The Dual-Use Founder: Vets Now Building For America
Summary
The investable thesis is that veterans can turn firsthand exposure to operational failure into dual-use companies—provided they build for the next conflict, not the last deployment. Grant Jordan saw legacy systems fail against small drones; David Tuttle saw GWOT-era logistics becoming inadequate against a peer adversary; John Doyle saw commercial cellular act simultaneously as a force multiplier and a targeting signature. Matt Shortal’s warning was that what a veteran needed in a past deployment can become “out of date” and “stale.”
The panel emphasized low-cost, attritable and cyber capabilities as asymmetric alternatives to a few trillion-dollar bets on absolute dominance. In 2007-08, a $50,000-$100,000 drone looked inexpensive; capabilities now available for $500-$1,000 exceed what existed then, while Ukraine demonstrates the scale of “tens of thousands of drones flying around all the time.” Doyle’s framing is the strategic call: prepare to win “the scrappy, messy, asymmetric war that’s sort of inevitable next time around.”
Defense procurement needs rapid entry, ruthless exit and a scaling path between experiments and programs of record. Grant cited a 20-month software prototyping effort followed by another possible year to transition as “absolutely insane,” while the panel argued that failed programs should be killed before they become taxpayer-funded zombies. The remaining “valley of death” sits between roughly $1 million-$2 million early contracts and a $200 million-scale award, where many products need midsize deployment before their value becomes visible.
The strongest dual-use products serve one underlying need rather than stapling a commercial division onto a defense business. Rune is focused on military logistics across services, currently the Army and Marine Corps; Grant’s company addresses drone awareness across bases, power plants and border security; Cape focuses on cyber vulnerabilities in the global cellular network. Doyle keeps one engineering organization and one priority stack because “we’re building one product, and it really serves both purposes.”
A Palantir- or Anduril-style apprenticeship can supply operating mechanics and access to complementary technical cofounders, but it cannot manufacture founder temperament. Doyle valued nine years at Palantir as “training wheels,” yet maintained that “there’s no way to learn how to do this job other than to just do it.” The cultural edge is transparent failure, ambitious leaps and founders personally modeling responsiveness: “Culture is what you do; it’s not what you say.”
The founders’ explicit demand signals include lighter soldier equipment, autonomous heavy-lift resupply and shared data—not simply more exquisite hardware. John Doyle suggested gear weighing 30% of the current load; Matt Shortal paraphrased the goal as 25 pounds and less cumbersome. Another request was an autonomous aerial platform capable of moving substantial cargo. Grant’s broader call was for decision-grade information shared across agencies and infrastructure operators, because “it wasn’t about having a fancy piece of hardware.”
Deep dive
1. Operational frustration became the founding wedge
Grant Jordan joined largely to pay for school: the Air Force funded MIT, followed by four years in the Air Force Research Laboratory. His work—getting new systems rapidly to warfighters—also exposed acquisition programs “broken or outdated” for the pace of current technology, suggesting change might come faster from outside.
David Tuttle commissioned through Cornell ROTC, left active duty for finance, returned to service and ultimately worked in the Joint Special Operations Command enterprise and technology organizations. Still serving in the New York Army National Guard, he founded Rune after concluding that field logistics lacked serious technology-company attention.
John Doyle nearly enlisted after 9/11, then signed an 18X contract the day after the 2003 Iraq invasion. He spent two years in the Special Forces pipeline and three on a 5th Special Forces Group team; law school proved misaligned with building, so he joined Palantir in 2013 and stayed nine years.
Their founding premises remained product-specific: Rune targets cross-service field logistics; Grant’s company addresses drone awareness; Cape focuses on cyber vulnerabilities in the global cellular network and the risks attached to commercial cellular use.
2. Ukraine made cheap scale and exposed signatures impossible to ignore
Grant recalled that in 2007-08, a $100,000—or even $50,000—small drone counted as inexpensive. Capabilities now available for $500-$1,000 exceed what existed then, while missiles, lasers and other “big, expensive, bespoke systems built for a prior era” initially failed against small, fast threats.
Tuttle’s logistics lesson is equally direct: systems that got the job done during the GWOT era would not necessarily sustain forces against a peer adversary, in competition or conflict. Matt pointed to Russia’s halt outside Kyiv as a logistics example.
Doyle left Palantir on a Friday in February 2022 and entered WeWork the following Monday as Russia’s invasion unfolded. Both sides were using commercial cellular as a force multiplier and a risk, including directing missile strikes based on cellular signatures. That prompted Cape’s first question: what technology should Ukraine already have, and how could Taiwan receive it before an invasion that “hopefully never happens”?
His broader forecast favors low-cost attritable systems and cyber operations, where “relatively low amounts of investment can cause huge amounts of damage,” over a handful of exquisite systems expected to guarantee absolute dominance.
3. Apprenticeships help, but founders still need an innate forward bias
Doyle credited Palantir with teaching company mechanics: foster innovation, allow “a little bit of chaos” without letting the wheels come off, and build a consequential culture. Yet his qualification was categorical: “There’s no way to learn how to do this job other than to just do it.”
Tuttle wanted a broader toolkit before founding—finance experience and a mission-driven technology culture alongside his service experience. Anduril also supplied his essential complement: cofounder and CTO Peter, whose Venn diagram “doesn’t overlap that much” with his own.
David Tuttle said he personally wanted to stop somewhere that showed “what right looks like,” naming Anduril, Palantir, SpaceX and Tesla as companies producing founders. The panel nevertheless treated this as individual preparation, not a credential requirement.
The anti-incremental shorthand came from Matt: “We went from 4G to 5G. Let’s go to 10G. Why stop at 4G?” He paired that with a warning not to recreate whatever a veteran needed in one valley or deployment years ago. Matt argued that supporting skills are teachable, while the insistence on ambitious, forward-looking goals is innate.
4. Dual use works when the mission and product remain unified
Grant defined drone security as genuinely dual use: Air Force bases, power plants and border-security operations all face drone-related concerns, while legitimate drones can inspect infrastructure and support logistics. The shared mechanism is customer- and user-driven problem solving, not “an over-obsession with the military portion.”
Recruiting becomes a values filter because the work is consequential. Grant noted that team members had assisted Ukrainians. Doyle said showing real-world examples—drones used by prison gangs to smuggle fentanyl or drones in military environments—makes the stakes concrete: for the right people, “it’s instantaneous,” while others can choose different work.
Tuttle’s pitch to commercial technical talent is simpler than outsiders assume: “Do you want to do something meaningful?” The operating model fuses software and hardware expertise with veterans’ mission knowledge, without pretending that purpose eliminates the company’s commercial obligation.
Doyle deliberately maintains one engineering team rather than separate commercial and defense divisions. The engineering team agrees on priorities serving the entire customer base, and Cape is building one product for both purposes.
5. Procurement must scale winners and kill zombies
The panel’s startup requests ranged from lighter armor and kit—John proposed reducing carried gear to 30% of its current weight, while Matt said to make it 25 pounds and less cumbersome—to autonomous heavy-lift aerial resupply capable of carrying substantial cargo. Grant’s deeper gap was information: modern problems increasingly concern data, decisions and cross-organization sharing rather than possession of a particular kit.
Grant described shifting from traditional hardware sales, where equipment often disappeared after delivery, toward supplying the information customers need to make decisions and take action. A power plant gains little if a neighboring federal agency cannot share the threat data it holds.
Grant endorsed government forcing vendors to perform: prototype, deploy, test and iterate quickly; retain what works and offboard what does not. “As taxpayers, as veterans, and as founders, we should want that level of competition”—including rapid replacement when another company serves the warfighter better.
Doyle called termination the neglected complement to faster onboarding: a zombie program consuming millions or tens of millions helps neither warfighters nor the company trapped by false validation. Grant added the scaling gap: many $1 million-$2 million early contracts cannot jump directly to $200 million, yet reveal broader patterns only after midsize deployment—such as one drone appearing at three bases.
6. Cohesion is repeated behavior, and public service requires real authority
Cape is in-person because proximity helps build trust. During a weekend P0 involving an employee abroad, the right seven people joined immediately and resolved it within 20 minutes; nobody celebrated or complained on Monday because “that’s how we do business at Cape.”
Doyle’s founder prescription, borrowing Ben Horowitz, was “Culture is what you do; it’s not what you say.” Founders must personally join those early Slack threads and show up every day until picking up “on the first ring” becomes organizational reflex.
Grant’s company reinforces cohesion through mundane repetition: engineering, product, growth and leadership collaborate in one place; early hires help author the culture; Friday happy hour remains at the same bar. That social hour coexists with Saturdays and a team spending the weekend at 29 Palms—people are the software company’s capital.
All three founders would consider returning to government, but only with a credible ability to produce results. Doyle would bring “a list of demands”; Tuttle called effective public service “an honor of a lifetime”; Grant’s acquisition-reform condition included one unexpectedly concrete necessity after an Air Force secretary raised it: “I’ve got to have the beard waiver.”