The Drone Ultimatum

Nick LaRovere is the co-founder and CEO of Pryzm, a startup building an AI-powered operating system for defense business development and procurement.

00:00 - Intro
01:19 - AI coding, “vibe coding,” and hiring engineers
04:27 - What Pryzm does and the future of defense procurement
10:35 - AI, CRMs, and the changing defense sales process
18:00 - Raising from Andreessen Horowitz and building Pryzm
24:36 - Scaling manufacturing in defense tech
27:12 - “Every company becomes a defense company”
32:28 - Startup culture, engineers, and product building
35:01 - “Startups are war”
40:13 - Palantir culture, Alex Karp, and defense tech talent
48:11 - How defense procurement is changing
59:49 - Anthropic, AI companies, and defense partnerships
01:02:18 - Closing thoughts

In this episode, Nick and Steve talk about why selling into government is still so relationship-driven, how defense companies can use better data to find the right opportunities, and why the traditional CRM stack falls short for companies selling to the Department of Defense.
They also get into AI-assisted coding, the challenge of evaluating engineers in the age of “vibe coding,” how startups should think about product management, and why defense tech may still be underinvested despite all the recent hype.
The conversation covers Pryzm’s work with both defense companies and government customers, the future of acquisition reform, and how the changing battlefield is forcing the procurement system to move faster.

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Pryzm (Website)⁠⁠

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David Michelson, former Army Ranger, DIU autonomy leader, and current Drones Thesis Leader at Re:Build Manufacturing, discusses what’s actually working and not working in drones and autonomy today.

⁠⁠Learn more about our sponsor, Cushman and Wakefield.⁠⁠

This conversation covers:
Why autonomy is a spectrum, not a switch
Lessons from Ukraine that the U.S. may be misreading
The reality of drone operations vs. “swarm” hype
Manufacturing constraints and scaling challenges
Why design for manufacturability matters early
The role of competition in defense acquisition
What it takes to actually field systems at scale
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⁠⁠Re:Build Manufacturing (Website)⁠

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Cheap drones are reshaping warfare in real time.

In this episode, Soren Monroe-Anderson, co-founder and CEO of Neros Technologies, breaks down what it actually takes to build low-cost, scalable FPV drone systems for modern combat.

⁠Learn more about our sponsor, Cushman and Wakefield.⁠

From Ukraine battlefield lessons to manufacturing tens of thousands of drones per month, this is a ground-level view of how drone warfare is evolving.

We get into production scale, electronic warfare, autonomy, and why most people misunderstand how drones are actually used in real-world operations.

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⁠Neros Technologies (Website)

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Nathan Mintz, founder and CEO of CX2 and former founding CEO of Epirus, joins the show to break down how electronic warfare is reshaping modern drone defense.

Nathan Mintz (LinkedIn)
CX2 Website

We cover the origin of Epirus, the moment the drone threat became impossible to ignore, and how soft kill systems fit into a layered approach to counter-UAS.

Nathan also explains what it actually looks like to build a defense company today, from working inside legacy primes to launching and scaling startups in a system that rewards access, alignment, and execution.

This episode is a practical look at electronic warfare, soft kill vs kinetic solutions, and how companies like CX2 are thinking about the future of drone defense.
• Electronic warfare and soft kill systems
• The rise of the drone threat
• Epirus origin story and lessons learned
• From legacy primes to startups
• Building CX2 and modern defense companies
• Counter-UAS strategy and layered defense

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Kurt Freshley, Chief Growth Officer of Valinor Enterprises, joins the show to break down the company's strategy and portfolio companies while sharing what it actually takes to scale in defense and advanced manufacturing.

Kurt Freshley on LinkedIn
Valinor (LinkedIn)
Valinor (Twitter/X)

From navigating procurement and aligning with real customer demand to building sustainable growth inside a complex ecosystem, this conversation gets into the operational reality behind the headlines.

We discuss how defense companies think about growth differently, where most startups get it wrong, and what separates companies that win programs from those that stall out.

Kurt also shares perspective on aligning incentives across government, primes, and startups, and what it takes to build something that actually gets fielded.

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