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
Evolving Careers, Democratizing Satellite Imagery, and SkyFi with Luke Fischer
Callye Keen talks with Luke Fischer, CEO and co-founder of SkyFi, about democratizing satellite technology. Luke shares his journey from military service to tech entrepreneurship, detailing the innovations at SkyFi that make satellite imagery and data more accessible and affordable. They discuss into the challenges of satellite technology, the future of the industry, and Luke's role in the upcoming community event "Austin 4 America." SkyFi is changing the landscape by allowing users from various sectors to easily task satellites and utilize earth intelligence like never before.
Episode Highlights:
- Luke Fischer's Journey: From serving in the army and working at Uber to co-founding SkyFi. Luke's diverse background from military service to tech innovation has equipped him with unique insights into both the defense and commercial sectors.
- What is SkyFi? An earth intelligence platform that simplifies the process of accessing satellite and aerial data for various uses—from agriculture to defense.
- The Power of Satellite Imagery Today: Luke discusses how SkyFi enables anyone from government agencies to private individuals to task satellites and gather real-time data, which was once a capability reserved for a select few.
- Challenges in Satellite Technology: Luke talks about the technical and regulatory hurdles they face and how SkyFi is navigating these challenges.
- Democratizing Space Data: A deep dive into how SkyFi's platform allows users to access satellite technology without the traditional barriers, significantly lowering costs and opening up new possibilities for innovation.
- Future of Satellite Technology: Insights into the future advancements in satellite tech and how these will impact various industries globally.
- Austin for America: Luke shares his upcoming initiative, a community event in Austin that aims to foster collaboration among defense tech companies, showcasing how the city is becoming a hub for defense and tech innovation.
Luke Fischer is the CEO and co-founder of SkyFi, a revolutionary platform that simplifies the tasking of satellites for imagery and data collection, making it accessible to a wider audience. Prior to founding SkyFi, Luke served 16 years in the U.S. Army, where he specialized in aviation and participated in numerous deployments. His post-military career includes significant roles at Uber and Joby Aviation, and he brings a wealth of experience from the defense, technology, and transportation sectors to his current role at SkyFi.
Relevant Links:
Welcome to the Startup Defense. My name is Callie Keene. Today I have Luke Fisher of Skyfy. Skyfy is a very interesting platform and I really want to get into the limited research that I did got me very excited. So I do, of course, have a lot of questions for you, Luke, but before we get into what you're doing, who you are and all that fun technical stuff, Same question I ask everybody what are you passionate about right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, boy, a lot of things. Well, I think, first, my family. I think any husband and father would say passionate about the family life. But on the professional side, building, building a tangible thing that gets in the hands of users is addicting and I'm hooked on it For what we've done at Sky-Fi, for what I've done in my past. Building something that gets out to the world is pretty exciting. I'm just super passionate about it. I live it every day, I dream about it and it's building just in general, and I think more clearly, building for America. I think we're at an amazing time right now where that theme of build for America, whether that's building a product, a hardware product, a software product, building your mind or your body, like you know, for America I think that's where we're at. So, yeah, definitely building. Good question.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we definitely share that value. What's happening in defense tech right now, the great advances and innovation that's happening. I just personify that as we're builders. Right, you see a problem, build a solution, get it out there, test it, try it, iterate on it. And I really get along well with high action, biased people that want to actually build this thing, build whatever that idea is and see it in the world. And I think we kind of hit it off on that perspective. But what are you building? Like what's Skyfi? Or we can even dial it back Like who's Luke for people that don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll start with, I guess who's me. So I'm Luke, ceo and co-founder of Skyfi. Prior to all Skyfi stuff, I spent 16 years active duty in the Army as an aviator, most of that time on the special operations side of the house. Dozens of deployments, all in the autonomy portfolio out in Mountain View, california. So seeing these military problem sets get solved by commercial companies that's what DIU does. So that gave me a really unique exposure, and still continuing to serve there the day job was something I never would have thought I would have done.
Speaker 2:I was head of flight operations for Uber. Which people are like what Flight operations at Uber? There was this business unit called Uber Elevate, which had the charter of advancing the electric aviation industry in the world, and so, from Uber's perspective, it was about time savings for customers. So instead of taking a Uber car from downtown Manhattan to JFK Terminal 4, in this concept that we built and started prototyping, you could say hey, I'm in Manhattan, I want to get Terminal 4 and JFK. A car would pick you up, it would drop you off at the heliport, you'd hop in a helicopter, fly seven minutes to JFK airport, walk off the helicopter and a car's waiting for you and it takes you to Terminal 4. So you save 30 to 45 minutes at about the same price. So I was a big part of setting that up in New York City a trial that we actually did called Ubercopter. I dealt with drone delivery, with partnering with Uber Eats internally and McDonald's. We did some of the first food delivery in San Diego. We delivered I think it was a happy meal to some customer in San Diego years ago and you know that was super fun.
Speaker 2:Then I wanted to be closer to the action and, you know, on the hardware side of the house, so I joined Joby Aviation, which is one of the leaders in electric aviation. So I joined them, led government operations, so really heavy on the government contracting, you know, providing the value to the Air Force. Other military and intelligence community professionals that wanted these ultra quiet aircraft that take off and land vertically but are super fast so they transition forward flight like an airplane, so you have all the efficiencies. It's battery powered, so very, very quiet and you can imagine there's a lot of military applications for those across the world. So I did that for a little bit.
Speaker 2:It was during COVID times as I started getting more involved in the industry and the commercial side of the house. I wanted to do my own thing, so I joined a venture capital firm for a little bit with the intent of like, hey, I want to get some white space, think about an idea and then start my own company. I moved to the great state of Texas, where I am now in Austin, and then met my business partner, bill Perkins, and we co-founded Skyfi and I can jump into Skyfi if that's good.
Speaker 1:What I like about this is often we see founders. They have this wild idea I call it the lightning bolt in the shower. Right, Because ideas are very dangerous and the world generally has lots of ideas. But your idea is grounded in context of doing and working around this problem set from multiple different angles, and so when we talk about Skyfi, it's built on seeing the problems in the space. So I really appreciate that context. But, yeah, let's talk SkyFi.
Speaker 2:This is very fascinating to me to access the technology, and when I say access the technology, I mean task satellites in the future, get historical imagery going back years and decades and then, I think more importantly, apply those analytics to get problem solved, whether it's a commercial problem or government some aspect, it's about solving problems and what we really do is speed. We give people the power of speed of decision-making using this technology. So some examples are if you need to know oil inventories over the world, you can get that answer through us. If you need to know moisture content of soil, if you need to know vessel detection in the South China Sea, you can get that now and you don't have to be an intelligence professional. I say the thing all the time, like my teenage daughters can task satellites while they're eating their breakfast in the morning with their iPhones through the technology we built Now, I think 30, 40 years ago, excuse me, if you were to ask somebody, will a cell phone be able to do that?
Speaker 2:They'd first say like what's a cell phone? And then to know that's only for spies, like that's James Bond stuff. So this access to technology in the future is just getting faster and faster, and so that's what we built at at Skyfi is this ability through a web and mobile application, allow government and commercial users to just get the power of, you know, the world's greatest satellite technology and analytics, literally at the power of their fingertips.
Speaker 1:I worked with a startup client and we were doing precision agriculture. We had to use satellite imagery and a lot of people that their startup, whatever that they're doing, is based on capturing that data. They can't even get started because the cost or the barrier to entry for that innovation is so high or so sophisticated to access that information that they essentially had a great machine learning model, they had great analytics, they had everything that you needed, except for they could only do this with Google Maps. And then, at the next level of this, they had to have a satellite. Yeah, and so they went from you know two, three people in their 20s to OK, now I need millions and millions and millions of dollars and tons of traction, whereas I played with Skyfi earlier and I can task a satellite for a couple hundred bucks and get it with clouds without clouds.
Speaker 1:From this time, that time, this space, I can buy imagery for a couple of bucks, I can buy data for a couple of bucks, and I'm just thinking back in my catalog how many startups that I've dealt with where we had to fake it with drone imagery right, we had to fake it with Google Maps, or currently a friend of a friend has they're doing fly by site for drones.
Speaker 1:So you take the picture, click on hey, I want you to fly to here, and then there's no more flight planning and there's no more communication. But they did it with Google Maps, and so the problem with Google Maps is, like you know, it's not accurate, and so they still have a ton of problems. It sounds fantastic, but for them, the next level of scale is well, now you have to have access to satellite imagery anywhere in the world, wherever a customer deploys it. Oh, by the way, you don't know where your customer is going to deploy it. Oh, by the way, problem after problem Is that kind of the problem set that you're chasing after with Sky-Fi. It's just on demand. Gis, yeah.
Speaker 2:It really was. We looked at this from multiple angles Again. My co-founder here is Bill Perkins. Bill is a hedge fund owner, natural gas trader, really successful. He's an author. He's got a great book called Die With Zero.
Speaker 2:He and I met when I was thinking about a company idea, if you believe in autonomous vehicles, because I spent a lot of time in that world after I left the military Well, those autonomous vehicles, whether it's cars or drones or airplanes, whatever are capturing large amounts of data just by how they exist in their environment. So I was like we'll partner with those companies, sell that data. As a byproduct, I met Bill. He was trying to buy satellite imagery from all the major players. Excuse me, you know 500K, a million bucks and we'd get the same story of like well, let's negotiate. How much are you going to buy next year? Bill's like I don't know. I want the imagery right now because I get to make some trades off of it. So we saw this industry that was still stuck in this sales methodology of salespeople negotiating contracts over multiple years, where we live in a day and age where I can get anything delivered to our front door via an app, yet I can't get a satellite image without talking to a human. So let's fix that. And so the mission was. It's an overused term, but I think democratizing the access to imagery is what we really set out to do.
Speaker 2:We learned a lot right from the beginning, in that satellite companies will partner with us because we can grow their market faster than they can organically by the fact that we have a web and mobile application. That is our purpose. They put great satellites in the sky and I go hey, we'll take care of the rest, we'll take care of the marketing, the education. You guys work on the hardware. We've got the software spot, and that's what started resonating with our partners and with the ability to sell one image. Well then the cost goes down. So you don't need an annual contract, you don't need a monthly contract. We're happy to sell that. We do that too. So the image cost goes down, which means more customers can use it, because you have this artificially constrained market which typically you need five, six figures at a minimum to play.
Speaker 2:Now you can do like you said for paid imagery hundreds of dollars. But we also have free data. There's a bunch of government-operated satellites, what's called open data, which is free. You can get on and get a bunch of free data. There's some pros and cons to it it's free, it's lower resolution. But that same thing I looked at and I say it all the time is that open data, even though, yes, it is technically free, taxpayers pay for it, so nothing's free, but it wasn't accessible. So open data did not equal accessible data, and what I mean by that is you have to present this to users. Like you saw, if you go to appskyficom, it's presented in a nice user experience and the user interface is enjoyable to work with and it feels like magic when you do a couple button clicks and you can task a satellite like. No one's done that before, and so we did that Large part about how we enabled.
Speaker 2:That was the team. We didn't come from the geospatial world. I came from Uber. The military, our head of engineering and a bunch of our engineers came from Uber, came from AI companies and fintech companies where we understood scale, not from the geospatial world. We're worried about building satellites. We're like let's focus on the customer. What does the customer want? So that customer angle, speed of delivery, rapid prototype, iteration was was really key to you know, getting to your point of like. How do you make it cheap and easy and accessible to people, and that's what we're.
Speaker 1:That's what we're yeah, we're, we're both builders and I want to kind of expand this conversation around the Austin ecosystem and what you're doing there as well, because I think that that is really amazing. But some of my favorite defense tech startups, they're essentially also facilitation platforms. Right Is that you could look at democratization, but it's also no one company can have all the solutions that are in a problem set in the kill chain, and the traditional way of looking at this is I'm going to design a satellite for bringing GIS data and I'm going to deliver intelligence to the customer and I own that entire chain. That the entry for touching that data is $20 million, $30 million or whatever it is to just barely scrape the surface of that, whereas the defense tech companies that, in my opinion, are winning, they are facilitating other innovative companies to win. So to lower the barrier of entry for success to the warfighter.
Speaker 1:Looking at it as what do I need? Skyfi is inherently a dual-use technology company, but you think of it from this perspective. I need a picture and I need it now. And if I'm the world's best at processing imagery, the probability of me also being the world's best at having the satellite and having the backhaul and having all of these things is extremely improbable. I don't care what size of company you are. I can keep picking on Google. They don't have the best imagery. They don't have the best at any of those things. It's very convenient when I look at companies like yourself and this leads into the community building is that you have an enablement business. This space it's not about solving and being the end-all, be-all of the space. It's about really uplifting the entire industry and facilitating innovation as change.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you hit on it too like dual-use company. I think that phrase gets put out there by quite a bit of people. Usually entrepreneurs are like we're a dual-use company. They go like well, what does that mean? Like well, we sell a military product? I'm like, well, that's not really dual-use. That means you're a defense tech company, which is great. But I think SkyFi is an actual dual-use company, meaning the product we create can be used in the commercial world, the intelligence world, the defense world, you name it international. So it is that true dual use where we cross both boundaries.
Speaker 2:I don't have a government product and I don't have a separate commercial product. It's all built on that one platform. And that's where I think a lot of companies struggle is they're like well, we have to have all these different products for all these different customers and it gets very capital intensive to build, whether that's software or hardware. In our approach it's obviously software. We took this approach at Sky from the beginning, going like we're going to launch commercially first, very intentionally knowing there's a big government market out there. But there's benefits of going commercial first. What do you get? Well, you get rapid iteration from your customers, especially if you're pumping content on social media like Twitter and LinkedIn and Instagram and Reddit all these avenues to get customer feedback. A lot of people talk about Skyfy's marketing and how good we are and we're pushing the boundaries and we do that with intention.
Speaker 2:It's not because we like the likes and shares and reposts, it's customer feedback. How many DMs we get and posts we get about like hey, sky-fi, I would like this feature. Like, hey, I'm on the app and this looks different, like, what about this? So that's the feedback cycle. And then we got a bunch of feedback and then with the government, usually you get kind of one or two attempts usually one at really proving out your tech to the government. And the problem again, there's multiple ways to do it.
Speaker 2:I think the problem with going with a government first approach is the product cycle. Feedback is super slow, like first you have to get the contract, then you have to start executing, then maybe six months down the road you're going to get a product checking and feedback, or a year. Well, in the commercial world that's like daily and minutely and hourly you're getting that feedback. So the product cycle. The other thing too is the company culture. You know, if you're building, you know if I were to build this company that's going, we're going to go defense first the company would look quite a bit different where you know it doesn't necessarily translate, where defense-focused folks don't necessarily transfer over to the commercial world and vice versa. But I think we've seen I've got a national security background. A lot of my leadership does too where having that understanding of going like we're going to launch on the defense side, very intentionally, we know the avenue, we know the product, we know the customers, we were those warfighters, you know flying helicopters and on the front lines we know what the product should look like. But very intentionally, this like dual use and I really think we're a true dual use company out there where I think a lot of people say I'm dual use and it's a commercial company, but only selling a defense product, which is great and it's awesome and there's good money to it.
Speaker 2:But you just have to pick your battle, which one you want to do, and I'll say each one is hard. Selling to the government extremely hard. It's a bureaucratic process. Hopefully with a new administration we're going to see some change in rapid aeration cycles. But selling to commercial world is hard too. You have to have thick skin and once you have a live product out there that can be downloaded on an app store or, you know, viewed by anyone in the world, it's brutal feedback. But you need that and we welcome it. You know, I always say like too it's. You know, feedback's a gift and we appreciate any and all feedback that comes through our doors.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that perspective, for for startups, it's all about the OODA loop how fast you can throw something out there, get feedback and improve what you're doing, whether it's marketing or it's the tech or it's your strategy. The OODA loop kills everybody. Government doesn't make that any better If you're waiting 18 months or 36 months for a contract. You've got to figure out how to bring the future forward and have a two-week sprint OODA loop.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then I think, also empowering your employees. You know the folks you work with to make the decisions. You know I'm not the smartest person in the company, nor should I be Um, and telling you folks who work with like, just make the decision. Like I always say, like 70%, if our product is launched and it's at a 70% solution, that's great. You know, if it's at 100%, and great, we waited too long. You know, which is very typical and I think you know getting it out there, being able to take the risk, you know, for that.
Speaker 2:Decision making in the OODA loop cycle and empowering the folks to just hire the right people, let them do great things, is really interesting. I've seen companies and we all know companies where maybe we've been a part of them where everyone has to go to the boss for a decision and it just takes forever and then that's like weeks and you got to get on the calendar and approve it or just go do it If you mess up, great. That means we're going to learn something. So I really like that and, candidly, it makes my job easier too If you've got a bunch of smart people and they're doing great things and moving on without you. That's what I prefer I look back to.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of that probably comes from the special operations world, where that's the mentality. It's not a bureaucratic organization. Most special operations units are very flat. Everyone's a decision maker. You've gone through a process to get there so I've modeled some of the hiring practices of Skyfi. You know, off of that decision making cycle, like I don't want people that are, you know, the yes man, you know, or just like you know, waiting for the bureaucratic chain and you know, work their nine to five and want to be told what to do every day. Because you know.
Speaker 1:I don't want people like that and I don't like being told what to do anyways. Well, certainly there's this strong correlation between autonomy and action bias that you see with people from the service and then moving into startup founders. It's like an undeniable trend, and you want to build a team that matches your culture, which is hey, go do the thing, go gather the information so you know the unknown, unknowns as quickly as possible, and then we can refactor, because a decision not made is 100% incorrect, like you know. So I find that fascinating how strong that correlation is.
Speaker 2:Well, there's one like to make one point on that too. There's also the cons, too, where you know largely you have just have a lot of special operations buddies that are entrepreneurs and CEOs. What is very difficult is to hire a team that is different from yourself. Like I could have hired a bunch of people with my background, the military experience, all my aviator buddies, and we'd be much less successful. You have to have that wide variety of spectrum of people because it's decision makers and different opinions from different industries, and that's what was pretty hard. I see some companies that suffer from that, where they want to hire their buddies whether it's a bunch of Navy SEALs working together or operators from unit working together, and it's there's pros to it, but there's definitely a limit. Depends on the business model too.
Speaker 1:Do you feel that was tempered by by your experience with high growth, more mature growth stage startups, or that was tempered by secondary education or anything like that?
Speaker 2:I think all of it. Yeah, I think you know the lessons at Stanford, you know, took a lot of the entrepreneurship stuff, a lot of case studies. You know that educational background of what makes startups successful and realizing most startups fail because of the team dynamics and going like, okay, why is that? You know, and it's it's a lack of challenging each other. You know friends, if you hire friends, they don't challenge each other as well as people you don't know, which is a really interesting dynamic where it's different thoughts that you want to come in and you're avoiding groupthink is what you do.
Speaker 2:But I think at Uber, at Joby, sitting at the venture capital firm for just a short while, sitting on the other side of the table, seeing what makes teams successful and who gets funded and who doesn't, was really foundational. And then seeing some companies I know and friends of mine that had companies that fail where they did exactly that Super easy to hire a bunch of your army buddies and then have a good time for a few months and burn down some venture capital money and have no product at the end. And I saw that. And again, when I hired people at Uber, when I hired people at Joby, when I hired people at Skyfi, I would get all my buddies going like hey man, I'm in, let's do this and I'd be like all right, you got to explain the skillset the tighter.
Speaker 2:Your shot group does not equal business sales and product creation. Your flight hours in the helicopter do not equal being able to execute against a government contract with the Space Force. So it's a really hard conversation to have, but again it just is what it is Ford again but industry dependent.
Speaker 1:It's really good insights. I want to highlight what you have going on in Austin, because Austin has really emerged as this third. It's like America's third space for defense tech and South by Southwest oddly morphed into this defense tech show which the industry got kicked out of. But there's also Capital Factory and AAL there and we have mutual friends that are in that area and have supported those programs around there. So it's really interesting to me no-transcript.
Speaker 2:A lot of major tech companies are here, obviously. You fly into Austin, you fly over the Tesla facility, which is just enormous, spacex is making and launching satellites just down the road, and rockets. Bunch of big venture capital firms moved here over the years. So you have this ecosystem which is growing and growing and growing. And then, yeah, at South by Southwest last year, because some artists protested South by kicked out the army from sponsoring defense contractors, weapons manufacturers, as they stated it, and I thought it was a really immature decision because, again, the community is what it's about and the worst thing we can do to build a community is shut out the conversations we don't want to have because we don't agree with them. You should be open to that. And why do we have a defense tech industry? Why is Austin becoming a hotbed of some of the best companies in the world to be created, solving military and intelligence community problems? Yeah, it was really interesting and really disappointing, and so what I did was I just called a few buddies. I was like, hey, is this really what's going on and I want to do something about it. So all that conversation resulted in what we're calling Austin for America. It's 6 to 7 March. It's right, as South by Southwest started, we're not affiliated with Southwest. South by Southwest don't want to be, because I wanted to have this spot where defense tech companies, investors, researchers everyone can come in and get exposed to what makes America great and that's the freedom we have and enjoy is because of this powerful military we have, because of the defense tech, because of the risks we take, and we can't shut that out because, again, it is a foundation of how America exists and how we're going to exist as the most powerful nation going forward. So I'm super excited about it and it's all just like a startup. It's all about timing, with the new administration coming in building for America having an event. You know, I'm glad I thought of the name Austin for America. I think it rings pretty well. It's just like people are piling in.
Speaker 2:We've got a bunch of sponsorship and it's free for everyone to attend. If you're a startup, come demo your stuff for free. If you're an investor and you want to learn about the latest, some of the great companies, come in and sit in the audience and participate. So that was really important too. I did not want to run an event where I'm charging startups thousands of dollars to sit at a coffee table and demo in front of a handful of investors. I want to like, hey, it's free because that's what it should be. I don't make money off of this. That's not the intent. The intent is really get the message out and some of the conversations we're having need to be head. Yes, we're going to have investors talk.
Speaker 2:We've got guys like Dan Cain, who retired as a three-star out of the agency where he's really tipped the spear seeing what's going on from a government intelligence community's perspective, opening with a keynote. And we have Steve Bauscher who leads In-Q-Tel, which started as the CIA's venture capital arm and now represents a whole bunch of three-letter agencies. He's coming to talk. Then we have a bunch of Austin dual-use companies. Then we have on day two really interesting we're starting off the day with a Ruck March sponsored by Go Ruck, which is a phenomenal American-built company that puts on Ruck marches and have a bunch of Ruck sacks that I think I've got three of them in my house. And then we've got Ways to Well coming, which is a health company which is really delving deep into stem cell research, hormone replacement, wellness overall. They're coming. They're bringing their Cybertruck. It's going to have a cold plunge in the back with a pull-up bar.
Speaker 2:Then we get into psychedelic discussions from some researchers We've got UT Austin has been doing research for years with special operations, veterans, of how to clear and cure PTSD and TBI and how to reduce the suicide risk, because for decades we've been at war and now we're seeing the effects of it.
Speaker 2:So, ut Austin, there's a doctor named Dr Greg Fonzo who's leading the psychedelic research how can we treat these things that are the symptoms of decades of war and a whole bunch of other psychedelic research. There's a guy named Justin LaPree who's got a company called the Illuminating Collective in Austin doing phenomenal work for veterans as well. So it's a different thing. It's not like I make fun of myself because I was one of those guys. It's not a bunch of dudes that look like me sitting in blue suits talking about we got to change the defense acquisition process. It's the more difficult and interesting conversations I think. So again, it's a great community, a bunch of people are coming in and it's going to be fun, and again, it's free thanks to a bunch of sponsors coming in with us.
Speaker 1:We'll make sure to put all the links to that in the show notes so people can connect with you on that. And just on a broader note, there's so many conventions and trade shows in the space and there are really great ones. For startups that I work with, I really suggest that they go to a city and go talk to founders. So go to the smaller event We'll be at Softweek, of course, right, and everybody's there Half the time. It'll be just talking to friends and seeing people, seeing faces, because everybody's going to be there. That's great.
Speaker 1:But go out to LA, go out to El Segundo, right. Go to San Diego, go to Austin, right. Come and hang out with me in DC. Go to a place and go talk to founders. Go see what they're up to. People have already solved whatever obstacle and problem that you have. They probably share a similar customer the probability of partnering. Hey, all these big companies, they team together, they partner together as a startup. You should be going and doing it. But go make friends, go to smaller events and go just hang out with people. It's amazing what can happen just from the fellowship of hey, I'm going to go to this space and chit chat with people for a couple of days, like you don't have to have a booth to like, do business development and meet people. Be a human being. It's amazing what can happen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think too, for veterans and you know folks or folks looking to transition into different jobs or different industries it's the power of the network. I do some coaching with the Honor Foundation, which helps veterans transition off active duty. Special ops veterans get a crash course in business over a handful of months and get resume reviewed. And the thing I say most and I've seen it and I'm a case study is you're not going to really get a job by submitting your resume cold on some website. You're going to know somebody, who's going to know somebody, and you're going to have a coffee and a meeting. That's how that really works. So the power of the network is super important for folks to realize.
Speaker 2:That's how I got into this industry, that's how I got to work at Uber. You know from a buddy of mine and you know that cycle continues where it's about building the network and being open to have conversations. You know where you know nothing has to be transactional. Just go and have a good time, you're going to learn something, you're going to go to another thing and meet some more people. So it's really important to build that. And you realize too, like you know, it's such a small world. Like you know, the defense tech world.
Speaker 1:It's a really small industry.
Speaker 2:Like you're like usually one person disconnected from an investor or from a founder that you need to connect with, so it's super fun, especially in Austin, too. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Luke, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to come and chit chat with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, it's been a blast. And yeah, super fun too.
