Tech Alliance Investor Summit 2025 | Sarah Jones, In-Q-Tel

Transcript

I'm Sarah Jones. I'm an investor at Inqutel. And Inqutell is a strategic investor. We're actually a nonprofit and we support the US national security community, intelligence community and and our allies. And we are focused on investing in emerging technologies and bringing those technologies to bear and to further the mission of our partner agencies that we work with in the US, UK and Australia.

[Music] We're very interested in artificial intelligence. We've made over 300 investments in artificial intelligence. In fact, we are also interested in cyber security. We're interested in what we call our advanced systems which is all about manufacturing our robotics, air, space, sea and ground platforms and technology as well as power and energy. And then other things like critical minerals that are necessary for securing our nation and then we also look at biotech and life sciences.

So I get really excited. I have a background in aerospace and and defense. So, I get really excited about the platforms we invest in like a autonomous systems. You know, when we think about the future of of security and and even the future of defense, a lot of that has to do with autonomy. So, that's, you know, that spans all all sorts of platforms from marine to air.

And then I also get excited about space technology. We we're seeing great advances in space and we have over 50 companies that we've invested in in space. Everything from connectivity related to you know earth observation and more and in including rocket launch we've also invested in that area as well. Yeah, I've met a number of founders at this event and then we also have a number of investments in the Seattle area around space folks like Stoke Space as well as Starfish Space. So, I actually um have been a big fan of the Seattle investment community and and have had the fortune of interacting and then I also it helps when when the head of the technology alliance invites you.

you show up and you participate and it's so good to connect with the rest of the start startup founders investment community out here and I hope to see more of these events you know I think in Seattle you know there's a great entrepreneurialist spirit in Seattle like I used to say as a native Seattle I say you know you've written on our planes you write on our computers and you you drink our coffee you know we we've been kind of the undercover entrepreneurial community for a long time and we have a growing venture capital sector. So I think we're starting to see a lot more capital come into the Seattle area which is fantastic and the recognition that there's an abundance of talent in the area especially around emer you know emerging very important sectors like AI. So it's, you know, while, you know, the Bay Area certainly has, you know, pound per pound a lot of capital down there and and is a, you know, kind of the startup hub of the United States, you know, Seattle is really important in a number of sectors, whether it's health and biotech and AI and logistics and and others. you know, just a great a great community and and kind of feed that happens that's you know coming out of like you know the Microsoft and and Amazon and Boeings you know it's been a good foundation for a lot of companies to start here so we are really looked looked at as a trusted partner for the national intelligence and security community for the US and its allies and so we play a critical role in not ly scouting for new technologies and investing in emerging technologies that help secure our nation and for national interest but we also you know play a key role passing along insights about what's happening in our startup community in the US and abroad what the technology trends are and and so they we really help our our government partners understand what's going out in the commercial going on in the commercial sector and startup community as well as the investment community. So that's key.

And then our model, you know, not not only includes that insights and intelligence, but we work with startups in two ways. We make one, we make a we make traditional equity investments as any other venture capital firm does. But what we also do, which is really unique, is we make investments where there's a technology development agreement associated with with it. And what we what that's about is taking a commercial technology and working with that startup to add the requirements necessary so that one of our government partners can actually adopt that technology. and we've helped transfer more than 500 commercial technologies into the US government and allies really around furthering their mission, furthering the security of our nation and you know just making our nation help making our nation more prosperous for through some of those investments our platforms that we utilize you know whether that's for logistics resupply whether that's for security.

I would love to see really common operating system that allows many of our different types of assets to work together seamlessly. That would be amazing. I think that would go a long way in furthering kind of the security and and defense of our nation. I think in the startup community and in the OEM community, we see a lot of what we call walled gardens. And I would love to see more interoperability between systems that allows for, you know, our end users in the government to be able to utilize assets in a more flexible and interoperable manner.

That would be really interesting to me cuz I like the hard tech stuff. I think my favorite piece of advice for founders is really around, you know, you go out on your own, but you shouldn't strike out alone. And what I mean by that is it's really about gathering around you an incredible team that complements who you are as a founder or as a or as a team of founders because the strongest teams are the ones that take good ideas and make them great and are actually able to execute upon them. And the even teams that have the best idea where the team is, you know, kind of mid or not getting along or not complimenting each other, those are the ones that don't end up performing as well. So it all comes back to people.

So it's really about how do you put egos aside and complement each other and build the right skill set throughout your team so that you can not only build a great technology but scale an amazing company. [Music]