Intro
David Ulevitch is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the largest venture firms by AUM with $90B. He cofounded the American Dynamism practice with Katherine Boyle about 4 years ago. Since then, it has taken over the timeline and become the language many use to describe frontier, deep or hard tech. Friend of the show Christopher Lochhead calls this Category Design, where you don’t necessarily have to be the first to become a category leader, you need to frame the problem and do it better than everyone else.
American Dynamism focuses on investing in areas such as public safety, aerospace, logistics, national security, defense, manufacturing, industrialization, logistics. Some of the companies in their portfolio include Anduril, Amca, Applied Intuition, Apex Space, Astro Mechanica, Astranis, Base Power, California Forever, Castelion, Hadrian, Northwood Space, Radiant Nuclear and of course SpaceX. Founders of many of these will be featured in upcoming episodes or are friends of the show.
David was previously the founder and CEO of OpenDNS, a cloud-delivered security service that was acquired by Cisco in 2015 for $635 million. While at Cisco, David was Senior Vice President and General Manager of Cisco Security — a $2.4 billion annual revenue business with more than 5,000 team members — where he oversaw the company’s global cybersecurity strategy, product portfolio, and business (via A16Z).
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Timestamps:
00:00 - Introduction
01:57 - Defining American Dynamism
05:43 - Project Maven and Rebuilding the Arsenal of Democracy
07:24 - Competing with General Catalyst for Anduril
08:49 - Category creation and defining the market
10:57 - The marketing engine of “The American Dream”
15:20 - Replicating Silicon Valley
18:22 - Robot Dogs and General Catalyst
19:47 - 1776 Million: Building the American Dynamism Practice
20:59 - Why Hardware Outperforms Software Over Time
22:38 - Coupling Defense, Energy, and Space
26:28 - Investing in Public Safety
33:01 - Investment Committees are “stupid”
35:39 - Long-term partners over short-term bets
39:23 - Policy, Regulations, and navigating relationships in DC
43:11 - How regulations are slowing us down
46:54 - The Industrial Supply Chain Divergence
51:29 - Global Maritime Dominance and Expanding TAMs
53:39 - Venture-Backable Bets in Critical Industrial Infrastructure
1:00:24 - Applying Anthropology: Study of People, Culture, and Political Power
1:04:08 - What Drives Innovation Across Nations?
1:11:49 - Regional Talent and State Incentives
1:15:48 - Moving from Benevolent Dictator to Minority Investor
1:20:42 - Life is Checkers, Not Chess: Agency and Knowing When to Sell
1:26:57 - OpenDNS and the Pivot to Enterprise: Letting Markets Dictate Your Revenue
1:30:13 - The High Bar for Talent: Grittiness, Grind, and Magnetic Leadership
1:33:09 - Attracting Capital via Narrative: Storytelling vs. Lying
1:35:07 - Toastmasters and Single-Topic Debates: Sharpening Communication
1:37:20 - Modern Credentials: Domain Expertise and Sourcing True Signals
1:44:23 - Government Sales 101: Enterprise Sales on Steroids
1:46:34 - Closing
