Steckman: Defense tech success requires blending commercial tech outsiders and industry insiders
Matthew Steckman · 99% of Drone Companies Will Die & Why Anduril’s Products Aren’t an Ethics Debate | Matthew Steckman · 20VC with Harry Stebbings · Mar 23, 2026 · at 3:36
Matthew Steckman is President and CBO of Anduril Industries. He explains why defense startups require a mix of silicon valley technologists and defense industry insiders to navigate the market.
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“Founding teams, one of the most important things in, in defense is some of them can be outsiders and, you know, brilliant technologists and thinkers. It does take a lot of inside knowledge and I think that one of the things we got right and keep getting right is that blend of Like the outside inside process who can think differently and bring in sort of commercial perspective high tech perspective add kind of entropy into the system. And then who can really deeply represent our customers, how they think, how does that come together uniquely that that becomes super important to having any success in the defense world.”
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