From Soldier to Startup

Trust is the greatest currency in the defense sector — and few things confer trust as powerfully as the lived experience of military service. As the United States’ Department of Defense (DoD) increasingly looks to startups as critical partners in the quest to advance our national security capabilities, companies helmed by veterans have a distinct advantage. With a shared language and intimate knowledge of the DoD’s most pressing challenges, founders with first-hand military experience bring a level of operational and strategic understanding that is simply impossible to replicate elsewhere. Product-focused founders who can also leverage deep expertise on the complex structures of this highly specialized sector are a major asset at a time when the U.S. must move quickly to develop new defense technology across land, air, sea, and space — or risk losing its long-held global leadership. While the U.S. has had the most technologically advanced fighting and defense force in the world since World War II, that advantage is slipping. Adversaries such as China and Russia are aggressively investing in modern defense technology that is not only poised to leapfrog America’s aging infrastructure and legacy systems, but is opening up entirely new warfighting domains. Meanwhile, underinvestment and dwindling labor and manufacturing capacity has slowed the rate of U.S. defense technology development, exposing our vulnerabilities across shipbuilding, long-range missiles, drone technology, and the emerging threat of space-based warfare. This is why we need founders with an insider’s understanding of the defense sector, the opportunities for innovation, and the ability to navigate the GTM/commercial motion with the Pentagon — coupled with the outsider’s approach to building transformative technology on rapid timelines. At Eclipse, we believe deep domain expertise and operational experience are the two most important qualities a founder can bring to their industry, and there is no sector where this is more critical than defense. If we hope to give America the bold reset it needs to maintain our technological and strategic advantage in an increasingly hostile — and militarily sophisticated — world, we need an army of innovators we can trust to build it. The concept of “founder-market-fit” is something we talk about a lot in tech. When founders are building tech to transform physical industries, having a direct connection to the problem they are trying to solve is even more critical, says Eclipse Founding Partner Lior Susan, especially in the defense sector. Susan, who served in the Israeli Defense Force’s special forces across multiple roles in a specialized ops unit, knows firsthand the inimitable knowledge and perspective military service provides. “Serving in uniform gives you deep insight into the future of the battlefield — across security, intelligence, and frontline operations,” says Susan. “At Eclipse, we’ve been partnering with defense startups for the past eight years, and I’m proud to support this next generation and work alongside amazing partners like Even Rogers, Rylan Hamilton, and Dan Jablonsky.” These are some of the leaders of the defense technology startups in the Eclipse portfolio. True Anomaly, Blue Water Autonomy, and Ursa Major are all either founded by or headed by military veterans who bring firsthand knowledge of the battlefield requirements and operational challenges facing today’s warfighters. True Anomaly, which is building autonomous spacecraft for space superiority, was founded by U.S. Space Force veterans who wrote the foundational doctrine on space engagement. Blue Water Autonomy, which is building autonomous ships for the military, was founded by Navy veterans who operated (and repaired) aging ships during active wartime. Ursa Major, a developer of advanced propulsion systems across national security domains, hypersonics, and space, is headed by a Navy vet who served as a surface warfare officer and nuclear engineer. Here’s how they are leveraging that experience to build the next era of defense technology. Deep Understanding of the Vulnerabilities

Startups headed by veterans have an unparalleled insight into the scope of global threats. They don’t have to convince others that there is a market for their technology. In fact, True Anomaly Co-Founders Even Rogers and Kyle Zakrzewski didn’t even set out to start a company. They set out to build the solution to a problem. In 2021, Russia destroyed one of its own satellites in a test of an anti-satellite missile. To date, this was the most high-profile (and concerning) proof point that space was rapidly transforming from a benign domain into an emerging warzone — and Rogers and Zakrzewski were already more than a decade deep into efforts to strengthen the U.S.’ space defense capabilities. At the time, Rogers was serving as a Fires Officer in the U.S. Space Command, while Zakrzewski was a reservist in the U.S. Air Force’s Space Aggressor Squadron and working as a space systems engineer at Ball Aerospace. As the vulnerability of the U.S.’ critical orbital infrastructure (including satellite-based navigation, observation, and communication systems) increased, Rogers had been researching the training and tactics that would be necessary to create state of the art space warfare protocols for the U.S. His work ultimately became the foundational doctrine for orbital engagements and orbital warfare. Zakrzewski was leading training of orbital warfare tactics to a division of the Space Aggressor Squadron. They couldn’t have had a better vantage point into the scope of the problem — nor the limitations the DoD and the prime aerospace corporations faced in quickly building new technology to solve new challenges. When senior officers asked what capabilities existed to counter a threat like Russia’s anti-satellite missile, Rogers and Zakrzewski could only tell them the truth: “Nothing.” This inconvenient truth was the wake-up call Rogers and Zakrzewski needed to change their tactic. “It became very clear to me that the Space Force, the National Security Space Enterprise, and its allies needed an industrial partner that was completely focused on space superiority,” says Rogers. “I realized that technology and tactics needed to be developed side-by-side and under one roof, rather than through a traditional system procurement process. It required operating like a startup.” True Anomaly was born in 2022 out of an unparalleled understanding of the depth and complexity of the problem as well as the recognition that it had to be solved urgently, on timelines and at scales not possible within the traditional defense industrial base. While neither founder had worked in a startup before, they believed the private sector’s approach to risk-taking, rapid iteration, and frequent product-shipping — — was crucial in order to get the U.S. on track to achieve space superiority.

The company has moved at an astonishing pace. In the three years since launching, the team has flown two test flights of their autonomous orbital vehicle Jackal, is gearing up for a third, and will be one of two participants in the Space Force’s Victus Haze demonstration, a critical step in proving the viability of commercially-developed spacecraft and determining the Department of Defense’s space strategy going forward. It’s a feat that would not be possible without their military experience, says William Liquori, a retired Space Force Lieutenant General and True Anomaly board member. “This is an incredibly innovative company with a lot of smart engineers who want to push the envelope,” says Liquori. “The awareness they can provide about what’s happening in space represents a huge benefit to our national security.” Intimate Awareness of Stakes Involved

Similarly, Navy veteran Rylan Hamilton couldn’t ignore the growing problem of our decimated shipbuilding capabilities in the United States. Once a powerhouse, the U.S.’ shipbuilding capacity now pales in comparison to other countries. China fields a navy of over 400 ships, while the U.S. fleet has fallen below 300. Between 2010 and 2018, China invested more than $132 billion into its shipyards, nearly 2,000 times more than the $77 million invested by the U.S. over the same period. Hamilton also knew that the U.S. military does not have the resources to revive our country’s shipbuilding capabilities, and it’s not economically feasible for private shipyards to take on the challenge alone. Like many technologies that are reinventing the real world, we have to do more with less — which often comes down to physical AI and autonomous systems. Autonomous ships can be force multipliers for military power at sea, enhancing operational capabilities while reducing risk to human lives.

Hamilton’s painfully detailed understanding of the inner workings of a Navy ship gave him the insight he needed to start Blue Water Autonomy, which recently came out of stealth mode and is developing advanced maritime ships that can operate without a cabin or crew. Blue Water’s 100-foot-plus autonomous ships are designed to give the Navy new capabilities, including the protection of its existing fleet of multi-billion dollar ships. In an era when hypersonic weapons and drones pose existential threats to crewed vessels, these nimble, lower-cost vessels can serve as frontline scouts — gathering intelligence, extending the Navy’s presence, and taking on dangerous missions without risking lives. There’s nothing quite like working on an aging Naval ship to show you how many potential points of breakdown it has — and what could be automated, Hamilton says. When he served as a Naval electrical engineering officer deployed to the Persian Gulf and the Pacific, Rylan Hamilton was often multitasking between repairing antiquated control systems onboard while trying to do his actual job. “These ships were three decades old and constantly breaking,” he says. “They’re big and complex, with so many systems. I can’t tell you how many times I woke up to a power failure or lost steering and had to sprint down to fix it.” As a navigator, he also learned how to refuel in open water, land helicopters on deck, and maneuver massive ships in and out of port without running aground. While he initially went into different, non-military industries after his service was complete (including founding 6 River Systems, which was backed by Eclipse and acquired by Shopify in 2019), Hamilton’s Naval experience drew him back into the field. Those experiences — along with co-founder Austin Gray’s perspective as a former Navy intelligence officer stationed on aircraft carriers — directly shaped the design of Blue Water’s vessels and gave the founder an advantage in conversations with customers at the Navy. “You need to know how these traditional ships work and how everything operates together,” Hamilton says. “Without that, I think we could make a lot of wrong assumptions about how the Navy would actually operate our ships at sea.” Deep Understanding of Defense Ecosystem Not only do these veteran leaders have an intimate awareness of critical defense capability gaps and the global threat landscape, they possess insider knowledge that allows them to actually work effectively with the government. This includes a thorough understanding of the defense ecosystem’s complex structure and procurement process (which enables founders to develop realistic business plans, product pipelines, and work flows in line with the DoD’s systems), as well as greater access to pilot programs and grants thanks to their reputational capital. “If we hadn’t been in the Navy, there is no way we could have started this company, frankly,” says Hamilton. “These are big, complex systems that take a lot of technical expertise and resources just to test. If you can’t walk in there and talk to the Navy, understand who they are and what their day jobs are, understand the other solutions out there and how it all operates together, it’s not going to work. And we don’t have the time or money to keep messing up.” This is especially important as the DoD is much more open to working with the private sector compared with previous eras, says Rogers. “There’s a lot of new entrants out there and that’s great, ​but it really helps if you have an intimate understanding of the problem and not just the solution you want to bring,” says Rogers. “As former operators, we’re not just saying it’s a secret handshake that we share, but a language and mental models that drive the analytical framework, which drive the product. We know exactly what the problems are, how to design for them, and how to talk productively with the Pentagon. We can cut through a lot of the noise.” Creating teams with the right balance of deep military expertise, engineering skill, and product development strategy is often the most challenging task for veteran-led startups to get right. Once they find their stride, they have the upper hand when it comes to bringing in the most critical roles such as senior defense officials who can help them scale products and expand their business strategy in accordance with government objectives. Such people are rare, and extremely selective of who they work with. In high demand from the growing cadre of defense tech startups, people with extensive experience across the government as well as legacy aerospace industry organizations opt to work with teams with extraordinary reputations and demonstrated understanding of the problem they are going after. “Change within the Department of Defense is very difficult. It requires new ways of approaching problems and engaging with industry, so the most important thing you can bring to the table is authenticity,” says , an Air Force veteran who spent nearly two decades in government across Intelligence, Armed Services, and Space Policy for the DoD, before joining True Anomaly. Unlike selling novel technology into other industries, defense tech companies must work closely with their stakeholders (who are also their customers) from the outset. That means mapping not just your product strategy, but your business strategy, to the objectives of the federal government. “These stakeholders will ultimately be your partner if your objective is to support not just the needs of the warfighter, but also the needs of our nation, and doing so in a way that is fiscally responsible to taxpayers,” said Kitay. not only because he was extremely drawn to the mission, but because of the exceptional background of Rogers and Zakrzewski. “This is a very unique team with deep operational experience as well as world-class tech and engineering power,” says Kitay. “This is where the concept of a defense product is so important — when you are working on a very hard problem set, you need to understand what it means to enable the government to achieve their goals.” As , Chief Business Officer, for Ursa Major puts it, startups can’t approach defense tech like other industry sectors, where it is expected for disruptive technologies to initially cause friction before ultimately improving an existing process. “The ‘fake it til you make it’ mantra doesn’t apply,” says Nicholson.

When Dan Jablonsky joined Ursa Major as CEO in August 2024, he immediately needed to use skills acquired from his military service. The nine-year-old rocket engine startup was in a time of transition and needed a strategic leader. With prior experience as CEO of space tech company Maxar Technologies, Jablonsky had the credentials to lead a high-stakes venture. But he credits his time in the Navy, serving as a surface warfare officer and nuclear engineer in the Pacific Fleet, as his most valuable training. “I learned how to lead under pressure, how to motivate teams when the stakes are high and the conditions aren’t ideal,” he says. “That’s where you really develop the instincts to guide people through tough moments.” Jablonsky’s instincts and knowledge of critical technologies led him to focus Ursa Major’s several hundred employees around the mission of building systems the U.S. needs to compete with adversaries in hypersonic capabilities. Within months, the company successfully powered two Department of Defense hypersonic test flights — in late 2024 and early 2025 — marking the first time in more than 50 years that the U.S. had flown a reusable hypersonic vehicle. Since hypersonic missiles can reach targets in minutes, not hours, this technology can lead to a radical reduction in response time for missile defense.

Ursa Major is leveraging the proven success of the Hadley-powered flight tests to develop Draper, a tactical, storable, throttleable, and reusable hypersonic engine. Under a $28.5 million contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Draper is slated to fly by the end of the year. This milestone marks not only the first flight test of a first-of-its-kind cost-effective liquid hypersonic engine, but also the first time Ursa Major will serve as both the propulsion provider and vehicle integrator. Jablonsky also knows the value of high performing teams from his time in the military, and several of his colleagues on the executive team also served. Ursa Major’s CFO, Bill Nash, was a submarine officer; Chief Business Officer Ben Nicholson, served in the Coast Guard; and recently retired Rear Admiral Chris Engdahl was the Navy’s chief safety officer and now oversees risk and quality for the company. For Jablonsky, the work isn’t just strategic. It’s deeply personal. His brother served as a Marine, his sister as an Army nurse, her husband retired as an Army colonel, and his youngest sister is an Air Force pilot now serving at the Pentagon. “Not everybody gets how important this work is,” he says. “But for our family, it’s not hypothetical. In a conflict, it’s our classmates, friends, and family on the line. We need them to have the best equipment and capabilities possible.” Conclusion “Mission-driven” takes on a different tone when it comes to defending the United States and our allies. Founders who have truly been at the front lines have not only an extensive understanding of what is at stake, but a demonstrated commitment to take the boldest risks needed to solve the world’s most complex problems.

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