🇺🇸 The Veteran Fund Update: Q2 2024
The Veteran Fund proudly initiated our final close of Fund I on Independence Day 2024, a symbol of our commitment to proliferate liberty and advance America through venture capital.
With tensions rising from recent global events, now more than ever, we need strong, liberty-minded leadership to foster unity. This is the time to come together with a shared purpose behind what it means to be an American and ensure the preservation of liberty, democracy, and justice for all.
We believe unparalleled American leadership begins by empowering those who have graduated from the greatest leadership academy in the world, the United States Military. Combined with deep domain expertise and mindfulness practices, veteran founders are uniquely positioned to build technology companies that will positively impact the world. Anchored by our elite partners in the military, business and mindfulness communities, our team is launching the next phase of deployment into exceptional veteran-led companies who share our strong sense of purpose and heartfelt conviction toward improving our country and the world for the benefit of all humanity.
In our Q2 update below, we have some exciting announcements and updates about our portfolio companies, new investments, and important events. We ask that you share our newsletter with the leaders in your network, who deeply believe in our mission to advance America through venture capital.
Let’s go!
🚀 New Investments
The Veteran Fund is excited to announce our investment into Tern AI. Led by co-founders Shaun Moore and Navy Veteran Brett Harrison, Tern is providing an alternative to GPS, which is a single point of failure for the entire US economy due to increased threats from foreign adversaries who have shown capabilities to jam, destroy, and spoof the signals of GPS.
Tern formally closed their $4.4M seed round in May, which was featured in TechCrunch. Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology at the US Department of Transportation, wrote an article in Forbes about how Tern is solving a key problem at the Department of Transportation (DOT). Tern was also selected for the award for the DOT’s Complimentary “PNT” (Positioning, Navigation and Timing) Challenge, signaling strong commercial customer interest.
Fulcrum Autonomy is a dual-use defense technology company leveraging decades of experience in design and manufacturing of unmanned systems and significant operational expertise to shape the future of autonomous systems.
Anchored by highly-accomplished founders and advisors from the military and premier government agencies, they are pioneering the unmanned systems space and emerging leaders in the development of advanced autonomy software and Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance as a Service (ISRaaS) solutions. Strategically headquartered at Davis Airfield, just 20 miles north of Washington DC, Fulcrum’s 50-acre aviation-centric campus enables it to privately host clients and partners, receive requirements, develop solutions, prototype, test, demonstrate, and iterate all onsite. Their strategic global partnerships will facilitate mass production near key areas of operational interest, ensuring rapid deployment and scalability.
Double A Labs is a web-based video meeting platform for enterprises that increases attendee engagement through unique, interactive brand experiences. Led by CEO Amber Allen, the company has secured top-tier customers such as Google, Microsoft, Dell, AT&T, Disney, Whole Foods, MacMillan, NBA Cleveland Cavaliers, IBM, and NASA.
Tiffany Matloob, the Global Head of Creator Community at YouTube says that using Double A Labs technology, “YouTube has had a 1,150% growth in their partners attending their virtual training and learning sessions.” Given the strong customer demand, dramatic increase in user engagement compared to competitors, and unique meeting experience, we believe Double A Labs will be able to rapidly scale through civilian and military education platforms.
📈 Portfolio Highlights
Congressman Gabe Amo gave a speech on the floor of Congress about the importance of underwater drones, which led to an amendment for $3M into the defense bill for VATN. VATN also participated in an Advanced Capabilities Experiment with the Marine Corps in June where they trained Marines to use their vehicles within 30 minutes. The training was highly successful and facilitated follow-on funding and collaboration discussions.
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Haiku's federal and military customer base is rapidly expanding due to its innovative ability to create Digital Twins of computer networks using the Unity game engine. This technology enables cost-effective training, modeling, and AI-driven testing of network responses at a fraction of the cost of cloud based solutions. Haiku's other achievements include winning a Phase I SBIR through AFWERX for AI integration, being one of five winners in the 2024 DARPA Tools competition for 5G engineering training, and receiving Fast Company's "Innovation by Design Award."
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Foresight successfully closed their $2.3M pre-seed round and rebranded the company to Cyphr.Ai. The company continues to onboard new banking customers, including a Mastercard pilot expected to go live in Q3 2024. Cyphr was recognized for their growth and scale by Kansas City with 2 awards: The 2024 Emerging Small Business of the Year Award and the 2024 Scale Up Award. CEO and Army Veteran, Jannae Gammage, also received Kansas City’s Entrepreneur of the Year award.
🇺🇸 Featured Limited Partner: Brigadier General (Ret) Trent Edwards
General Trent Edwards is the former Director of Air Force Budget Operations and Personnel who formulated and executed the $80 billion Air Force daily operating, military personnel and civilian pay budgets. He served previously as the Programmer and CFO for a $10 billion Air Force Space Command mission, which included funding Air Force-wide cyber operations. He has extensive congressional experience and was assigned to the Secretary of the Air Force Office of Legislative Liaison, as the Chief of Congressional Affairs and served as a National Defense Fellow to a member of Congress.
Outside of his military career, General Edwards is the CEO of T.H. Edwards Consulting, specializing in aligning business capabilities to Department of Defense strategic priorities and future needs. He is on the Board of Directors for Navy Federal Credit Union, the Piedmont Conservatory for the Arts, and the Montgomery YMCA.
📆 Q2 Event Highlights
The Veteran Fund Spotlight by the NVCA
The Veteran Fund was featured by the National Venture Capital Association, the largest member organization of investors and venture capital firms in the country. Read the article here.
Mike Spoke at TechCon SoCal: The Largest Gathering of Investors in California (May 2024) and Plug & Play Summit in Silicon Valley (June 2024)
GP Mike Sherbakov gave inspiring talks at different events around the country on the topics of veteran leadership and dual-use investing.
VetVC Summit in NYC with JPMorgan Chase (June 2024)
GP Mike Sherbakov was joined by LPs Trent Edwards, Jen Pilcher, and fund partners Dan Sylvester and Dan Sennott (Holland and Knight) in New York City for the annual VetVC summit, hosted by JPMorgan Chase.
📣 Announcements and Events
Military Veteran Founder Showcase, featuring The Veteran Fund, AIN, and Context Ventures (July 30, 2024)
Join us for an exclusive online event where five outstanding US military veteran startup founders will pitch their innovative companies to a panel of investors and venture capitalists. These founders represent some of the best new companies from the Founder Institute network, all actively raising capital. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur, an investor, or simply passionate about startups, this event offers a unique opportunity to see the future of innovation coming out of the military veteran community. Register here: https://fi.co/e/337778
Apply to the FI Veteran and Military Family Accelerator (Fall 2024)
The deadline for the Founder Institute Veteran and Military Family Accelerator Fall 2024 cohort is August 4th. This will be a fully virtual program running August 19 - November 12, 2024.
Any US veteran or military spouse can apply and join the program for free through our veteran and military family scholarship.
View the application and program details here: http://fi.co/veteran
Limitless Conference: Hosted by LP Ken McElroy (August 29-31, 2024)
Join LPs Ken McElroy, Chuck Heath, GP Lisa Song Sutton and Veteran Fund supporter Congressman Dan Crenshaw at the Limitless Conference in Dallas, TX.
Limitless is an annual conference that brings together American entrepreneurs to discuss real estate, economics, business and investing. Speakers include Ken, Chuck, Lisa, Congressman Crenshaw, Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad), George Gammon (Rebel Capitalist) and others.
Sages and Scientists: Hosted by LP Deepak Chopra (September 14-15, 2024)
In collaboration with industry leaders Sam Altman, Marc Benioff and Gary Vee, join this prestigious event in Boston, MA where GP Justin Nahama will be moderating a panel to discuss Conscious Leadership with LPs Deepak Chopra, Dr. Matt Provencher, General Stan McChrystal, and GP Ryan Micheletti. Sages and Scientists is an annual symposium to unite an extraordinary assembly of the world’s foremost entrepreneurs, philosophers, doctors, scientists, and artists. The Symposium aims to ignite a convergence of minds that will pave innovative pathways for the well-being of humanity.
We are incredibly proud of the community of leaders we have united to support our mission of advancing America through venture capital. Thank you for your continued support and contribution toward the closing of Fund I. It is an honor to be stewards of this great community.
As always, if you know of a strong company led by an exceptional veteran founder, please share this with them.
With gratitude,
Justin, Mike, Lisa, Ryan | The Veteran Fund
The Veteran Fund General Partners with Andrea Fox Downing, advocate for TVF and Miss Texas 2018
