Thread by @Andercot

A Weekend at the El Segundo Defense Tech Hackathon - The UNIX Timestamp of the Deep Tech Renaissance

This weekend smashed all of my expectations.

Here's my honest impressions and takeaways, and where this fits in to the evolving startup scene.

The Gundo Thread: 🧵

Organizers @apollo_defense did a fantastic job bringing together a room full of talented students, defense industry engineers, and investors.

Teams built through the night and even had calls with members of the Ukrainian defense ministry who were keen to see and use the results

The winners of the hackathon delivered a functional prototype with thoughtful consideration of real world requirements, to use drones as relays for free space laser comms.

For many teams ML and AI were used but not as the main show - just part of the stack

Compared to hackathons in SF the crowd was markedly different - hardware engineers, defense tech founders, military intelligence and contractors replaced hte usual FAANG, B2B SaaS, and LLM-centric projects that have overflowed the past year of the AI gold rush

The supporting ecosystem of founders was tight knit and chasing big visions grounded in pragmatic engineering, like ending droughts and ensuring water security for farmers.

@ADoricko at Rainmaker hosted the event in between tracking cloud seeing runs with his X-band Radar Truck

The local hardware startups here are very real.

I've worked in DoE national labs, two fusion startups, university labs, in many roles. At Rangeview I saw a technically talented team developing state of the art manufacturing methods for paying customers.

These guys ship.

This comes just days after the @a16z and @anduril meetup at Stanford, put together after a Defense Tech Student Club had their charter denied while the Pickleball Club was approved.

Both events brimmed with unabashed patriotism, almost contrarian to the often PC tech scene

It's ironic that the contrarian deep tech founders of today, like @isaiah_p_taylor, are pro-nuclear, pro-natal, to build hydrocarbon energy abundance, are really a revival of the American Dynamism of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s that built so much of the country.

Tech needs this.

Along with YCs call for more deep tech applications, this is just the beginning of a broader transition of venture capital towards businesses with defensible moats in atoms-first industries, where AI and ML are in the stack but not the main show.

This all makes sense in the broader context of declining numbers of new software unicorns as SaaS markets mature, AI lowers barriers to entry, eating away margins and carving up markets

My essay from a week ago details the macro behind this transition

Although many hackers and founders in El Segundo are quite young, their politics, lifestyles, and work habits are more mature than many older "tech bros" in the Bay, where Peter Pan syndrome draws the 20s well into the 30s via fear of romantic commitment and raising families.

A massive difference is the tech-friendly and common-sense local government. Nowhere were streets blocked with anti capitalism protests, calls to halt AI, or labeling technology as 'evil'. The city was clean, safe, young, and relatively vibrant. Police even enforced the law.

There is a genuine hardware ecosystem forming here where adjacent-sector startups drive commercial network effects by sharing customers, suppliers, equipment, space, investors, and pooling resources to source top talent like this weekend Hackathon.

(I think its working)

For however powerful storytelling can be in creating a self fulfilling prophecy, the story being told in Gundo is a compelling one:

Build for your country, for your family.
Focus on things that are real.
Work hard, work out, live clean.
Call bullshit where you see it.

I'm walking away impressed, optimistic and relieved there are more hardware startups grounded in solid physics and engineering, and a new younger generation of founders building more than niche CRMs with better LLM calls.

Gundo has tell-tale signs of the beginnings of something truly great - that it strikes you as weird, different, but refreshing, simple, and honest.

This is the opposite of zirpy LARPS, do-nothing virtue-signaling, or hand-wringing doomerism.

This is "shut up and build" energy

But, it's just getting started.

You'll need more housing, larger spaces, shared infrastructure, and more investments to keep drawing talent, enabling new companies, and building the ecosystem.

Fortunately it's all on a bedrock of a legendary Gundo history of American Industry and generational talent - some of which works at, and consults for, these new startups.

This area is no stranger to a booming, thriving manufacturing and defense tech ecosystem, with SpaceX, Anduril, Varda and many more nearby in Hawthorne and Long Beach.

What El Segundo is, is the new hardware and manufacturing startup nursery, where new companies can find footing, build their first tech, get their first customers, find a supportive community aligned in physical industries and healthy living, and together build something world-changing.

I've never seen such an optimistic future framed in the shadow of an oil refinery, but it reminds us of something basic and true - the origins of prosperity is abundant energy, and the Gundo has that in spades.