Venturing into federal tech, featuring Will Dickson and Trinity Torres of FedTech

Tough Tech Today with Meyen and Miller

What happens to the ideas generated across the United States federal government’s research initiatives? Will Dickson and Trinity Torres walk us through the pathways of taxpayer-funded technological advancements and opportunities for a diverse pool of private citizens-entrepreneurs to find commercial success licensing patents owned by the U.S. government.

The United States government generates vast amounts of intellectual property across its many research organizations, national laboratories, and other technical divisions. Unbeknownst by many citizens, novel technologies are available for licensing and may be a boon to ‘proto companies’ (not-quite-yet-born startups). FedTech is an organization that conducts programs oriented to supporting the exploration of tech commercialization through federal partnership with the private sector.

Our discussion spans how to find federal intellectual property, the integration of complementary non-engineering skillsets into an engineering-driven culture, and considerations for how various groups such as NavalX and the Defense Innovation Unit are changing government funding for and acquisition of tough technologies.

For audience members interested in dual-use ventures and public-private partnerships and funding avenues, check out our interview entitled “Launching dual-use ventures”, featuring Katy Person of the MIT Innovation Initiative.

Show Notes

• Episode page, transcript, and podcast listening links: https://toughtechtoday.com/venturing-into-federal-tech-featuring-will-dickson-and-trinity-torres-of-fedtech/
• Will Dickson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamfdickson
• Trinity Torres on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/trinitytorres
• FedTech Venture Studio: https://www.fedtech.io/
• Subscribe with your favorite podcast service: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1169378/5536735
• Watch this show on Youtube: https://youtu.be/dg2KW5C5nSE

You may also like...

• Tough Tech Today’s episode “Launching dual-use ventures”, featuring Katy Person of the MIT Innovation Initiative: https://toughtechtoday.com/launching-dual-use-ventures-featuring-katy-person-of-the-mit-innovation-initiative/
• jmill’s article, Who’s Your Ally? How Tech Startups Navigate Venture Capital and Federal Funding: https://medium.com/@iamjmill/whos-your-ally-e2ff6068cd3a

अध्यायों

1. Venturing into federal tech, featuring Will Dickson and Trinity Torres of FedTech (00:00:00)

2. Situational Awareness: FedTech (00:01:41)

3. Accelerator for commercializing federal research (00:03:14)

4. Starting at FedTech's Fellowship program (00:04:23)

5. Startup demographics (00:05:01)

6. Finding federal intellectual property (IP) (00:07:27)

7. Example: Commercializing a Navy materials breakthrough (00:09:44)

8. The secret sauce is in customer discovery (00:10:48)

9. Bringing a non-engineering skillset to an engineering-driven environment (00:12:26)

10. "I come from three generations of military" (00:14:14)

11. Taxpayer-funded tech portfolios (00:14:36)

12. Ways to think about where tech is developed (00:15:29)

13. "billion dollar markets" vs "mission-driven"? (00:16:41)

14. Non-dilutive capital is a big selling point for working with federal tech (00:17:18)

15. Government contracting is slow... what to do about it? (00:18:58)

16. The US Navy's NavalX approach (00:20:29)

17. The US Dept. of Defense's Defense Innovation Unit, DIUx (00:20:38)

18. Crossing the valley of death with venture capital, allies, and more (00:21:04)

19. "The government is slow to buy, and slow to stop buying" (00:21:51)

20. HOw to get more diversity of voices in the room? (00:22:14)

21. What is "tough tech" to FedTech? (00:24:44)

22. How many FedTEch companies have venture funding? (00:27:08)

23. 'Tech push' and 'market pull' (00:28:34)

24. How does FedTech get paid? (00:30:13)

25. How do government labs license their tech? (00:31:27)

26. As a startup itself, how is FedTech navigating its growth? (00:32:34)

27. Cultural impressions (00:34:15)

28. How do you get smart on such a wide variety of technical topics and markets? (00:34:54)

29. What are the trends in government acquisition needs? (00:37:36)

30. "It's an awesome time to be alive if you're a deep tech startup in the US" (00:38:54)

31. Building the tech pipelines (00:39:44)

32. The emergence of the US Space Force (00:40:13)

33. Surprise! the government communicates the best through social media (00:41:44)

34. Improving federal relationships with small tech companies (00:42:36)

35. Getting more women involved in government acquisition and tech startups (00:45:17)

36. The privileged role of governments to financially support frontier science and engineering (00:47:24)

37. FedTech is accepting applications for startups and mentors for its upcoming programs (00:50:54)