Ben Faw

Shield Capital fund manager sit down with John Serafini, Founder & CEO of HawkEye 360 to discuss the journey of scaling a defense and space company, from early vision to profitability. They cover what truly matters in defense tech: - trust over hype, - capital discipline, - operating in complex national security environments, - and where real opportunities still exist. Shield Capital invests in the entrepreneurs building technologies in the four critical national security domains of: AI, Autonomy, Cybersecurity, and Space. A must-listen for founders, operators, and investors building at the intersection of commercial innovation and national security. #dual #deftech #spacetech #space #AI #cybersecurity

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The US defense industrial base has a structural problem that creates opportunity. The issue: • A few number of primes dominate procurement • Cost-plus contracts incentivize rising costs • Thousands of lobbyists maintain the system Promising defense-tech startups die before scaling, crushed by procurement friction they can't navigate. This "valley of death" is where specialist capital can outperform - funds that understand DoD go-to-market and have patience to back companies through the scaling gap.

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Boards are supposed to help founders. Over the past 19 years, I've watched many trap them instead. As companies scale, many boards turn from insight to oversight and stop doing what founders actually need: Help making big, hard decisions. Early boards tend to be small, the board members are close to the business and highly invested in it. They argue from first principles. They help founders think. Later-stage boards often look more impressive on paper - they have more independent directors, committees and process. Somewhere along the way, collective problem solving gets replaced with oversight. The board shifts from helping the CEO make better decisions to monitoring decisions that have already been made. Strategy discussions get safer, real debate gets rarer and meetings become more about risk management than judgment. This usually coincides with the introduction of more professional board members. For better or worse, they often optimize for governance, optics, and liability management. That’s their job. But it’s not always what the company needs in moments of real uncertainty. Then, CEOs stop using them as thought partners. That’s a problem. So what should founders do? A few principles that help: • Keep the board as small as you can for as long as you can • Add directors for new insight they bring, not what boxes they check • Treat board seats like senior hires, not trophies • Design meetings for debate rather than reporting • Be explicit about when you want input vs approval Good boards should improve decision-making. If your board isn’t making you think harder, it’s probably not doing its job.

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🏛️ At Greenfield Partners, we see Government AI as one of the most important and underappreciated verticals emerging today. Over the past 24 months, there has been a quiet - yet significant - shift in how state and local governments are adopting AI. What's driving this change? 👉 Aging workforces and hiring freezes creating operational strain 👉 COVID-era IT failures exposing the need for modernization 👉 A surge in cyber threats and AI compliance requirements 👉 Real dollars flowing through DOJ, DHS, and federal modernization grants The result: AI is becoming foundational to how government services get delivered. In 2024, SLED IT budgets reached $144B, with $13B earmarked for software. But the real story isn’t just about budget size; it's where dollars are translating into deployment. Public safety is leading the way, adopting in everything from real-time video analytics to AI-powered dispatch and threat detection. Companies like Axon are proving what’s possible when hardware and software are tightly integrated into mission-critical workflows. And this shift is translating into enterprise value. Premium multiples, strong retention, and a growing number of viable exit paths make this a compelling vertical. This isn’t a hype cycle. It’s steady, necessary modernization and it’s creating real opportunity for founders, investors, and operators who know where to look. If you’re building or investing in this space, we'd love to connect. 👉 Read the full breakdown here: https://lnkd.in/gEG3zgtX

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At Eniac Ventures we’re investing in companies built for a world of abundant intelligence. At the agentic layer, that means leaning into regulated industries like healthcare, government/defense, and financial services, where data friction is the moat, not the obstacle. The companies that will win here aren’t just building smart products. They’re willing to take on liability, to stand behind the output, own the outcome, and put skin in the game alongside their customers. At the tooling layer, it means things like security, privacy, and compliance. The model companies can’t be the ones solving this. You don’t grade your own homework. These need to be independent layers, and the need only grows as agents move deeper into mission critical environments. In the age of abundant intelligence, the hardest areas to build in will likely be where the most durable companies emerge.

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