Squadra Ventures

Excited for AUVSI Pathfinder next week? Be sure to swing by Booth 36/37 to visit the Primordial Labs and Red Cat Holdings teams! Kevin Cuomo, Chris Kirk, and Rehana Asmi will be on the ground in Huntsville, AL. Connect with us to learn more about our natural language C2 software, Anura, and how it empowers warfighters to task UAS like they would a human teammate: with conversational, mission-type orders. We’ll see you out there! 🐸 #Autonomy #AUVSI #AUVSIPathfinder2024 #HMI #NaturalLanguage #UAS #USArmy

Happy to be in Austin! The Squadra team and our portfolio companies are already having a great time at Capital Factory’s Fed Supernova, joining a truly representative cross-section of leaders in startups, government, venture capital, technology, and industry. While Dan Madden and Dominic Ventimiglia are ready to connect, don’t miss meeting with Squadra portfolio companies: NetRise: Supply chain detection and response for software inventory, control, and risk response Prewitt Ridge: Digital engineering software to 100X the efficiency of hardware engineering teams Primordial Labs: Human-machine interface that translates operator intent into action when teaming with autonomous uncrewed systems As a team that focuses on accelerating dual-use opportunities led by strong founding teams, we know this is going to be an impactful week! #defensetech #cybersecurity #dualusetech #startups

Congrats to our customers Hydrosat & Muon Space on a successful launch! #aerospace #space #deeptech

Meet the Prewitt Ridge team in Austin! Co-Founder Charles (Zeke) Brechtel will be attending Fed Supernova at the Capital Factory from August 20-22. Fed Supernova is a favorite event of the aerospace and defense innovation community. The event is centered around bringing entrepreneurs, VCs, government and industry together, with the specific goal of developing dual-use solutions that apply dual use technology to the DoD. When technologists can collaborate directly with the people who are closest to the problem, good things happen! We’re particularly excited to head to Austin, which has long had one of the most vibrant innovation communities in the country, buoyed recently by Tesla, SpaceX, and a host of government innovation units making a home inside Capital Factory. Can’t wait to see friends, including the Squadra Ventures team represented by Dan Madden and Dominic Ventimiglia, who will be hosting a happy hour on Thursday, August 22, at Zilker Brewing Company. RSVP here: https://lnkd.in/ecBBM495 If you’ll be in Austin next week and want to discuss digital engineering, get in touch! #engineering #aerospace #defense

Our office warming party last week was a HUGE success! With lively conversations, delicious food, and a gorgeous view of the Atlanta skyline, it was a night to remember. 🏢✨ We want to give a huge thank you to everyone who joined in commemorating the occasion! Getting to share in the celebration of our milestones with friends, colleagues, and supporters mean everything to us. In addition to celebrating the opening of the new office, the party was also a marker for the end of our summer internship program. Hussain Askari, Sydney Griffith, and Colin White have been significant members of the team these past three months. We are very appreciative of the work they've done and for being apart of the Falcomm story! One chapter ends and another begins. We'll be keeping the momentum going, so be on the look out for open roles and more updates to our progress! #falcomm #startups #semiconductors #newoffice

"The plane was grounded for weeks while engineers manually reset its onboard system." Reuters covers a new dimension of GPS spoofing attacks. OPSGROUP details a recent incident in which an aircraft operated by a major Western airline had its onboard clocks suddenly sent forward by years, causing the plane to lose access to its digitally-encrypted communication systems. https://ow.ly/7Pws50SWhJZ #GPSintegrity #GPSspoofing #electronicwarfare

Great week in Utah! Prewitt Ridge CEO Steve Massey is in Logan for SmallSat, which continues to be one of the largest space industry events of the year! We were delighted to serve as a co-sponsor of the Payload Space Happy Hour. Both SmallSat and University Nanosatellite Program are some of the reasons our CEO Steve has his career. It was great to run into Dr. Michael Swartwout and attend the 25 year anniversary of UNP We’re longtime attendees of SmallSat, so this was an especially wonderful opportunity to reconnect with familiar faces, as well as meet new folks. These small group events continue to have a big impact on our ecosystem! We were thrilled to join forces with Bank of America, Millennium Space Systems, A Boeing Company, and Terran Orbital Corporation to bring the happy hour to life. This year’s SmallSat conference had a focus on automation — it’s being introduced in satellite systems, and in the engineering workflows that results in these systems being deployed. We’re proud to be a part of the community that is advancing capabilities as the industry grows across government and commercial applications, and salute the hard work of all those who bring us together! #aerospace #space #engineering

Important news for Maryland startups and investors! This week, the Maryland Department of Commerce is launching the 2025 Innovation Investment Tax Credit (IITC) Program. IITC aims to enhance the abilities of Maryland startups to attract private capital by providing refundable income tax credits to investors, making another reason why Maryland is a great state for innovation to call home! Last week, Squadra Managing Partner Guy Filippelli participated in a conversation with Cybersecurity Association of Maryland, Inc. (CAMI) to share some insights from the investor perspective on the value of this program. 💵 IITC is an incredible opportunity to both investors and companies. Investors have the opportunity to make back up to 33% of their investment in an eligible company, up to $250,000, or 50%, up to $500,000, if the company is located in Allegany, Dorchester, Garrett or Somerset County. For example, if an investor put in $750,000 and then got back full IITC credits, only $500,000 leaves the bank but their returns are based on their $750,000 initial investment. If the company sells and the investors ends up getting $1.5 million back on their initial investment, the investor just went from doubling their return to tripling their return. 🇺🇸 Maryland has one of the highest bases of military and intelligence community connected talent, making our talent an unparalleled resource for defense tech startups. As new capabilities are demanded, Maryland has unique advantages to help startups fulfill different needs. Many world class institutions sit in Maryland, including the NSA, the University of Maryland-College Park, Johns Hopkins University and the Applied Physics Lab, Fort Meade, Aberdeen Proving Grounds, and several Navy facilities. The intellectual capital of the DC Metro Area is also well within arms reach. There are boundless opportunities within the Maryland borders, and IITC aims to be part of the catalyst in the defense tech boom in Maryland. 👏 IITC aims to be the push to help an investor choose an exciting Maryland startup over something else. While IITC provides enticing opportunities, it will never be the sole reason for an investment. Good investors—the kind that will dedicate energy and back you up—will not invest because they have a shot at returning 33% of the money they plan to invest immediately. They will invest because they believe you are the best option, most poised to generate returns and with the most potential value to society. Looking for investors that your company fits well with is the most important thing. For the fiscal year 2025 IITC program, Commerce will begin accepting Form B QMTC applications today 8/20/2024 and Form A investor applications on 9/3/2024. Registration for the online investor queue will begin on 9/25/2024. Have questions? The Commerce team is standing by and happy to help! More information as well as Guy’s presentation can be found on the Maryland Department of Commerce website.

It's never too late to write up a post about Black Hat and DEF CON, especially when you were out there for 8 days and are still working on follow ups from all of the activity. NetRise had an incredible trip out to hacker summer camp having a booth at Black Hat, our first non startup city booth! We had a great location that brought a ton of organic traffic and allowed us to do a ton of demos for folks. We had an unbelievable dinner at StripSteak with 30 customers, partners and prospects and friends that exceeded our expectations and even allowed for a number of folks to create new relationships among themselves which is always a nice added bonus. We partnered with Eclypsium, Inc. on Thursday to host a happy hour at StripSteak also that had a line out the door and approximately 350 registrants. It was jam packed, but create an excellent environment to meet new people and catch up with folks we have not seen in some time. Derek McCarthy and I spent the weekend at DEF CON also. Visiting all the villages, working our table and doing more demos than I care to admit. NetRise also made a splash that was recognized by various publications related to our announcements related to expansion of support for containers and Windows. 1️⃣ : Silicon Angle - https://lnkd.in/gs9rbprH 2️⃣ : MSSP Alert - https://lnkd.in/gCHPJyZx 3️⃣ : CSO Online - https://lnkd.in/gP3Wn_mv 4️⃣ : Solutions Review - https://lnkd.in/gT4ett4g Huge thanks to the NetRise team that made it all possible - Mark Hauptman, Joe Galuszka, Derek McCarthy, Trevin Mowery, Adam Dawson and Tyler Slocum. It was amazing seeing so many friends that I have not seen since last year's Vegas trip, here is but a few of the folks I got to reconnect with, which barely scratches the surface.

We had a great first week of our 26-city series discussing the Evolving Relationship Between CISOs and Developers. Thanks to our week 1 sponsors Invicti Contrast Security and Legit Security At it again next week in Tampa, SoCal, Atlanta, San Diego, and Charlotte. If you are a CISO in any of those cities and have not received an invitation please message me. If you have a solution in the appsec, sbom, api security space and want to be involved in these discussions, message me to learn how to be involved.