Ready Founder™ Spotlight
Meet the founders building companies worth watching. The Ready Founder Spotlight series features veteran and MilCom growth-stage SaaS and defense tech entrepreneurs on their businesses, their lessons, and what's ahead.
One Success Leads to Reinforcement
Some of the small business owners Sergey Alkorn talks to would rather not pay him $500 for a website. For $30 a month, they can get all the AI tools..
We Went to the Fire and Put It Out
Ross Puritty walked into a fire station and asked the crew a question. Do you have the same problem the military does? Do the lessons from your calls..
Treat Cybersecurity Like a Trade
Derrich Phillips joined the Army two weeks after he graduated from high school in 2002. September 11 was less than nine months behind him. “That..
Your Men Have to Eat First
When COVID hit and the company Charlie Raffay was working with began laying off its development team in the Philippines, Raffay couldn’t watch it..
We All Still Have That Reason Deep Down
Daniel Hendrix didn't know it growing up, but law enforcement was the family business. His grandmother was one of the first two female police..
Cash Flow Is Not a Theory
When Douglas Clark was a kid, he and his brother used to play a game with the dictionary. One of them would call out a page number, a column, and an..
Here’s What I Can Do for You
On Maury Argento’s first day at Siemens Ultrasound, one of the warehouse employees looked at her and asked how old she was. Argento had just left the..
People Lie, but the Data Never Does
Mike Pendleton woke up one morning shortly after retiring from the Air Force and started scrolling through his phone. Twenty-plus years of service...
Write It in Pencil
The first business Hillary Boyce ever started was born on her couch, late at night, with a glass of wine in her hand and no plan whatsoever. The..
We Help You Keep Your Promises
Devin Mahoney’s six-year-old daughter asked him a question over breakfast. “Dad, how many jobs do you have?” He laughed telling the story, because it..
I’d Rather Be Disliked for Who I Really Am Than Loved for Who I’m Not
Odie Gray was kicked out of high school. The way he tells it, the options that followed were simple: join the military, or face a future with almost..
It Can’t Be Built, and Even If You Could Build It, It Wouldn’t Work
When David Sherwood started college as a physics major, he had one question that had nothing to do with physics: How does biological memory work? It..
We Give That Blood a Second Chance
Every unit of donated blood has a shelf life of 42 days. After that, it gets thrown away. Every year, the United States discards millions of units...
You Already Have the Thing Most of Silicon Valley Is Trying to Reverse Engineer
Rana Gujral caught himself doing something that unsettled him. He is a builder. He has spent years in the weeds of speech signals, models, and..
We Don’t Have Autonomous Systems Just Going Willy-Nilly All Over the Place
John Rye has a question he likes to ask. If you’re in a self-driving car and that car has to make a split-second decision and makes the wrong one,..
Instead of You Pushing, the String Pulls You
When Nathan Gray was nine years old, his father brought home a computer. Within days, Nate was teaching himself to code. He would walk to Radio Shack..
Lady, You Are Crazy
In the fall of 2022, Olga Topchaya was home with a new baby, staring down the worst tech recession in a decade. Hundreds of thousands of people in..