all of the kind of corporate clutter and like just focus on what counts. I think that makes me a better worker, it makes me a better employee to have this just regular, clear focus on like shoot, these things are really important versus these other things you know are not as important. Yeah, so I'd encourage people to give it a try. I think, you know, probably it's not for everyone, but I love the idea that we can just like create big, bold new solutions and kind of write our own, you know, write our own future, so, yeah, I'd encourage people to try. And also it's really hard, but, you know, write our own future, so, yeah, I'd encourage people to try it. And also it's really hard, but, you know, I think that's great. I think that's how you know how success is born. Yeah, that's my suggestion for people thinking about it.
Speaker 1:I love it. Thank you so much, Greg.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hey, great talking to you. Thanks for the opportunity to be on the podcast.
Speaker 1:My name is Callie Keene and this has been the Startup Defense.
