For those of you who know me, it will come as no surprise that I co-founded an org dedicated to education around firearms and policy, called Open Source Defense. substack.com/@opensourcedefe… OSD has been steadily growing in reach and "clout" inside the Second Amendment (2A) space. We are getting more introductions and insight into what we're calling "the civilian defense industry" - those companies in the 2A, self-reliance, shooting, hunting, and outdoors industries. My co-founders and I want to leverage our experience in tech and in firearms to support this industry with two things they are lacking relative to other innovation industries: 1) Access to capital 2) Access to mentorship and tech talent For #1, we are exploring starting a fund dedicated to providing seed/angel funding to innovators in this space. Before actively starting this fund, we are organizing a few special purpose vehicles (SPV) for specific companies we are excited about. I'll give the details down below. For #2, that's people like you. X obviously has people with a lot of experience in the tech and startup world that is very much lacking in the 2A/civilian defense world. We'd like to leverage your experience as technologists and company builders, and your network of "people who get things done" to help get some needed support in the industry. Please ping me if you'd like the specifics of our investment thesis or would like to be a resource/mentor for companies in this space. The SPV we're organizing is for an advertising solution for an industry that cannot advertise on any mainstream social platform or existing advertising networks. They have excellent traction and an impressive list of publishers and advertisers with a modern ad-tech stack that has been missing from the industry. If you're interested in this SPV, please reach out via DM and I can send you a link to the deck.

I'm going in. Wish me luck.

At step 5 I gave myself a blunt force trauma cut that most certainly needs stitches, but we tape up and press on. This also goes to my belief that anything can be used as a weapon if you're clumsy enough or mad enough.