2023年2月4日

五年前，穀歌放棄了五角大樓的一份政府合同，因為數千名員工抗議該公司的技術可能被用於致命的無人機瞄準。然而，如今，矽穀在為美國國防部開發技術方麵的顧慮要少得多。創始人基金的特雷·斯蒂芬斯、Lux資本的比拉爾·祖貝裏、盾盾資本的拉傑·沙阿和in - q - tel的資深總裁史蒂夫·鮑希爾今天在舊金山為退伍軍人舉辦的創業活動上如是說。沙阿在談到他個人觀察到的態度轉變時說:“對國家安全廣泛感興趣的公司、創始人和企業家的數量，我從未見過這麼多。”鮑希爾認為，“矽穀不願與(國防部)和英特爾界合作”總是“言過其實”。他補充說，在他在中央情報局風險基金in - q - tel工作的16年裏，他的團隊每年與大約1000家公司會麵，隻有“5到10家公司拒絕了我們，說他們對與我們所代表的客戶合作不感興趣”。我們將在TechCrunch+上獲得更多的討論，但我想分享我們的部分對話，主要是在向美國政府出售產品時要考慮的事項，因為擁有商業客戶的創始人可能會越來越多地考慮將他們的產品和應用程序出售給美國軍方。(人工智能、網絡安全和自動化初創公司尤其如此))例如，我們與投資者討論了使命演變問題，這意味著一家開始與政府合作的初創公司如何確保它不會因為新請求而花費大量時間來滿足政府，並在此過程中忽略了早期的商業客戶。自主武器係統製造商Anduril的聯合創始人特雷·斯蒂芬斯(Trae Stephens)從一開始就積極爭取政府機構的業務，他說，這種目標上的逐步轉變“正是使它在早期階段很難兼顧(迎合民用企業和政府)”。他說，“很多讓創始人能夠與國防部進行早期業務的項目，都需要針對這個用例對產品進行dod化。”雖然In-Q-Tel很早就支持了Anduril，斯蒂芬斯對此表示感謝，但他指出，許多接受政府資金的公司，包括通過小企業創新研究(SBIR)項目獲得的資金，“最終都建立了所有這些非常具體的工作流程步驟，使它們脫離了真正運作業務所需的商業業務”。 (Stephens relatedly noted that very few outfits can chase after the military exclusively, as did Anduril, because it “takes so long to get into production with the DoD that you have to be able to raise, basically, an infinite amount of seed dollars; otherwise, the company’s going to die.” ) Relatedly, we asked how so-called dual-use companies deal with their intellectual property rights once they’ve begun selling to the government. For example, you can imagine a scenario in which a tech helps the NSA identify certain types of people who are making certain types of calls, and while there are commercial applications for this tech, the government doesn’t want it being released to adversaries. Is there a way to sort that out in advance, we wondered? Here, there was no easy answer other than: get the right help and do it as fast as possible. Zuberi recounted one cautionary tale centered around one of Lux’s own portfolio companies. Said Zuberi: “I have a company that received a $100,000 [National Science Foundation] grant. Two guys started it in my office. I didn’t think much of it; I thought it was nice to have on their resume. Then they started to do a Series B raise, and one of the [interested] firms does diligence on what other contracts [the team might] have, and there was a clause in that NSF grant that said, ‘Hey, if the government needs [what you’re building], we can use it.’ So we had to wait six months while we negotiated with [someone] at the NSF who didn’t care about it at all to get that right back. I would have paid them double the amount of the grant just to make it go away, but they said ‘No, you can’t do this, we can’t go back.’ So you can run into problems. Again, we’ll have more from this discussion soon, including about AI in military applications; we learned a lot — hopefully you will, too.