Jesse Sullivan

The United States Air Force is making a major move to bridge the gap between bureaucracy and the battlefield. By consolidating program executive offices (PEOs) into mission-focused "Portfolio Acquisition Executives,"(PAEs) the service is effectively moving away from managing individual platforms in isolation and toward a more integrated, functional approach. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink called this a generational opportunity for the department, noting that it allows them to holistically reform the enterprise from requirements and acquisition through to testing. This shift is designed to ensure operators get what they need before it becomes obsolete, rather than waiting on decade-long development cycles that often leave technology outdated by the time it reaches the field. For U.S. dual-use startups, this is a massive signal that the barrier to entry is changing. Historically, small companies with innovative tech often got lost in the shuffle because they didn’t fit into a specific, rigid program of record. Under this new mission-level oversight, the focus shifts toward solving broader operational problems. This makes it much easier for startups to pitch solutions that provide a capability across an entire mission set, like weapons or electronic warfare, rather than trying to find a tiny niche in a single aircraft's budget. William Bailey, who is performing the duties of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, summed it up well by saying that by redesignating these offices, they are pushing authority and accountability to the mission level and telling leaders that they own that specific mission set. When leadership owns the mission rather than just a budget line, they have more flexibility to pull in commercial technology and iterate quickly. This is exactly the kind of environment where dual-use startups thrive, as it prioritizes speed and warfighter impact over traditional, slow-moving procurement habits. #DefenseInnovation #AirForce #GovTech #DualUse #DefenseTech #MilitaryModernization #StartupGrowth #NationalSecurity

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You can turn $100,000 into a $50 million business through acquisitions. This is closer to capital allocation than traditional entrepreneurship. Here's the deal structure. First, the capital stack. You buy a business the same way you buy a house. Equity in, bank covers the rest. With SBA loans: 90% loan, 10% equity. A million dollar business might require $100K to $200K down. Target companies with $1 to $3 million in earnings. Go to sellers that are NOT at market. Brokered deals are competitive and sellers want cash at close. This only works off-market. Here's what you propose: Seller keeps 20% equity in a new entity. Asset sale, their company moves into newco, they keep running it at fair market salary. You write them a check for 60% via bank loan. Remaining 20% is a seller's note: 10% straight note, 10% performance earnout. From the bank's perspective, you created 40% equity. The truth? It's really only 20%, and it's the seller's. Your money in? Approaching zero. But you own 80% of Enterprise Value. Why would a seller agree? Tell them: my goal is to make your 20% as valuable as the 80% we're giving you today. What are the odds you double the value on your own in 3 to 5 years? Now stack earnings. $2 million average per company. Buy 10 just like this. $20 million combined earnings under one entity. Centralize marketing, accounting, HR, governance at HQ. You bought each at 4 to 4.5x. A $20 million earnings business sells for 7 to 7.5x or more. That's multiple expansion, just by combining them. Close the first one. Negotiate the next $100K for the next business. Then newco sells to PE for 7, 8, 9x your $20 million in earnings. That's the path from $100K to $50 million. If you're considering buying a business in the next 12 to 24 months, we built Acquisition Lab for exactly this. walkerdeibel.com

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My inbox is full of messages from folks looking to transition into defense tech. Here are 10, well-funded, fast-growing companies that are actively hiring: 1) Castelion → Julee Y. → Hypersonic long-range strike weapons 2) DroneShield → Vini Botelho → Counter-drone detection and mitigation 3) Epirus → Connie Chan → High-powered systems to counter drone swarms 4) Firehawk → Kinsey Alexander →  3D-printed fuels for missiles & platforms 5) Reliable Robotics Corporation → Tyree Clowe → Autonomous flight systems 6) Saronic Technologies → Kathy Allen → Autonomous vessels for naval missions 7) Shield AI → Eric Webber → AI pilots for aircraft in contested environments 8) Skydio → Paul Gresia → America’s leading autonomous quadcopter maker 9) Umbra → Natalie White → Satellites for intelligence and reconnaissance 10) Anduril Industries → Shannon Grunwell → Autonomous defense systems 🤝 See the comments section for direct links to the career pages. 🫡 Texas Venture Partners is on a mission to make our world safer and the defense tech industry better. 👋 Say hi. We'd love to meet you.

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Forget the 5-year plan. 2026 is about execution in Africa, not vision boards. Nohémie & Co. podcast is back!!! Here's the uncomfortable truth for diaspora investors and operators: the political gravy train is over. The value isn't in extraction anymore—it's in refineries, transformation, logistics, processing, and getting-it-to-market. The "Swiss cheese economy" is full of holes, but those holes are where the real (business) opportunities live. Watch full episode: https://lnkd.in/eAARidSq As I'm running Lubembo Co. and navigating the brutal realities of African supply chains, I've learned this: the entrepreneurs who win aren't the ones with the prettiest pitch decks. They're the ones who can execute four simple, unglamorous actions—one per quarter. In my latest podcast episode, I break down the 2026 playbook based on what I'm seeing on the ground: Q1: Micro-test ONE supply chain. Not a business plan—a real transaction with real losses. That's your education. Q2: Formalize ONE partnership with a 50/50 agreement. This filters talkers from doers. Q3: Document your process. Your knowledge becomes a sellable asset (hello, market intelligence product). Q4: Make ONE cross-border connection. Single-market dependency is how you get wiped out. This isn't theory. It's what I'm building with Lubembo, container by container, relationship by relationship. For my fellow diaspora builders: you don't need a grand vision. You need four receipts—a customs slip, a signed agreement, a documented process, and a plane ticket. 🎧 Listen to the full episode: https://lnkd.in/eARjhEpA | https://lnkd.in/e95G4yXm 📥 Looking for business strategy in Africa? Subscribe to my Diaspora Playbook newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gnpxTS8h 🎁 Download: Congo Business Starter Kit: https://lnkd.in/g7eYfPna Building Lubembo has taught me that sustainable wealth in Africa isn't built on connections—it's built on systems. This podcast is me sharing those systems with the diaspora ready to execute. #NohemieandCo #NandCo #Podcast #Founder #BuildingAfrica #Business

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4 mistakes dual-use tech founders make breaking into government markets. The warfighter said, “We need this yesterday.” Yet 6 months later, your contracts still in limbo. It’s not your tech. It’s how you’re entering the federal system. Giles W., retired Marine and founder of OODAx, sees these patterns break founders over and over. Here are 5 common mistakes he sees early-stage teams make 1) Assuming "The Government" is a single buyer In truth, you’re navigating three distinct power centers, each with its own agenda: → The warfighter wants functional capability that works today → The program manager protects an existing system and budget → The senior leader who's buried in demands and time-starved You must solve for all three. 2) You demo without a procurement path Excited warfighters ≠ revenue. You need a funding stream behind your pilot. → A sponsor to carry it forward → Someone involved with buying authority → Match the capability to an active contract vehicle Start with the path, not the deck. 3) You treat BD like sales, not translation. Federal success means procurement-ready speak. That means aligning your language, timing, and use case to fit a pre-existing structure of need. Think: capability gaps, acquisition timelines, and mission planning windows. 4) You overestimate AI and underestimate humans Giles uses ChatGPT and Perplexity to write proposals faster. But without a clear strategy, AI just accelerates the wrong message. Human-in-the-loop is the filter that protects you from sounding clueless. Giles built OODAx to help pre-Series A teams avoid these mistakes early, before they burn through time, trust, and traction. If you’re building for the federal space, catch our full conversation on The Amplified CEO. https://lnkd.in/ea2sS8w5 It could save your company.

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10 Most Exciting Defense Startups From the Black Flag 100 (PART 2) 🔥 🏴‍☠️ This is part 2 of my review of the Black Flag 100's most promising defense startups. They featured 31 companies, each one worthy of becoming a unicorn. 😍 Here are 5 more that really caught my eye: 6/ Castelion - Mass-produced hypersonic weapons. SpaceX veterans Bryon Hargis, Andrew Kreitz, CFA, and Sean Pitt are using rapid iteration and commercial manufacturing techniques. $100M backed by Space VC, Cantos, Lightspeed, A16Z, and Champion Hill Ventures. 7/ Scout AI - Embodied AI systems for defense that operate without GPS or cloud connectivity. Colby Adcock and Collin Otis developed FURY, a Vision-Language-Action model powering autonomous drones and ground vehicles through natural language commands. Backed by Gaingels, Decisive Point, and Neman Ventures with DoD contracts. 8/ Firestorm - Combat drones at 1/5 the cost, 10x faster assembly. Dan Magy 🏴‍☠️ , Chad McCoy, and Ian Muceus built modular platforms adaptable to any mission. Backed by Harpoon Ventures, Mana Ventures, Beyond Capital, and Marque Ventures. 9/ Rune Technologies - AI predictive military logistics. David Tuttle and Peter Goldsborough's TyrOS turns siloed systems into data-driven networks. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Point72 Ventures, and XYZ Venture Capital. 10/ Vatn Systems - Affordable autonomous underwater vehicles that work without GPS. Nelson Mills, Geoff Manchester, Frederick Mills, and Dan H. combine cutting-edge autonomy with modular design. Backed by IQT, Beyond Capital, Champion Hill, and Marque Ventures. Thanks for all the incredible engagement on Part 1! You can find it here - https://lnkd.in/gpQVD-iR Which of these 10 companies do you think is most likely to become the next defense unicorn? 🌟 Please press like and share your thoughts in comments. Full list of Black Flag 100 companies is here - https://lnkd.in/gf8KKn23 🤝 Building in defense? Let's connect!

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The pace of battle has accelerated. The process for making decisions in it hasn't. The entire technological paradigm of war has changed. Drones built in a day for a few thousand dollars are destroying arsenals worth billions. Machines move faster than humans can think. And yet...coordinating a strike is still shockingly analog: manual calculations, hand-drawn maps, whiteboards. The gap between deployment speed and decision speed has never been wider. Smack Technologies Inc. was founded to close this gap. Smack is the first frontier AI lab dedicated entirely to national security, and they are building domain-specific AI models. Systems trained from the ground up for military decision-making. Models grounded in physics. Capable of optimizing across multiple time horizons. Trained in simulated environments built by warfighters. This focus has already led to contracts secured with multiple branches of the U.S. armed forces. Smack's co-founders, Andy Markoff and Clint Alanis, are MARSOC veterans with 20+ years of combined combat experience. Andy literally re-taught himself trigonometry and complex mathematics while deployed in Afghanistan because the tools weren't good enough. That's the mindset at the core of this company. Felicis is proud to have partnered with Smack in both their Seed and Series A rounds. The need is urgent. The approach is right. The team is built for this. → Full post: ordnl.link/m9enl7C

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Oo Nwoye echoes something that I have talked about in the past. No disrespect to MBAs and BSc Finance/Accounting guys, but there are way too many of them, especially at the analyst/associate level in African VC firms. There is more to a deal than having the ability to crunch numbers. Qualitative analysis of a deal is equally as important as quantitative analysis. Ex-founders and operators excel at qualitative analysis, and can learn quantitative analysis too. But MBAs & BSc Finance/Accounting guys will need to rack up a lot of deals to get to a level where they can do so well at qualitative analysis. The ideal scenario is to have both within the ranks. But if a firm has to hire one, then the ex-operator/founder should do the trick. But it truly baffles me how someone, fresh off a lecture room in New York can analyze a deal of a startup digitizing operations of SACCOs in Western Uganda or payments of SMEs in Lagos.

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This is the conversation we need. Defense tech isn’t just a market—it’s a mission. Set out to break the old system, not replicate it with better branding. The warfighter deserves better than misaligned incentives and recycled gatekeepers. Time to refocus: mission-first, not valuation-first.

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