2024: Year in Review
I planned for a year at the beach, God had other plans
A sabbatical year cut short
I started this blog in the summer of 2023 as a creative outlet after handing off the reins of Spartan. After six years of near continuous building since we started Epirus in 2018 and Spartan in 2020, I needed a break and a chance to observe and orient before deciding and acting on my next move.
Since then it’s turned into a semi-weekly passion project and a megaphone for me to continue making some of the key thesis points of the last ten years of my career. These include: the intersection of electronic warfare and networks; how the defense industrial base must embrace commercial best practices and abandon cold war era practices and mindsets to stay relevant; the rapid transition from C2 autonomy to mission based autonomy; and the burning platform need for mid-tier acquisition reform to keep our force rapidly reiterating.
Throughout my “sabbatical year” I had the opportunity to attend and present at numerous conferences; speak with countless founders, builders and investors; make a few angel investments; and advise some early stage start ups and venture capital firms. In that time, it became increasingly clear that we live in an era of accelerated change. Technology was following the same mega-trend of decentralization, best explained in Martin Gurri’s “The Revolt of the Public” (in my opinion the most important book written so far in the 21st century). It was becoming increasingly clear that the traditional top down institutions we have built during the 20th century were being upended by the bottoms up, decentralized institutions and networks that have come to dominate the 21st.
The implications of this “unbundling” for warfare were playing out on our screens daily with the invisible battlefield of the electromagnetic spectrum becoming a dominant domain of warfare, both in Ukraine as well as the war in the middle east since October 7th 2023. The democratization of low cost autonomous systems and software defined radios has brought IoT to the battlefield.
I connected earlier this year with Porter Smith, a veteran helicopter pilot and (at the time) A16Z partner who spent a great deal of time in Ukraine and saw the same trend playing out. After connecting with Mark Trefgarne, another successful entrepreneur in the tech space who founded and exited LiveRail to Meta and Lee Thompson, a SpaceX RF engineer who led the team that built the whole comms stack for Starship, we co-founded CX2 via the 8VC build program in order to build a 21st century Electronic Warfare prime.
Shortly after signing the term sheet with 8VC and A16Z in late spring, we were on a train to Ukraine to see for ourselves what was happening there. We saw first hand the changing character of war and those lessons learned and the relationships we made there have been folded into the work we are doing at CX2.
Other milestones this year
I had a couple of exits at the beginning and end of this year which have been great bookends for 2024.
I was an early advisor to Opengov, which was a spinout of a passion project called California Common Sense that Joe Lonsdale and I started over a decade ago. I introduced Opengov to a dozen or so cities in LA and OC that became some of the first customers for the transparency portal. Opengov had a massive exit of $1.8B to Cox Enterprises back in February. Congrats to Zac Bookman, Joe and the team there!
Spartan Radar, my second company, had a rebuilding year with the automotive market and the sensor market in particular overall undergoing a reset. The company transitioned CEO’s in May and my co-founder Blake Gasca took over as CEO. I’m happy to report that the company had a partial exit last week, with its Software division being acquired by a Fortune 100 Manufacturing OEM for an undisclosed sum. I will share more details about this as I can, but its great to know that the software product and team we built will live on in the stack of a future autonomy product. Congrats to the Spartan team on this huge milestone!
Articles I’ve Co-written with others this year:
Porter Smith and I were fortunate enough to have our OpEd published in the Wall Street Journal: The Future of Warfare is Electronic back in September, which launched CX2 out of stealth.
Dr. Fred Kennedy and I’s recently co-wrote: Dude, Where’s My M-Code? about the need for a rethinking of the USSF’s core mission and acquisition strategy.
The Former Fed published a piece I jointly wrote with Christina Ramstein, Head of People for CX2 on what makes x-government applicants stand out in the hiring process.
ICYMI Here, top 5 posts (by readership) from the past year:
Epirus news
My long time friend and collaborator Joe Lonsdale, was on the Shawn Ryan Show recently talking about Epirus and it’s implications for the future of warfare (you can watch the clip below). High Power Microwave and Directed Energy Weapons more broadly are an enabling capability for the future of warfare and an essential equalizer to the attritable mass brought about by the proliferation of cheap, expendable autonomous systems on the modern battlefield.
…And thanks for the plug Joe!
New from other start ups I’m an Advisor or Investor in
(Investor) Procurement Sciences, a company using AGI to automate and streamline the government proposal process, raised a $10M Series A led by Battery Ventures.
(Investor) Epsilon3, which up until now has focused on test procedure management, unveiled three new products to expand it’s footprint across the ERP space for development and manufacturing. These include enhanced timeline tools, MRP and a data storage portal.
(Investor) Wyvern Space a hyperspectral imaging company, raised a $6M round led by Squadra ventures.
(Investor + Advisor) Hexium, an Austin based start up focused on nuclear isotope concentration, raised an $8M seed round last March with participation from Mac.vc and R7 partners.
(Investor) Standard Metrics recently introduced a Global Benchmarking product which provides unparalleled insight by category into how the 2000+ start ups across their portfolio and how they are making and spending money.
(Advisor) Senra Systems which is revolutionizing the way wire harnesses and cables are manufactured, has attracted such Marquis investors as Sequoia, Founders Fund and a16z. The two co-founders, Jordan Black and Ben Shanahan were recently named to the Forbes 30u30 list for Manufacturing.
(Advisor) Safire systems, a pioneer in employing nano-technology to improve battery safety, recently closed an $8M round led by Canaan Partners.
(Advisor) Pterodynamics, the developer of the unique Transwing design for eVTOLs that is superior to tiltrotor methods such as those used by the V-22 Osprey, began real world testing from the deck of the USS Curtis Wilbur Destroyer during this year’s RIMPAC exercises.
(Advisor) Viridian Space got some great coverage for their air-breathing propulsion technology for VLEO from SpaceNews as they entered into the Seraphim space accelerator.
Podcasts and media coverage
The Evolving Role of EW in Conflicts Overseas - From the Crows’ Nest EW Podcast
Episode #397: Tech at the Front Lines: How Consumer-Scale Innovation is Shaping War Stuart Alsop’s Crazy Wisdom Podcast
Meet the Startup Revolutionizing Safety With Road Tech Tech Optimist Podcast with Mike Collins from Alumni Ventures Group
Best Memes
A year in memes with some of my favorites:
Merry Christmas/Happy Chanukah/May your Festivus Airing of Grievances be Cathartic
Unfortunately not coming to a Target near you (not for resale)- but super cool nonetheless! 10 year old Nathan thinks his life is now complete.
