The next deep tech revolution isn’t coming from the Bay Area. It’s germinating in El Segundo, Seattle, Washington, D.C. — and potentially Austin, though that is still early.
The companies redefining aerospace, defense, space, physical AI, and the reindustrialization of America (@reinsummit) aren’t being built on Caltrain. They’re being built near launch pads, defense primes, manufacturing ecosystems, and the halls of the Pentagon.
Every VC pitches access: access to talent, customers, follow-on capital, and the relationships that help a startup skip a line or avoid a landmine.
For decades, that pitch was credible because the game was being played largely in one place. But when the game moves, the access doesn’t automatically travel.
This week, Shaun Maguire posted that most of
@Sequoia went on a “hardware trek” to LA. He ended with: “HARDWARE IS BACK, baby.”
It’s a great post. And it perfectly illustrates the point.
You don’t build the network, credibility, and pattern recognition to back and scale defense, space, aerospace, and physical AI industrial companies through an annual field trip.
The traditional Silicon Valley network simply doesn’t map cleanly here.Warm intros to Google, Stripe, and Meta are valuable in the software world.
But they don’t move a defense contract, open a program office, accelerate a teaming agreement, validate a manufacturing plan, or help navigate procurement.
In this new era, legacy VC firms are often left selling two things: money and a brand name.
Both matter. But neither is truly differentiated.
The investors who will help define the winners in this cycle are the ones who built their careers where the industry lives: inside the primes, the program offices, the manufacturing floors, the test ranges, and the procurement chains of El Segundo, Seattle, Washington, and beyond.
In deep tech, the network is the product.
Everything else is just capital.
@NewVistaCap