Founder Forward
Sep 16, 2024
The U.S. government has funded some truly revolutionary technology: semiconductors, satellite communications (GPS), the internet. Yet the military and other agencies lag behind when it comes to today’s tech, from AI to the cloud. Instead of embracing the newest, best, and most innovative software, all too often the government spends billions to maintain outdated systems.
The main culprit: a complicated procurement and compliance system in which approvals can take years. The federal government recently allocated $1 billion for the technology of the future — from machine learning to advanced data analytics. But the procurement and compliance issues remain.
Enter Second Front. Its Game Warden® DevSecOps platform offers a simple, secure way to fast-track innovative and disruptive software for the U.S. military and other government agencies. It’s the first of its kind as a way to connect the private and government sectors through Saas technology, strengthening America’s standing in the world with bits, not bullets.
Aaron Jacobson is one of the partners working closely with Second Front. He recently spoke to the company’s CEO, Tyler Sweatt, a former Army officer, about the challenge and importance of accelerating the transition of technology to the national security community.
Tyler: I think there’s this huge misconception that the military is an orderly place where everything works and everybody shows up on time. I did two tours in Afghanistan. My greatest piece of kit was an Afghan cell phone. Everything else didn’t work, I just had to carry it.
The biggest parallel between the military and working at a startup is just being able to make decisions with imperfect information and recognizing that there’s always going to be degrees of asymmetry.
Tyler: Software is eating the world. Software in the Department of Defense in the U.S. government, we’re still at like 7.5% or 8% cloud penetration. In the walled garden of national security, the cloud is the new thing. One of the main reasons for that is there’s no structured sort of scalable, repeatable, predictable way for commercial software to conform to a design pattern or a compliance. There’s an 800-page policy here and policy there and they’re all conflicting with one another.
There’s also a number of policies and laws and regulations that were created in the ’50s, in the ’60s, and refined in the ’80s and the ’90s, that were mainly oriented around how to buy metal for aircraft carriers, destroyers, airplanes, and artillery pieces. Those come with a pretty rigid set of requirements. We’ve got an entire acquisition system that’s built around that. It’s all micromanaged, and the budgeting process is done years in advance.
When you do buy technology it takes 18 to 24 months, sometimes longer, to get it to conform to the requirements so that it can be deployed. So between compliance and procurement, we’re talking about five years down the road.
Tyler: Yes, that’s why our process was to create a single pipeline so a government agency just has to build an application in a way that conforms to the platform. And then, in a matter of weeks, it gets approved.
Tyler: 100 percent.
Tyler: One is you’ve now got the post-9/11 veterans who worked with no cutting-edge technology. You’ve got folks like that who are now sitting members of Congress, who are running agencies, who are program managers owning budget. We all have this shared experience coming up, which is tremendous.
Two, you saw what happened in Georgia in 2020 when a Russian cyberattack effectively bricked a country.
Tyler: You’ve also got the rise of the Defense Innovation Unit (created to help the military make faster use of emerging tech), which got an $800 million-plus up in the most recent National Defense Authorization Act. It was a huge shot across the bow of like, “Hey, it’s time for us to bring in emerging tech in a repeatable and scalable way.”
Tyler: Our mission is to accelerate the transition of technology to the national security community. The goal is deterrence and quality of life. Preservation of stability, security. I’ve got a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old. I need to leave the world in better shape than when I got it. That’s what gets me out of bed every morning.
Tyler: We’ve talked a lot about how protective I am of the culture, of the team, of the mission. That extends to who is sitting in a board seat and whose capital we are taking. I don't know if I’ve ever been part of a process as pleasant.
The team saw the vision, understood a bunch of the intangibles about what we were trying to get after, and you understood why it mattered. You guys were the logical partner. I wouldn’t change a thing.
Disclaimer
The information provided in this blog post is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to be investment advice, or recommendation, or as an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy an interest in any fund or investment vehicle managed by NEA or any other NEA entity. New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is a registered investment adviser with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). However, nothing in this post should be interpreted to suggest that the SEC has endorsed or approved the contents of this post. NEA has no obligation to update, modify, or amend the contents of this post nor to notify readers in the event that any information, opinion, forecast or estimate changes or subsequently becomes inaccurate or outdated. In addition, certain information contained herein has been obtained from third-party sources and has not been independently verified by NEA. Any statements made by founders, investors, portfolio companies, or others in the post or on other third-party websites referencing this post are their own and are not intended to be an endorsement of the investment advisory services offered by NEA.
NEA makes no assurance that investment results obtained historically can be obtained in the future, or that any investments managed by NEA will be profitable. To the extent the content in this post discusses hypotheticals, projections, or forecasts to illustrate a view, such views may not have been verified or adopted by NEA, nor has NEA tested the validity of the assumptions that underlie such opinions. Readers of the information contained herein should consult their own legal, tax, and financial advisers because the contents are not intended by NEA to be used as part of the investment decision making process related to any investment managed by NEA.
