How US Defense Could Fight at Machine Speed/Matt Bigge - DefenseTech, X-Bow, F.I.R.E. ~ Spark of Ages Ep 40 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Rajiv Parikh (00:05):
Welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
Today we're joined by MattBigge, a partner at Crosslink
Capital.
Matt's been crushing it in theinvesting world for over 25
years and his track recordspeaks for itself.
He's backed winners likeVeriden, sold to FireEye,
arcsight sold to HP andCloudShield sold to SAIC.
He was even a founding investorand chair of Mesh Networks,

(00:28):
which Motorola snatched up.
Before he was writing checks andbuilding tech empires, he was
serving our country as aninfantry officer in the 10th
Mountain Division.
We're talking full airborne andranger qualified.
This guy helped detain Haitiandictator Joe Raul Ced when he
was just 24 years old.
Talk about starting your careerwith a bang.

(00:48):
When he's not hunting for thenext unicorn or advising
government and private sectorleaders on cybersecurity, matt's
living his other passionbaseball, and we mean serious
baseball.
His son actually made it to themajor leagues with the Cubs
after being drafted in 2019.
And now he plays for the TampaBay Rays, armed with degrees
from Georgetown and HarvardBusiness School and based in the

(01:11):
San Francisco Bay Area.
Matt's also deeply committed togiving back through the Honor
Foundation, helping specialoperations veterans transition
to civilian careers.
Some of the key takeaways youcan expect from this episode the
impact of low-cost versushigh-cost defense systems.
How the US is rebuilding oursupply chains for defense and

(01:34):
the logistical challenges facedby defense startups.
Strategies employed by startupslike X-bow and Darkhive to
disrupt traditional primedefense contractors.
And, finally, how Matt'sinterest in plausible science
fiction influences hisinvestment approach.
Matt, welcome to the Spark ofAges.

Matt Bigge (01:54):
Hey Rajiv, Great to be here.
Thanks for having me.
It's always fun catching up.

All right.
Well, we're going to continuethat fun conversation that you
and I always seem to have andwhat really excited me about
having you here, you bring thisvery unique perspective as a
venture capitalist, as abusiness leader, because you
served in the military andyou're a true deep tech geek.
But you then understand how toturn that into leadership and

(02:23):
investing and purpose, so Iwanted to bring all that to my
audience.
So let's start with a littlebit of what's happening today.
So there's a conflict inUkraine, as you know well, and
what's interesting about it isthat they're faced with an
overwhelming militarily superiorpower and they have innovated

(02:46):
in ways that are justunbelievable.
As you'd find in many militaryconflicts but in this one it's
especially poignant They'vedemonstrated the impact of
low-cost expendable systems likedrones and loitering munitions.
How has this shift influencedyour perspective on investing in
high-cost, exquisite platformsversus numerous low cost

(03:06):
autonomous systems?

Matt Bigge (03:08):
Well, you know, I don't think it's, I don't think
you want to think about this interms of cost.
I mean, ultimately cost doesmatter.
But really, about 10 years ago,when I joined Crosslink not
quite 10 years ago we, you know,we sat down and did a lot of
work thinking through how do youmake an impact, what are the

(03:31):
challenges?
That I saw, both as a soldierdecades ago, but then also when
I was CEO of my last company,which was a small defense
contractor and we were runningbusiness operations in places
like Iraq and Afghanistan and avariety of other places.
You don't go on vacation andwhat it boiled down to was the

(03:57):
future requires systems that aremodular, that are interoperable
with one another and they'reresponsive.
So we can break that down.
Modularity Things need to beplug and play.
You can take components fromone system and use them in
another.
It's kind of like blocks ofsoftware, because I think most

(04:20):
people in the startup andventure world think in terms of
software.
But you know there's no reasonwhy.
You know, a UAV from one vendorcannot use the exact same
interface as a UAV from anothervendor.
If you're plugging in a thermalcamera or other ISR, you know,

(04:41):
reconnaissance capability,Interoperable.
These systems need to be ableto communicate with one another,
independent of who the prime is, independent of who the
technology provider is.
We have too many walled gardensthroughout our national security
infrastructure, and thesewalled gardens lead to a

(05:03):
slowdown in communications, andthat degrades combat
effectiveness.
And ultimately, what you wantto build are products that
enable the warfighter to dotheir job and enable the
enterprise that supports thewarfighter, and that requires

(05:24):
interoperability.
In addition to that,interoperability is critical for
the military to run at machinespeed.
Too often the battlefield runsat human speed, while our
adversaries are running atmachine speed, and that's where
autonomy comes into play.
The last is responsive.

(05:44):
We no longer can afford to takeyou know the average of 6.6
years to create a program ofrecord.
You know the average program ofrecord from you know the day it
gets talked about in thePentagon to the day that you
field an initial capability is6.6 years.

(06:06):
That's crazy.

That's a long, long time.

Matt Bigge (06:09):
Yeah, Like what is the technology cycle?

And then many of them, like you know, like some
of the fighter jets, these are20 plus year programs right
before they get to production.

Matt Bigge (06:18):
Right, and so they are, by definition, obsolete
before they're in the hands ofthe warfighter and our
adversaries do not require, youknow, three technology cycles to
deploy one tech, one capability.
You know, if we think aboutsomething that was spec'd out to
require artificial intelligencein 2019, all right, that was

(06:38):
basic machine learning, and youknow, in today's world, things
like generative AI are formingautonomy in ways that allow us
to function at machine speedversus human speed low-cost
drones, right.

There's drones that are made with toys or toy
components from China.
I mean, right, a lot of themicrocontrollers and those
things, right.
And then there's this massivesort of disruptive impact where

(07:14):
these low-cost items, puttogether in large numbers in a
well-trained system, are takingout much more expensive weapons.
Like you know, 100x, 1000xtimes, right, a $200 device is
taking out a $100 million system.
So if you were to look at itfrom that perspective, is this

(07:34):
because people were thinkingabout this before or is this an
adaptation?

Matt Bigge (07:41):
Well, it's an adaptation.
I mean, you know, when you'reforced by an existential threat
to come up with solutions, youget pretty creative.
And hats off to everyone in theUkraine because they've
demonstrated, you know,incredible creativity,

(08:02):
incredible intestinal fortitude.
You know it's pretty cool theway people have found a way to
stay alive and fight back andactually inflict some pretty
significant damage on.
You know, as you pointed out, amuch more.
You know financiallywell-backed adversary and when

(08:29):
you look at that, it reminds meof a book I read in undergrad by
Che Guevara on guerrillawarfare.
And when you look at the wayChe changed the way the Soviets
implemented guerrilla warfareback in the 60s and 70s it took
us a while to figure that out.

(08:50):
Now, ultimately, the Cold Warturned out the way it turned out
and Che didn't meet with a verypleasant end.
But that playbook is largelywhat we're seeing out of the
Ukrainians.
It's also what we're seeing outof the Ukrainians.
It's also what we're seeing outof the Houthis.
It's what we're seeing out of anumber of nation state and

(09:14):
non-nation state adversariesthat are forced to function
without fancy, exquisite systemsthat spent decades getting
spec'd out and more decadesbefore they went into production
.
And that's where you get backto MIR modular, interoperable,

(09:35):
responsive.
It's got to be responsivewithin the technology cycle.
It's got to be able tointeroperate and communicate and
to me, that's the future of thedefense sector.

In a way yeah, in a way because they were forced
to be in that situation.
They didn't have all the setupand the infrastructure.
They were forced into thatsituation and that's because we
had these electronic systemsthat can be cleverly utilized.
So now let's take it a bitfurther, right?
So one of the other areas I'dlove to chat with you about is

(10:10):
the notion of the current supplychain base.
Right, so we have the notion ofmodernizing defense production.
Right, and you've invested in acompany called Crossbow that's
using an additive manufacturingapproach for single rocket
motors.
Right, so they are additivemanufacturing.
That's printing, 3d printing.

(10:31):
So how far along?
So a lot of folks will say,well, the US has hollowed out
its industrial base and supplychains, and you'll say that, and
there's a lot of logisticalchallenges as a result.
Right, I'm a startup and I'mtrying to take advantage of
whatever I have here in the US.
I can't just necessarily drawfrom what's moved overseas.

(10:51):
How do you think about that interms of modernizing our
production base?

Matt Bigge (10:55):
Well, I mean, it's about modernizing the production
base so that we're actuallyputting the best and the latest
and greatest capabilities intothe hands of the men and women
who defend our country.
And we have gotten lazy aboutthings.
When you look at the world ofsolid state energetics, so you

(11:18):
have two types of rockets onesthat use liquids and ones that
use solids.
There's a few hybrids in there,but for the purposes of this,
liquid versus solid.
Liquid gas goes in your car.
That's a liquid.
The rocket that you built inthird grade and shot up in the
air, that had a little solidthing of gunpowder.

It's like fireworks, right, it's like
fireworks, right, it's likefireworks.

Matt Bigge (11:46):
Yeah, those are that solid state and solid state
motors.
Actually, most of the rocketsthat get shot around this world
are solid state rockets andreally, you know, prior to about
six years ago there had notbeen a meaningful patent filed.
You know, in my lifetime I'mnot young, there is no non-gray

(12:12):
hair on my head, and so thattells me that even if the
capability is great, the abilityto manufacture the capability
is not.
And that gets to beingresponsive, being modular, being
interoperable, and I thinkwhere Crossbow has seen a lot of

(12:34):
commercial success has been theability to respond to customer
requirements in very, very shortorder.
When you look at the incumbentsin this market, you have very,
very long lead times on ordersand you have very large scale
like capital.

(12:55):
They basically have mixingbowls the size of a four-story
office building.
They fill them up withchemicals and then they turn
them into rocket motors, asopposed to Crossbow.
They fill them up withchemicals and then they, you
know, turn them into rocketmotors, as opposed to Crossbow.
They have a program with theAir Force where you can just 3D
print these motors in a shippingcontainer, like anywhere in the

(13:19):
world.
It's pretty cool and it turnsout you don't have to order that
nine months or a year inadvance.
But I think one of the naturaltendencies in this conversation
is to bash the legacy primes.
But the reality is they've gotto all work together and where

(13:39):
that can be very symbiotic isthe large primes are incredibly
good at communicating withCapitol Hill.
They're very good at managingvery complex large programs.
They have exceptional pastperformance which allows them
bidding preferences.

(14:00):
But, generally speaking, thebest technology but generally
speaking, the best technologyit's found in Silicon Valley,
it's found in El Segundo, it'sfound in Austin, texas, it's
found outside the R&D facilitiesof large primes and, frankly,

(14:21):
even some of the federallyfunded research and development
centers.
And prior to 9-11, over half ofresearch and development in
this country was funded by theDOD.
Today that number is less than18%.
So it's because 9-11 happenedand all of our spend shifted to
immediate operationalrequirements as opposed to
research and development.
What we've seen over the last10 years is the rise of

(14:46):
venture-backed, nationalsecurity-focused businesses.
I've been investing in nationalsecurity-focused businesses for
well, since the 90s, andhistorically that hasn't been
the place where you can find anidea.

This was not the next sexy Amazon, or right?

Matt Bigge (15:04):
Yeah, but neither was cybersecurity 25 years ago,
Right?

So I mean you had to see it a bit earlier, right,
I mean, that was the thing.
It's like you had to see, Ithink, what you're talking about
, this notion of modularinteroperable response, If you
had to see it, the need for thatprior to that, because even
your crossbow investment is notthe last three years, right?

Matt Bigge (15:26):
this is like yeah, it's 2019 is when we right.
Yeah, we were the first.
They were in development evenbefore that right.

They were in development way before that
right so they.

Matt Bigge (15:36):
The idea before was before that, but we, we were
their first capital so it.
That's when it went from reallygood ideas to really good ideas
put into motion.
And that's where you look at acompany from basically zero six

(15:56):
years ago to hundreds ofmillions of dollars in bookings.
And that means, number one,they've built something useful.
And number two, the customersfind it useful, which we all go
back to business 101.

(16:19):
Budgets that those people haveconsistent with the capability
and then the ability to have acontract vehicle that can do.
Numbers one, three, three ifyou got all four of those things
, you might have a businessright.

If, if you don't, if you're missing any one of
those things, but you have tosee it right, and so there's
this combination of seeing itfrom the your, your let, your
personal lens and then seeing itfrom the folks that you're
talking with, and so this is asituation where it's kind of
like the SpaceX I think theaudience may understand as this

(16:57):
as sort of like United LaunchAlliance, which is Boeing and
Lockheed's rather slow-movingrocket building capability that
was very reliable but veryexpensive, versus SpaceX doing
it less expensively much, youknow, like 75% off per rocket
launch, right, and coming upwith super clever ideas about
how to reuse, launch, reuserockets Right, you were.

(17:18):
You had to see the same thingin the defense world with these,
with the rocket that can bemanufactured in a kit on demand
on a site versus off at a biglocation, right?

Matt Bigge (17:31):
Well, we have a big location too, but that's true.
But even there it's you know,it's continuous throughput and
again, that that's you know.
This gets back to you know,responsive requires taking a
greenfield look at things and,just like we do in any venture
category or any startup category, really it's all right, this is

(17:53):
how the world does it.
Well, how should we be doing itin light of modern technology,
in light of modern capabilities?

Yeah, and that led you to see these sorts of
things.
So let's go to talk a littlebit about AI, right, and so
there's the rise of AI agents.
There are tons of sensors outthere of all types, so there's
data coming from all thosesensors, coming to the
warfighter, right, and so thatwarfighter or the team has to

(18:25):
make sense of it in the contextof a highly disruptive
battlefield.
Right, there's massive volume.
There's a lot of things comingat you.
As one of our guests, jasonHansberger, told us, right, he's
an Air Force colonel now doingwork at Stanford to help bring
Silicon Valley and the militarytogether.

(18:47):
It's not like driving your fullself-driving system in a
friendly city street right,where everybody has rules to get
somewhere.
You're in a complex world,right, where everyone's against
you.
So now you have to make sense ofit, right.
And so how do you see theseAI-powered automation and
augmentation capabilities comingtogether to help the warfighter

(19:09):
that may be potentiallyoverwhelmed by all this data?

Matt Bigge (19:12):
Well, you're absolutely going to be
overwhelmed by this data andthat is why I talk about the
future requires functioning atmachine speed, not human speed.
The future requires functioningat machine speed, not human

(19:47):
speed, because the human brainis not going to be able to
handle those inputs at a pacethat's nation to defend our
country.
Increasingly, they must alloperate at machine speed and
that requires interoperabilityof systems, which is a big
challenge that we face in termsof modernizing our national
security infrastructure.

(20:08):
The good news is we've gotgreat minds, great entrepreneurs
out there doing it and I thinkincreasingly the large primes
understand that if they're goingto be successful in the future
and maintain their market share,they're going to find ways to
partner with these emergingtechnology companies so that

(20:31):
everybody's doing what they'rebest at.
You know, crossbow, I believe,has you know, awesomely
wonderful solid-state energeticstechnology and capabilities,
and these larger primes,increasingly their organic
ability to produce thosematerials is outdated.

(20:54):
So if they want to servicetheir customers the best way
they possibly can, they're goingto partner with these up and
coming innovators that I believe.
The Forged Act calls themnon-traditional providers, which
was a term coined by SiliconValley Defense Group, and SVDG
is a founding board member there, and we do a lot of work

(21:16):
helping the Pentagon understandwhat the state of the art is and
where to find it.
We also do a lot of workeducating Capitol Hill on what's
the state of the art and whereto find it.
We also do a lot of workeducating Capitol Hill on what's
the state of the art and whereto find it.
I think we still have somechanges that need to be made in
the procurement world.

I'm sure that's a significant process.
Make my rocket on thebattlefield right.

Matt Bigge (21:51):
Well, it's the motor .
It's not the whole rocket, well, not the rocket.

You have the explosive and then you have the
rocket.
You can make it at thebattlefield or in forward
locations, as opposed to gettingit shipped all the way from
somewhere.
So that's, an incredibleinnovation in and of itself.
And then I think, you have aninvestment in this firm called
DarkHive, which is in the areaof drones and drone management,

(22:15):
where now you can have themworking together as a swarm,
working autonomously orsemi-autonomously to get to
where to fulfill a particularmission, so that, if they're
somehow blocked by othercommunications technology, they

(22:36):
can make things happen, right.
Yep, so these are capabilitiesthat are Silicon Valley-esque,
capabilities that are combinedwith a military need to get
people to where they want to go,right, and so this is how all
this is coming together.

Matt Bigge (22:52):
Right, and it's a great founder market fit story,
where a former Navy combat techwho I met when he graduated the
Honor Foundation TransitionProgram back in 2018, kept track
of him.
He had a job with a largecontractor, did that for a while
, learned how the system worksfrom the contractor end because

(23:16):
he'd already seen the problem onthe ground in combat zones, in
combat zones, and so, when Johnwas building his business, his
question was why are wedeploying, you know, a $150,000
drone to do a reconnaissancemission, when, if we take a step

(23:38):
back and build it usingconsumer electronics
methodologies as opposed toexquisite system methodologies,
we can build that exact samedrone and sell it for $20,000 or

(23:59):
less?
And that was the aha for him.
I think what we've realizedwith the company over time is
that, yes, those drones aregoing to sell like hotcakes, but
the software that makes themrun is what really allows the
battlefield to run at machinespeed rather than human speed.
And then, when you think aboutthe interoperability, it's
building the hardware and thesoftware with an open systems

(24:24):
approach so that it cancommunicate both up and down.
They can certainly communicatewith the soldiers on the ground,
but it can also interface withthe software that informs higher
headquarters at the operationaland strategic level.
So, thinking through thatinteroperable and responsive

(24:45):
framework, you know you take aconsumer electronics approach to
building these systems.
That's going to radically lowercost.
It's also going to materiallyenhance your the
manufacturability of the UAV andby doing that you become much

(25:06):
more responsive.
It's not place an order, waitsix months, take delivery, go
out and train on it.
Maybe it all works, whereaswith DarkHive it's yeah, what do
you want?
All right, well, amazon Prime,I mean, it's not quite that easy
.

It's pure sense and respond right as the market
demands it and it and likeyou're saying, it changes the
way you procure right.
The, the traditionalprocurement system has changed
and you know, to the defensedepartment's credit, they've had
darpa and other clever ways ofworking with industry and I
think you guys have you, throughyour, your silicon valley group
, have helped to change some ofthe legislation so that you

(25:46):
enable these firms, or theprimes.
Explain a quick thing aboutprimes A prime is.

Matt Bigge (25:52):
So prime is a systems integrator.
So you think about the big onesLockheed, rtx, boeing, northrop
, saic, booz Allen.
These are large companies.
They control about 30% of, youknow, all defense contracts,

(26:15):
over 50% of the large defensecontracts.
Because, rightly, our federalgovernment is not going to trust
a $100 billion program thatsome startup with eight people
and maybe a dog wandering aroundthe office, because when you
build these things they have towork.
This is not.
Hey, we have 99% uptime, we'regood to go.

(26:38):
We're talking five, ninesreliability, nine, nines
reliability.
You know there have been someincidents over the last few
years where startups, you know,don't stand up to the
reliability and you know, justdowntime requirements that you
have with a militaryspecification.

(26:59):
You know, we all love to makefun of the $500 hammer and that
is silly.
All love to make fun of the$500 hammer and that is silly.
But at the end of the day, ifyou know, I think back to when I
was an infantry officer.
If I pick up my, you know backthen M16 and it jams every 10

(27:26):
rounds, I'm not using it.
Yeah, 90% success rate is notgood enough.
Yeah, you're going to die.
And when you look at thesesystems, you know five nines
reliability in a network system.
That equates to about sixminutes of downtime per year and
that is on the border ofacceptable in a military system,
because the idea is that we'regoing to win and we're not just

(27:48):
going to use stuff that enhancesour ability to die.

So that's the reason for this notion of the
prime contractor They've beencertified, they have the systems
in place, so it's easier forthe government to work with them
directly of the primecontractor They've been
certified, they have the systemsin place, so they so that it's
easier for the government towork with them directly and then
for them to vet the sub, theseother companies that they, that
they might put on that contract.

Matt Bigge (28:12):
Right, absolutely so .
So so if I'm coming inproviders right.

So what?
What?
The game for the?
If I'm going going to be anentrepreneur and build a defense
tech company, it's probably inmy.
Eventually, I may either workthrough a prime or through one
of the exceptions that I thinkyou've worked on.

Matt Bigge (28:31):
Right, and so there are ways to sell direct, and it
depends on what you're doing.
I mean, if you're just, ifyou're selling discrete widgets,
you can be what's called amerchant supplier, and as a
merchant supplier to thegovernment, you might sell
through a prime, you might selldirect to the government, and
that usually involves sellingdiscrete things as opposed to

(28:52):
systems.
Now there are younger companies, growth stage businesses that
aspire to be the next generationof primes.
You look at something likeAndoril.
They're not in it to sellthrough Lockheed, they're in it
to be bigger than Lockheed, andthat's a longer journey.

(29:13):
There's a lot of benefit to it,and I think we do need some
upstart primes.
Once upon a time SAIC was anupstart prime, and you know.
And so there are different waysto skin the cat.
But you know if you're going tobe selling autonomous systems,

(29:34):
you know you're going to want towork with.
You know the large primes thathold the large contracts so they
can more easily on-ramp you.
You get that past performanceso that you can then become
eligible to bid as a prime onyour own program of record.

So there's a whole system that we need to have,
that's available, that you'vehelped put together with
like-minded folks, so it's notjust closed off, like most would
think.

Matt Bigge (30:06):
Everything in the world is hard until you learn
how to do it, and then it's justwork.
And whether you're trying tosell into the Fortune 500 with
enterprise software, well, thefirst time you sell in the
Fortune 500, it's really really,really hard.

It's freaking hard yeah.

Matt Bigge (30:23):
Yeah, and then you learn how to do it.
You build a playbook and youknow, over time you refine that
playbook and then it's justworked and very similar to that.
When you look at, you know ourdefense budget going to be about
a trillion bucks by the timethis thing gets through
reconciliation.
That's over 5x the GDP of theUkraine.

(30:46):
Yeah, Like, our defense budgetis five times that country's GDP
, actually a little more.

Yeah, I think it's bigger than the next 10.

Matt Bigge (30:59):
At least.
Yeah, I mean, it's rough.
It's about 40% of globaldefense.
Yeah, I mean, global defensespending is 2.7 trillion.
We're a trillion.
So it's the kind of thing wherethis is a very, very large
enterprise.
And if you're thinking about, asan entrepreneur, identifying
what is my total addressablemarket whether it's hardware or

(31:19):
software you've got dozens ofFortune 500 sized budgets inside
the US national securityinfrastructure and people think
about the government as asolitary or a one customer.
Oh, you have concentration riskbecause you just sell the DoD
Well, the DoD has hundreds ofpotential customers, so you have

(31:40):
concentration risk.
Is you just sell the DOD?
Well, the DOD has hundreds ofpotential customers, so you have
concentration risk.
If the only thing you'reselling into is you know the,
you know one program like, ifeverything you do is going into
the you know joint strikefighter, all right, that's

(32:01):
customer concentration risk.
But if you're selling through Ihave a portfolio company that's
into they're a part of 28different programs of record
that's not concentration risk.
That is rational spread ofprograms, rational revenue

(32:22):
diversification, and so that'swhere the venture world is just
coming online with understandinghow to diversify revenue
appropriately without evenleaving the US government.

Yeah, so that's a great way of putting it right.
There's so many different ways,so many different potential
buyers within this.
So when I'm thinking aboutgo-to-market to them, there's a
whole way that there's amechanism to get you there.
There's a mechanism so thatthere's not concentration risk.
And do I think about net dollarretention?

(32:59):
Do I think about NRR?
Is that what they're putting?

Matt Bigge (33:02):
up in their slides.
It's much longer.
No, when I go to a boardmeeting with Matt Biggie.

Am I talking about NRR, ndr.

Matt Bigge (33:09):
Maybe on the cybersecurity side of the
portfolio, but no, it doesmatter, though.
The government can kick you outof contracts if you're bad at
what you do, and it happens yousee contracts terminated for
convenience.
That is a phrase that nobodywants to hear, and you do see

(33:31):
this happening, particularlywhen products don't hit
reliability standards.
There's a reason why it takesso long to get a missile
qualified or to get a safetysystem qualified.
I don't want the parachute thatwas slapped together and it's

(33:52):
gonna work 90 of the time.
Yeah, I mean, I have no problemif you know.
Uh, you know, I buy a box ofpens and nine.
You know I buy a box of pensand only nine out of ten of
those pens has ink.
Like, all right, that sucks,but I can get over it.
But if my parachute only opens90% of the time, like you know,
hey, we got a problem.

Even 99 is not good enough.

Matt Bigge (34:14):
All right.

Let's talk about one of your favorite topics,
which is plausible sciencefiction.
Okay, so how does that informyour investment decisions in
cutting edge national securityareas like hypersonics or
energetics or autonomous systems?
How do you discern betweenplausible future tech and pure

(34:39):
fantasy?

Matt Bigge (34:41):
I'd say number one.
The future is way closer thanpeople realize.
When you look at these kind ofthings, you want to understand
have the basic sciencechallenges been overcome?
And then it's a function of allright?
Are we still inventing novelcapabilities or are we into the

(35:04):
engineering phase where we'rerefining a capability to turn
into something that can be usedin the world around us for
business, national security,whatever, and actually I'll go
with a company that you haven'tnamed Alira.
Alira is a company that we spunout of a lab at Harvard in 2019.

(35:27):
And they basically make anSD-WAN product where the
security mechanism is quantumentanglement, and when I first
met the company, they had had abreakthrough.
I first met the company, theyhad had a breakthrough.
An undergrad student, workingwith Professor Preet Narang, had
figured out a way to predictgate failures in quantum systems

(35:48):
.
It turns out that that littlebreakthrough allows you to
sustain a communicationconnection that is essentially
unhackable and when you thinkabout the post quantum
encryption world, unhackablesystems are going to be pretty
critical because there's noright now, right.

(36:09):
So just to help everyoneunderstand, when is wide area
network?

So wide area network we're trying to
communicate across the networkstoday have been built on TCP IP
and you know that was theoriginal networking system.
There's a lot of companies incyber security at every single
level network security,application security, cloud
security, I mean there's, youname it.

(36:34):
There's all these companies,right, but and everybody keeps
talking about post-quantum,basically post-quantum computing
as a way.

Matt Bigge (36:41):
None of our encryption works right now.

Well, I mean, I got five or six different
clients that keep talking aboutpost-quantum right being
essentially unhackable, becausewith quantum I can break the
cryptographic code, right.
And so you found this coolcompany that in the quantum
space that had a had a bead toaround it Right, that and that

(37:04):
could be.
Quantum has been sciencefiction for a long time, Right,
it's always kind of like fusion,it's always 10 years out or
whatever, Right?
So but in this one you foundsomething where there was a
practical application.

Matt Bigge (37:16):
Well, not only a practical application but I mean
, yeah, I mean honestly, thefirst time I sat down with a
professor, I was like this isnonsense, like this is five to
10 years out.
What I discovered was theresearch has been done, and then
we had a couple of years ofdevelopment where we were

(37:38):
refining can we make this workin a manner that it can be
useful to businesses andgovernments?
And that took a couple of years.
And then, once you do that,it's about engineering, where
you're taking that R&D andturning it into a product For
better or worse.
I began my venture careerrunning around research and

(38:00):
development labs, defensecontractors and federal labs
trying to find cool intellectualproperty that appeared to have
business utility, and so a lotof my early investing was in
companies where we were takingR&D and making it useful, and so

(38:22):
that kind of informed why Ilike going into these things
really, really, really early,because I understand how that
evolution works, and when I satdown with Professor Narang in
Harvard in 2019, it was reallyquite exactly.

Yeah, good job, all right, but yeah, great to
meet you great idea yeah justlike a lot of, a lot of I've
talked to a lot of professorsthat you know their, their wet
lab innovation is just justready to be commercialized,
right ready to go.

Matt Bigge (38:54):
but the longer I spent learning about, the more I
realized, all right, the futureis a lot closer than we think,
and this is something that couldhave legs.
So do you like read?

science fiction books and that informs some of
your thinking.
Are you looking for things likethat?
Is there a pattern recognitionsort of in in built in your head
that while that you read aboutthis cool stuff when I was
reading you know prelude to theFoundation and now it comes out
today I mean, if you readDiamond Age by Neil Stevenson

(39:30):
and read the whole book it's ashort book and then look at the
year it was copyrighted, yourjaw will hit the floor.

Matt Bigge (39:38):
There's a reason why Neil Stevenson was one of the
first advisors to Jeff Bezos forBlue Origin.
The guy has seen the future andfrequently gets it right or
close enough to right.
So I do read a ton of sciencefiction, but I also read a ton
of white papers and I am verymuch always on the lookout for

(40:00):
where the future is closer thanpeople generally believe it is.

You know, I think- and so that's how you build the
connection.
You may have something way outthere.
Like somebody might read, rayKurzweil years ago and he was
maybe a little aggressiveinitially with what's going to
happen with AI and thesingularity and all that but
Well, he had Leon Cooper atBrown in the 70ity and all that.
But, he wasn't.

Matt Bigge (40:22):
Well, he had Leon Cooper at.

Brown in the 70s and 80s.
We're getting there, yeah, yeah.

Matt Bigge (40:27):
I mean the term neural network.
I believe it was coined in 1979.
Right right At Brown got inLeon Cooper, nobel Prize winner,
and so that was a you know40-year journey before that
basic research turned intosomething useful.

(40:47):
Now I think a lot of that hadto do with the ecosystem around
it, because the principles ofneural networks have not changed
a ton, but the bandwidth, thecompute, the memory.

Having the cloud essentially enables it to move
so much faster.

Matt Bigge (41:03):
Or having this little device in our hands
that's more powerful than anycomputer on earth in 1979.

Right, right.
So all that brings it together,and so you have to be able to
see all that you know and you'llmake mistakes, and some you
know.
But you have to be more.
I guess you have to be one, youhave to be 10% right on a home
run.

Matt Bigge (41:27):
The power power law theory does work.
You know that's a yeah, I think.
If you look at the history ofour funds, you know it's.
You know we have plenty ofsingles and doubles and that's
great and that's great for theentrepreneurs, great for the
entrepreneurial ecosystem andit's wonderful for us and our
investors.
But ultimately, when you have areal home run of a fund, it's

(41:48):
because you have a few of thoseoutliers.

Okay, so, matt, this was awesome.
Now we're going to have somemore fun and we're going to go
to the spark tank.
So here we go.
Welcome to the spark tank,where we ignite the unexpected
connections that fuelgo-to-market innovation and

(42:14):
occasionally set fire toconventional business thinking.
Today, we're thrilled to haveMatt Biggie, a true deep tech
investor capitalist.
We're thrilled to have MattBiggie, a true deep tech
investor capitalist, a man whosecareer reads something like Mad
Libs, with a LinkedIn profileand accidentally created a
superhero origin story.
This is the ultimate wordassociation challenge, where
we're going to dig throughdecades of your brain's filing

(42:34):
cabinet and see what fascinatingconnections fall out.
Every response could eitherdrop some leadership gold,
reveal the secret sauce of teambuilding, or accidentally pitch
the next unicorn startup inscience fiction investing.
Here's how it works.
I'll start with a word and,matt, you'll respond with the
first word that pops into yourhead.
No military precision required,just pure stream of

(42:57):
consciousness brilliance.
Then I'll respond and we'llkeep this chain of associations
flowing, you know, maybe two orthree times back and forth, and
then I might ask you a questionabout it.
Okay, ready to see where yourbattle-tested synapses take us?

Matt Bigge (43:11):
Let's go.

All right, here we go.
Matt Mission.

Matt Bigge (43:18):
What needs to happen .

Purpose.

Matt Bigge (43:22):
Leaving the world better than you found it.
Do you have a couple offavorite companies that embrace
that notion of mission andleaving the world a better place
?
Learn Lux.
Learn Lux Financial wellnesstraining as a benefit.

(43:48):
This is something that'schanging the lives of millions
of employees around the world,of large companies that use the
LearnLux platform so that theiremployees are better able to
manage their day-to-day personallives, which makes them better
at their job.
So lots of Fortune 500customers, very exciting company
that is absolutely leaving theworld better than they found it.

Awesome.
All right, we'll do the nextone Destroyer.

Matt Bigge (44:13):
Creative destruction .
Battleship Slow musk, Iwouldn't say slow for musk, I'd
say that maybe I'd say lockheedfor slow.
The big primes, yes and no, andthey're so slow it's so many
things.

Give me one word.

Matt Bigge (44:32):
Give me one word all right twist around my thinking
what, what's the word, what'sthe association you're starting
with again?
Destroyer let I'd say innovator.

Innovator.
So this is like this philosophyfor leadership right it's
destroyer could be a battleship.
It could be something where welook at things from first
principles.

Matt Bigge (45:03):
Well and that's where I go is creative
destruction, where you have tolook at the world from first
principle standpoint andunderstand all right, if we
chuck out all the legacy baggage, what do we really need here?
How would we do it if we'rebuilding a greenfield system?

So what happens?
When you're going through thatprocess of thinking things from
first principles, or destroyingthings?
There's this point of well, whyare things the way they are
today, Right?
And so there's that point whereyou're making the flip from
moving from one to the next andyou're wondering why everyone
else hasn't thought of it.

Matt Bigge (45:34):
Right?
Well, and that's where you haveto understand the history of
innovation in a given sector andother sectors, so that you can
think through all right, how hassomething been disrupted in the
past and what were theconditions that turned the tide
from the old way to the new way?
You know what are the set ofunit economics, or what are the

(45:59):
series of human behaviors.
I mean, like unit economics didnot drive the rise of
smartphones.
That was driven by humanbehavior and putting novel
capabilities into people's handsin a manner that nobody could
have foreseen the potential outof it.
It just felt like you know, wegive them all these cool toys,

(46:19):
you're going to make them useful.
So there are different types ofcreative destruction as opposed
to.
You know, let's go from bunniesto cars.

That was a long evolution, I would say, in that
period of putting the massiveinvestment in and going from one
to the other.
I don't know about you, butthere's that period where you're
like I don't, you know.
You wake up every morning witha cold sweat and say did I make
the right choice?

Matt Bigge (46:46):
I put a lot of people into this.
I think a lot.

Maybe I can't be the only one that wakes up with
a cold sweat.

Matt Bigge (46:55):
Yeah, now there's.
There's a lot of capitalrunning around, so very seldom
entrepreneurs really take theirown, put their own net worth at
risk, um, but when you do, yeah,there's a lot of.
I mean, you know you're a smallbusiness owner not so small

(47:16):
anymore and you know if billingsare off, uh, you know.
You know who's writing thecheck for chief?
Uh, payroll's getting covered.
Yeah, so you know's writing thecheck?
Rachief?
Uh, it was getting covered.
Yeah.
So you know I've been there too, and you know your wife gives
you a pretty.
Uh, really, are we writing thatcheck?

why did you, why did you not sell the company?
Okay, next one.
Yeah, all right, this one's aninteresting one because we
talked about we talked about alittle earlier china
fundamentally different.
Uh, they, they come with theopposite, yeah, opposite.

Matt Bigge (47:44):
So so you're it's just a whole of society approach
that we yeah, it's just, it's acultural thing.
I mean it's yeah, they, theytake a whole of society approach
we have.
You know, generally we separatebusiness and government.
I mean that's starting tochange, but yeah to change.
But I had a company I was a CEOof once where we got hacked by

(48:07):
Huawei and they were trying tosteal a proposal on a contract
we were competing against themon.
I called the FBI and they saidwe have no jurisdiction and you
should probably invest in bettercybersecurity tooling.
I was like, well, great, thatmakes me feel awesome about my
tax bill.
And it was even in the spring.

(48:28):
It was I was on my way to myson's baseball game when he was
in high school and I get a callfrom my IT guy saying hey, I
just unplugged everything andI'm like I am literally I'm
going to write a check to theIRS in about two or three weeks.

And what it is is that you're paying the
government to do certain things.
You have this expectation ofsome protection, and then you
have another one that is agovernment sponsor of that
that's actually doing this onbehalf of their businesses.

Matt Bigge (48:58):
Where are you?

going with this.

Matt Bigge (49:00):
Yeah, I mean, you know know, back then the chinese
government owned 30 of huawei.
So that's yeah.
That to me is state sponsoredand suboptimal.
We wouldn't do that, or atleast we claim we don't do it,
so yeah and I think it's athere's.

There's the benefit of, there's the the
tough side and there's thebenefit in terms of they do
things at such scale that someof the technologies we're
utilizing today have come downto such a low cost that it can
be widespread, like solar orbatteries.
So there's a plus minus and Iguess we're trying to figure out

(49:37):
a happy medium.

Matt Bigge (49:40):
Yeah, I think that's well phrased.

Okay, let's have some more.

Matt Bigge (49:43):
We'll end this with a little fun old-fashioned
cocktail favorite I mean, I, thedegenerate in me, says gambling
.
But yeah, old-fashioned is myfavorite cocktail, so you just
put them both together there yougo.

yeah, so you're gaming oldfashioned.
I love going to the Gotham Cluband getting the old-fashioned
with the 24, the baseball withthe 24 on it.
I brought my daughter to thatthe other day and I was like,
check this out, it was so muchfun.

Matt Bigge (50:14):
That's pretty cool.
Got to get a 43 on that.

Oh yeah, we got to get 43.
We got to there, we go there,we go.
A little bit of Hunter on that,so there we go.
Awesome, matt, did you alwaysknow you wanted to work in
technology?
Was there like a specificmoment or project that sparked
your passion in defensetechnology?
What got you sparked, yeah?

Matt Bigge (50:40):
Yeah, I mean I was always kind of really, really
interested in internationalrelations and I did kind of get
into computers at a very, veryyoung age.
May or may not have done someyouthful hacking.
That statute of limitations hasprobably expired on I think

(51:01):
you're okay now.

Maybe, maybe, I don't know.

Matt Bigge (51:03):
I don't know.
In today's world it's hard tosay.
But no, I've always beenpassionate about the way nations
interact and I've always beenpassionate about technology.
In terms of a career, I kind ofgrew up just focused on what's
the next step and when I got outof college I knew I was going

(51:27):
right in the Army because I hadan ROTC scholarship at
Georgetown.
When I got out of the army Ikind of stumbled into technology
.
I always say I haven't had acareer as much as I've had a
series of things that I've done,that when you string them all
together, it's been good andit's, you know, it's worked out
very well for my family and I.

But to me Was there anything about like a mom
or dad or uncle or family orsomeone that you knew that was
into it, that he drew from?

Matt Bigge (51:58):
You know there is I mean, there is a variety of
people over the years in my lifewhether it was football coaches
when I was young had the goodfortune to play Pop Warner as a
10-year-old with a formerDivision I coach who had won a
national title and he retiredand was coaching his grandson.

(52:19):
His grandson didn't make theteam, so he learned a lot about
how to fight through adversity.
But for sports and the military, you learn how to set and
achieve goals in a team-basedsetting at an elite level.
That's a critical takeaway Interms of decision-making and

(52:40):
thinking about what I'm going todo next.
It's got to be fun, interesting, rewarding and entrepreneurial,
because FIRE F-I-R-E fun,interesting, rewarding and
entrepreneurial is somethingthat, when I sat back in the
late 90s and tried to thinkthrough what is my framework for

(53:00):
decision-making personally andprofessionally, that's what I
came back with and thatframework is undefeated in my
life.
Whether it was the decision tostart my last company, the
decision to sell it or thedecision to join Crosslink, it's
got to be fun.
You've got to love what you'redoing and who you're doing it

(53:21):
with.
It's got to be interesting tothe point where it keeps you up
at night.
It's got to be rewarding, bothintrinsically and extrinsically.
Extrinsically, you've got topay the bills.
Intrinsically, you've got tolook in the mirror every morning
, know for a fact that you'releaving the world a better place
.
Otherwise you're just afreaking oxygen thief and you
don't have any right to be here.
Entrepreneurial, because you'relearning and growing something

(53:42):
new every day, month, whatever.
So that's kind of how I thinkabout the world.

It's a great fire, it's a great framework.
So, matt, beyond specifictechnical skills, what are the
most crucial leadershipattributes developed through
challenging military orteam-based experiences?
What are these experiences thatyou consistently find that are
either vital or surprisinglyunderdeveloped in executive
candidates you evaluate?

Matt Bigge (54:08):
I mean generally leadership.
I think it even says it on ourwebsite.
That is the trait I believe ismost important in a founder you
need to lead by example.
You need to take a we first,not a me first approach.
The overuse of personalpronouns can be very, very

(54:32):
frustrating.
We accomplish things, I don't.
You know.
It's really about finding a wayto make the organization come
together so that some of theparts, you know it, comes
together and is accretive.

(54:52):
So the one plus one is three tofive to 10.
And there are people out there,you know it tends to correlate
with people who have a historyof, you know, setting and
achieving goals in a team-basedsetting at an elite level.
That's a skill set that isrefined in the military.

(55:13):
It's also refined in sports.
And you know there are a bunchof other ways where you can find
that, find experiences thatreinforce the concept, but
sports in the military are twothat are pretty consistent.
It's kind of you know there arecertain schools you can hire

(55:34):
from where you're like I don'tknow if this person is a good at
their job, but they can't be adummy because they got into that
place, you know.
So that's kind of how I thinkabout it, that's a great way of
thinking about it.

Can you make that one plus one into three, or one
plus one, or two plus two into10, right, can you do that, and
the best leaders know how to dothat.

Matt Bigge (56:00):
And that's a transferable skillset.
You know, when I'm counselingveterans transitioning to the
private sector, they're like allright, you know, as an army
ranger I can jump out airplanesand shoot really well.
What does that mean in theprivate sector?
Well, it's like well, you alsocommanded 150 people and you got
them to set and achieve goalsin a team-based setting at an
elite level Turns out, in thecorporate world.
If you can do that, you'regoing to be incredibly

(56:23):
successful and probably makeyourself and your shareholders a
lot of money.

Yeah, there's discipline and understanding of
leadership and understanding ofteam that you get trained at
scale.
All right, I got some personalthank you for opening up some of
these personal questions, so Igot some more.
All right, this is, I'm sure, afavorite of yours.
Your son, hunter, was draftedby the Cubs in 2019.

(56:49):
Now he plays for the Tampa BayRays.
I know that you havenotifications on whenever he's
pitching Bay Rays.
I know that you havenotifications on whenever he's
pitching.
So Hunter was also a physicsmajor at Harvard.
How did you identify andsupport Hunter's unique passions
and talents, both in scienceand competitive athletics, so
that he could develop specificsuperpowers rather than

(57:10):
conforming to a single path?

Matt Bigge (57:14):
We really tried to, you know, let him do what he was
interested in.
You know we never you know, Iwas an athlete, but certainly
not at his level but we alwaysjust tried to say, all right, if
you're interested in something,you know we're going to do what
we can to support it withinreason.

(57:35):
And, you know, a little bit ofcoaching along the way.
You know, he was really reallyinto math, math and science
broadly and you know, overconversations, you know we, you
know him and I kind of vectoredin on physics.
Really, he vectored in onphysics because he loved the way

(57:57):
the math, the math, wouldinterface with the physical
world.
And you know, at first he wasthinking engineering, but then
we took a step back and you know, and his theory was all
engineering is just appliedphysics is just applied physics.
So if I really want tounderstand how things work in a

(58:19):
manner that's going to be useful, through technology cycles,
physics is probably more usefuland he's always had a very
advanced approach to thinkingabout the world around him,
approach to thinking about theworld around him and I think
that's benefited him both interms of physics, where he was

(58:40):
doing, you know, crispr researchway before any of us had heard
about it.
Or in baseball, where you knowhe's one of 240 relief pitchers
in the major leagues and, like,if you're one of 240 in the
world at what you do, you'reprobably doing pretty well.

Right, and so there's a tremendous amount of
focus and sacrifice anddiscipline to get yourselves in
raw, raw, innate ability tothat's honed.
So that's it's pretty amazing.
I'd say definitely when I, asyou know, I have four kids and I
have a very we had a similarapproach find what they like to
do, expose them to many thingsand then, whatever they really

(59:21):
like to do, help them go deep tothe extent that we could, yeah,
and then let them flourish tothe level that they want to go
with.
But if you get good at onething, if you can help them get
good at one thing, you can takethat anywhere.

Matt Bigge (59:36):
Yeah, I mean it gets to the transferability of
skillset and understanding atthe meta level, which.
What are the elements of theskillset that are transferable?
And that, to me, is whyleadership is so critical and
demonstrated leadership prior tostarting a business, you know,
because at the end of the day,any business is just a team that

(59:57):
needs to execute at a highlevel, and if you have a history
of getting teams to do that, itsays a lot about you.
You can do anything, yeah.

Rajiv Parikh (01:00:04):
All right.
What's a piece of conventionalwisdom that everyone around you
accepts but you secretly thinkmight be wrong?

Matt Bigge (01:00:16):
There are so many.
A favorite interview questionDo you jaywalk?
Why would I waste time at anintersection that's empty just
because the light says so?

I'm a jaywalker.
Luckily they don't have robotdrones watching me, Okay.

Yet.

It's coming.
Was there a historical event orperson or movement that it
really inspired you?
Is there a person in particularthat just lights you up?

I mean I wouldn't say there's any one individual.
Um, you know, I, I take apretty broad-based approach to
that one.
I mean you know whether it's.
You know I, I, I take a prettybroad based approach to that one
.
I mean, you know whether it'syou know the guidance of Kevin
Compton, who's just an amazinghuman, incredibly successful
venture capitalist.
You know, kevin's been very,very kind to me over the years

(01:01:09):
and you know, honestly, I feellike every time I talk to him I
just get smarter, uh, and thenit wears off and I have to go
see him again.
So there's folks like that.
Or Colonel Joe Bonnet, who is aprofessor of mine in ROTC at
Georgetown, who was somebody whoreally taught me a lot about
leading by example.

(01:01:29):
There have just been a numberof them over the years.
Paul Meggers, who was my lastboss in the Army.
You know Paul taught me a lotabout, you know, perseverance
and executing through difficulttimes and being a leader when

(01:01:49):
things are.
It's not easy to lead byexample when you haven't slept
in days, you're out of food, allkinds of crazy things that
happen in the woods.
But those are just a few.
Heck my wife, my son justwatching the way.
He had a really bad injurysenior year of high school and

(01:02:10):
to watch him persevere throughthat.

That's really hard to come back by, right, because
it put him off his path towardsthe major leagues, right.

Absolutely, and you know the way he fought through
it fought through it, figuredout a way to do it, and you know
his intestinal fortitudethrough his journey is something
that my son has taught me.

Do you have a favorite life motto that you
come back to all the time withfriends, work or life?

I mean, the fire thing is really kind of my big
deal.

Yeah, I think you nailed it with that.

Fun, interesting, rewarding and entrepreneurial.
And if you live by that, atleast, for me, and I think we
all have to have our ownpersonal version of it.
But for me, and I think we allhave to have our own personal
version of it, but you know, forme that's been immensely
instructive and, you know, itjust kind of keeps me on the
right path.

What's a seemingly small act of kindness or
generosity you've received thathad a disproportionately large
impact on you.

I think you know I'll go back to Joe Bonnet.
Lieutenant Colonel, you,colonel, lead professor of
military science, georgetownUniversity 1990.
And Joe pulled me aside and atthe time I was working a
full-time job, carrying afull-time load of classes and

(01:03:34):
still trying to play footballand doing ROTC.
It was ugly.
And that was really where theyou know we, not me concept
really got hammered into mybrain.
Because you know, colonelBonnet really helped me
understand that by spreadingmyself too thin I was being a

(01:03:57):
bad team player and that was aturning point in my life.
It really helped me understandthat by focusing on something I
could get good at it.
If I got good at it I wouldenjoy it.
If I enjoy it I'm going to getbetter at it, and that sort of

(01:04:17):
virtuous cycle I think isimportant.
And it kind of gets back toeverything in life is hard until
you've learned how to do it.
Then it's just work and if it'swork you enjoy, you can get
really good at it.
Yeah.

So if you had to teach a masterclass on something
that's not your job, somethingthat you're passionate about we
covered quite a few of thosewhat would the course be called?

I mean, I'd probably wrap it around fire.
Well, Just understanding how tosee the world through other
people's eyes so that you can.
Because you can't engage peoplein mutually beneficial
transactions unless you canempathize with them to the point
where you can see the worldthrough their eyes and
understand why they make thedecisions they make.
So when I was running the lastcompany we're hanging out in

(01:05:11):
places like Afghanistan and Iraqand all these combat zones.
They have a very differentcultural framework, so it's
really really hard to engage inbusiness with them unless you
can see the world through theireyes.
All right, so I got the nameFire and Eyes, there we go.

All right, what's your personal moonshot?

My son.

I love it.
He's the best startup I've everbacked.
There's nothing better thanbacking your kids and seeing
them grow and become somethingyou never imagined or go beyond
your imagination.

All right, this is great.
I really appreciate you takingthe time today.
This is awesome.

Matt, thank you so much for joining us.
It was a thrill, as always, tosit and chat with you Hope we
can have you again sometime andI think you brought a lot out.
You brought a lot of greatinsights out for us.
You helped us understanddefense and technology and
venture investing, leadershipand what are things we want to

(01:06:16):
think about as we raise our kids.
So thank you so much.

Well, thank you and glad to come back anytime.
Always great catching up.

Hey, so that was really interesting Love having
Matt on the show.
He and I have had so many greatconversations together and
bringing it to you is just oneof the special thrills I get to
do.
As you know, I love learningabout technology, innovation,
disruption, and so looking at itcome together in the context of
the different wars and battlesthat we're fighting.

(01:06:51):
It's the David versus Goliathnature of what people are able
to do under extremecircumstances is what's really
interesting about what'shappening with Ukraine beyond
them being so threatened andtheir lives being so deeply
impacted and affected, and howpeople act under that fire, and

(01:07:14):
what we learned in theconversation with Matt is seeing
some of those things ahead oftime and preparing for it and
building an innovation ecosystemaround it so that when the time
comes, you're ready thatunderstanding, seeing things
before they happen, thinkingabout the people in your life
who affect you and then bringingit all together as part of your

(01:07:36):
life journey.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
The show is produced by AnandShah, edited by Sean Maher,
aidan McGarvey and Laura Ballant, I'm your host.
Rajiv Parikh from PositionSquared, an AI-focused growth

(01:07:58):
marketing company based inSilicon Valley, come visit us at
position2.com.
This has been an Effort Fundingproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.

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How US Defense Could Fight at Machine Speed/Matt Bigge - DefenseTech, X-Bow, F.I.R.E. ~ Spark of Ages Ep 40

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}How US Defense Could Fight at Machine Speed/Matt Bigge - DefenseTech, X-Bow, F.I.R.E. ~ Spark of Ages Ep 40