Transcripts
What You Missed On The Vector Episode 3: “R&D Growth Strategies: Government vs. Private Sector”
Written by: Morsiell Dormu
In this episode of The Vector, host Kelli Kedis Ogborn explores the dual-track road of advancing innovation through both government and private sector pathways. She’s joined by Matt Tompkins, Vice President of the Space Portfolio at The Outpost, a dual-use technology accelerator and venture fund. With a deep background in U.S. government innovation strategy, including co-founding SpaceWERX, Tompkins shares actionable insights on navigating research and development (R&D) from idea to implementation.
Key Highlights:
Government vs. Private Sector Innovation:
Speed vs. Structure: Tompkins breaks down a common misconception—that the private sector is always faster. While commercial firms often appear more agile, it’s typically due to less bureaucracy and more tolerance for risk, not necessarily better systems. He notes the military’s challenge in pivoting quickly due to structural barriers like contract modifications and institutional inertia.
Failure as a Function: Where commercial firms might quickly shut down unprofitable efforts, the government often tries to recoup or repurpose projects. This can result in inefficient continuation of programs that would be terminated in the private sector.
Balancing Return on Investment (ROI):
Two Lenses of Value:
- Government ROI is often capability-driven—focused on mission outcomes and national security.
- Private Sector ROI is equity- or profit-driven, with investor expectations for returns in 3–7 years.
Tompkins notes that entrepreneurs must often satisfy both, making their path uniquely difficult. The challenge is to articulate value in terms that resonate with both investors and government stakeholders.
Show Your Work: Kelli urges startups to communicate clearly: what are you doing, what happens if it fails, and how will you pivot? “AB test your tech,” she says. Transparency builds trust.
Navigating Risk:
Government Has More Room to Explore: Especially in lower TRLs (Technology Readiness Levels), government entities often accept higher failure risk to explore what’s possible. Private investors, however, want a clear line to profitability.
Use Cases Are Gold: The best way to mitigate risk? Propose a use case. Matt says: “Don’t just pitch—show how it would perform in real-world scenarios.”
The Power of Dual-Use Technology:
Dual Use ≠ Buzzword: A truly dual-use tech has clear government and commercial applications—this isn’t just good strategy; it’s often required for government innovation funding (e.g., SpaceWERX). Companies need balanced portfolios to stay resilient through funding cycles.
Two Proof Points: Just because your tech works doesn’t mean the market wants it. Entrepreneurs must prove:
- The technology functions.
- The commercial market sees value in it.
Innovation Ecosystems and Allied Collaboration:
Beyond U.S. Borders: Tompkins emphasizes that space innovation is inherently global. Through work with international programs and NATO’s new innovation fund, he sees a growing interest in collaborative funding and tech development.
Policy Drives Demand: He cites In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM) as a prime example of how White House policy led to DOD and NASA initiatives, which in turn drove market interest and industrial base growth.
Areas of Initial Allied Focus:
- SATCOM
- Remote sensing
- Small and heavy launch infrastructure
- ISAM technologies
Final Advice to Innovators:
- Focus on One Capability at a Time: Avoid “spray and pray.” Prioritize a single core strength and build from there.
- Understand the Funding Landscape: Explore all routes—SBIRs, STTRs, BAAs, Defense Production Act, congressional plus-ups, and more.
- Stay Ready to Pivot: Plans change. Build your fiscal year around specific outcomes, then be agile if opportunities shift.
Final Thought:
“No one does anything truly amazing alone,” says Tompkins. Innovation—especially in space—requires collaboration across borders, sectors, and stakeholders. With the right blend of focus, transparency, and ecosystem engagement, the valley of death becomes a bridge to sustainable impact.
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Transcript:
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Hello everyone and welcome to the Vector where we discuss the topics, trends and insights driving the global space ecosystem. I am your host Kelli Kedis Ogborn, Vice President of Space Commerce and Entrepreneurship at Space Foundation. And I’m very excited today to be joined by Matt Tompkins, who is the vice president of the space portfolio at the Outpost, which is a dual use technology accelerator and venture fund. Matt has more than authority to join me for this discussion today and he has extensive experience working with and guiding research and development and innovation portfolios in both the private sector and within the US government. Matt is a graduate of the Air Force Academy with a BS in Astronautical engineering and he spent the last 20 years of his career in active duty as a contractor supporting every major space mission area. Notably in 2020, he was part of the team that co-founded the US Space Forces Innovation arm, which is known as Space Works, where he focused on the international market orchestrating and supporting efforts such as the International Space Pitch Day, the Allied Space Accelerator program, and the Global Space Innovation Project. And he continues to serve now as a reservist in his position at the Outpost. He oversees the space portfolio and helps companies overcome the dreaded valley of death, which many of your intimately aware with while also advancing next generation technology companies into both commercial and national security verticals. Matt, I really want to thank you for joining me this morning.
Matt Tompkins:
Thanks, Kelli, appreciate it. And thanks also to Space Symposium 365. It’s a great way to kind keep current as we all await for the symposium here this spring.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Absolutely. It’s a way to connect in the absence of connecting in person every April. So today I think we have a great and a big conversation to tackle, especially when you talk about the duality of innovation systems and pushing really interesting research and development forward, but also making it relevant and applicable to the markets that you’re moving into. And so what’s interesting about the space community is that it’s often discussed that it will look very different in 10 years and driving that is the fact that daily new and agile companies and really aspiring entrepreneurs are joining the ranks and redefining capabilities and business strategies for how people should think about and engage space. And as you know, engaging in the industry, it’s not a one size fits all and growing technology portfolios means different things based on different stakeholders as well as how you progress in technology development timelines and also business goals. So to start off the conversation, I really want to set the stage and given that you have worked in both, I’m curious if you could tell me some of the main differences you have seen in working with the US government and the private sector in advancing research and development.
Matt Tompkins:
Sure, that’s a great question. By the way, I’ve been supporting US government, both like you said in my intro as active duty and then later as a contractor. The one question that I keep getting asked recently is how do we go faster? Because I think there’s sometimes this falsity that the commercial industry does in fact go faster, and I think they may appear to go faster, but that’s as a result of usually a lot less bureaucracy and a lot easier to take risk. But I think the main difference that I’ve noticed a little bit is just the fact that commercial industry is better at closing things. Typically, the US military will like to open a project or we’ll say an agency or a new division or something like this, and then if it doesn’t seem to be working, they’ll try to reve it. They’ll try to kind of recoup that investment in organization somehow as opposed to sometimes in commercial industry we’re like, well, that didn’t work, move on.
And it is just a lot easier for smaller companies to pivot. Now this is also a function of the size and the resources that are involved. But isn’t that something then that the defense department should take a look at? Are they too big? Do their resources make it too difficult to pivot? One of the biggest things that I chuckle about and that I like to tell people when I finally left government service was just getting a new computer or traveling. These are things that are some of the most difficult things in the day to day. Dealing with your computer, dealing with your network and dealing with all of that or just booking travel and getting travel reimbursed for business. That’s the biggest no-brainer in the world. Now, on the other side of that fence, and that’s certainly something that the military could certainly benefit from, but I’m digressing from space.
I think as far as moving on, one of the things that I’ve noticed a lot is in not just in prototypes but even later maturity stages, what technology readiness level that things that have already been operationalized. The commercial industry is just easy to learn from something, make a change and pivot. A lot of times the military either doesn’t have the flexibility to make a specific change without additional bureaucracy of going through contract change proposals and documentation. And so I think I would say when a lot of people saying, how do we go faster, I would kind of say, how do you change how you pivot from your mistakes? Yeah, so that’s something that I’ve noticed through this initially.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s a great overview and one of the themes that’s coming up in my mind as you’re talking about this is that concept of agility. I know in the space industry the word of being agile and being able to pivot is critical to any sort of business strategy and plan, but obviously the way that the government views agility and the way that the private sector views agility, and maybe it’s not even viewing agility, but the ability to be agile is probably more accurate. And what I would wonder about that is when it comes down to what the ROI is for each stakeholder, because there is merit in engaging the government to further RD portfolios, but obviously the capital that’s coming from the government is through taxpayer dollars and other sort of stakeholders at the end. And then in the private side it can be a lot more closely held. And so ROI can be a lot more immediately scrutinized as opposed to having a longer mission lens. So can you illuminate a bit on your thoughts on that in terms of how to balance the different standards of ROI when engaging both audiences and how entrepreneurs can think about creating their strategy to appeal to both?
Matt Tompkins:
Excellent question. I think when you’re dealing with stakeholders, and I would say some stakeholders are capability driven like in the military, I want you to deliver this capability to me, other stakeholders are financially driven. And just to start from that perspective, the military does not operate or the DOD or most of the government in itself does not operate on an equity driven
Return on investment, right? All those grants that you were talking about, they’re either non-dilutive or we don’t own portions of the prime development contractors. Something interesting the allies do. A lot of the prime developers over in Europe are in part owned by their allied nations. And so there is an equity driven passion or bias when you’re talking about am I giving a good return on investment? Now whether that’s equity driven or capability driven, I think it’s something to point out and to note. Now, I don’t think that the US government or the US culture is going to possibly look at owning shares of a prime development contractor for defense. However, we are already seeing the office of strategic capital that just came out December 1st that’s going to be doing federal loan guarantees and that speaks to a debt and loan type of culture that may be drifting more towards an equity focused environment. The other thing that you brought up was time.
The DOD definitely operates on a very constricted timescale. We have these things called urgent operational needs or joint urgent operational needs. These are requirements that come out from combatant commands to say, I need this capability in less than six months. So there are those kinds of urgent things much like the commercial industry, but again, the difference is whether you deliver or not, how does that look and who are you I guess relaying the accomplishment of that delivery to Sometimes it can be a lot more difficult if the people that are involved have a stake in the game from a financial perspective. And in the military it’s just a lot more subjective. There is certainly a stake in the game and that stake could be more threat based rather than economically or financially based. So I think that’s kind of the difference. And you originally kept saying how do you balance that?
And that’s really important. So if you’re a commercial company, you typically end up having to deliver both and that can be very difficult. You are simultaneously convincing your investors that what you delivered is a value to them and will make them money, but at the same time, you are also trying to convince your government customer that you have delivered something that is impactful and both of those are very difficult to do and the commercial industry has to do that at the same time. And so that’s just an additional burden that I’ve noticed that we need to deal with that it’s just a little bit different than doing that in the military that I’ve noticed so far. I think the other thing that I would add is when you are trying to deliver to any stakeholder, it’s so important to understand why they made this investment or why they made this decision to give this and what their bias is. And usually it comes down from their background. Why is this particular technology or effort important to you? Really being able to understand that is something that’s very often overlooked when you go into a project and then maintained because that bias can change much like the threat changes or much like the economic footprint changes back with your investor.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
You hit the nail on the head of where I was really driving this, and I want to add a couple of other layers to this. I think it’s, while we can streamline it and summarize what we’re driving at, there really are different levels because the technology and the r and d that is being furthered in both verticals, the government and the private sector also is at different maturity thresholds. It very much runs the gamut on different TLS and this concept that you talked about to the impact to the investor. So if the investor is the private sector or the investor is the government who’s actually funding and what are they going to get in return? And one of the things that I always talk about when it comes to investment in the space industry or how you actually progress innovative portfolios is balancing this altruism for where space is going.
And in some innovation portfolios you can boil that down to doing innovation for innovation’s sake because it’s important to establish a baseline for us to be able to use in 5, 10, 20 years. And then the business pragmatism in the private sector of if I invest in X, you’re going to give me a return in 3, 5, 7 years. And a lot of those technologies and capabilities are a lot closer held because they have more immediately lines drawn to space as it is now and where space is going to go. And I think a lot of that boils down to a risk appetite and how the government and the private sector ingest risk and how they also play out in risk. Because I would think that from a government aspect, a lot of it does play into this. It’s not necessarily altruism because again, it depends on the level of maturity, but if you’re looking at technologies and r and d that’s in the TRL 1, 3 4, a lot of times you are progressing to see what’s technologically possible, what kind of capabilities can we bring to bear for an integration point. And so the risk of failure or realizing that that technology is not possible yet is broader than if you are trying to push that threshold in the private sector because it’s private dollars being put into this portfolio. And so in your experience with risk and understanding how both balance it, what would you have to add to that?
Matt Tompkins:
Yeah, I was just in a meeting last week where this came up and I won’t say who of course, but it was a flag officer in the air force and he said, I don’t know about this tech even though we described that. And I quite frankly said, well then this is your chance to apply use cases and scenarios and put that risky feeling to the test. So we’ve explained the technology, you think it’s interesting, but you’re just not sure how it would perform in a certain use case. Boy, does that not sound like a great project. So that is why we have these innovation projects and I don’t think innovation is going to ever replace traditional acquisition, nor is it trying to. I think it’s just there to compliment
Supplement and augment. I love those three words, very non-threatening words and we’ve seen innovation funding go up despite Congress whether or not to fund just a couple months ago, which was interesting. It ended up, we’ve seen it over the past few years go up. So I think to your point of how do you balance that risk is well take a look at traditional acquisition and take a look at the innovation and monetarily quantify that risk that you’re taking and really kind of understand what you can do because I feel like a lot of people, both users and customers in the dod don’t realize how much in the driver’s seat they really are in all of this. And so if you could have a TL four technology that, hey, we’re thinking about building a prototype and what do we think about that, you could have a TL nine technology that’s simply not used in the military that lowers it and then all of a sudden you’re kind of in the same boat.
So there’s ways to balance that risk and say, if I want to get from a five to six to your L and I want to do this type of project, you have options. And so I think what the military can do is to provide what I said earlier, provide use cases and provide scenarios, listen to the pitch, and then that’s your chance to then be constructive and offer something too far. There are many demos that I’ve gone where a company will come out and demo and the military will be like, well, thanks for coming out. So I think that’s really the biggest thing that the military can do is to provide, well, here’s how I was envisioning that when you described that because maybe there’s a miscommunication and then again, as we talked about earlier, that’s where you can understand that person’s bias and their passion and then really play to that and say, let’s make a project that you will be invested in.
And we know that’s not equity based, but it’s the same kind of thing. I think that there’s a lot of just transparency that the military can provide. Now I know and have worked in it for many years at varying levels of classification. And so it’s not always easy to do, but if we can provide a little bit more advanced planning and understanding of here are the things where we want to go and here are the roadmaps. And I think the second thing that the military needs to do is to stick to that plan and to stick to that roadmap and commit to it. Now, we did talk about pivoting earlier, so there’s lots of things that can go wrong and I understand that, so it’s very, very critical, but the military is changing sometimes too rapidly for the commercial industry to catch up and understand how to navigate it.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, the transparency piece is really critical and I think that the onus doesn’t necessarily, if we’re just talking about the US government doesn’t necessarily just fall in the US government because there really is an arts to the communication of how you talk about a technology and give somebody confidence that you’ve thought through the risk portfolio and you’ve thought through the AB testing. One of the things when I used to do tech commercialization and I would work with companies when they would apply for government grants, whether it be SBIRs or BAAs or broader, is I would always have them show your work in a way, and I know it sounds really basic, but what are you proposing to get funded? What is the outcome of that funding? If you are not able to meet your technological objective? What’s your plan B? What’s your plan C? So at least it’s completely transparent across the board what you’re trying to establish from a baseline of possibility and how the government can track it to understand, yes, no, did you meet your objective? How do you pivot? Because sometimes I think innovation in and of itself is a buzzword and sometimes technologies can very much be talked about in buzzwordy terms, and I think you need to be as clear as possible about what are the bounds that you’re trying to push and what can you expect as an outcome. So that transparency needs to be on both sides
Matt Tompkins:
For sure. One of the biggest buzzwords that gets used a lot and used here in the introduction is Valley of Death, something that I’m not quite sure everyone really knows how to define the valley of death, so how if you’ve approached it, I’ll actually be giving a talk in a couple of weeks on that and we’ll give it a shot or we’ll at least kind of unmask it a little bit. And buzzwords can be fun, buzzwords can be helpful, I think in all of this. And where is all of this innovation going? We’ve got a new spark cell popping up almost monthly it seems, which is just fantastic. And I think what it shows is that we’re trying to make things, and I use the personal pronoun because I view myself as a part of this larger ecosystem. We’re trying to make it fun, we’re trying to make it inviting.
And so it’s really inspiring to see new things with the word works after with an X or whatever popping up all the time. And NATO is now doing an innovation fund and a defense dual use accelerator. So it’s really exciting to see that because people find it inviting, people find it welcoming, and if you can create an atmosphere and an ecosystem that is fun and inviting organically, it’ll grow. And I think that’s part of it. And so a lot of times what I tell people is when we talk about dual use, which is another buzzword, and I think if we can realize that we’re all kind of in the same boat and that a rising tide lifts us all, then we’ll start to realize that people, yes, may have different bias, people may have a conflict of interest, but overall, usually everybody that you talk to is out there trying to help and do their part. They’re trying to compliment, they’re trying to augment, they’re trying to supplement. And if you can realize that and harness that, you’ll probably find a way to benefit from it.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Absolutely. And I do want to capitalize on the progression of this conversation moving into dual use, but we do have a question from LinkedIn that I want to posture to you. So somebody asked if industry should be looking at developing their own mission resilience and protection solutions, what are your thoughts on that?
Matt Tompkins:
Yeah, absolutely. You’ve got to protect your investment. Something interesting that a colleague brought up to me a couple months ago, communication satellites are considered extremely high value. One because they’re used all day every day, and two, because they’re extremely expensive to put out there in geo orbit, but they’re considered high value assets by both the DOD and commercial on the commercial side. They’re sold and every time they’re sold, there’s usually a station keeping thing or some sort of change that expends that fuel. And that is a huge reduction in your investment because you have reduced the end of life date, so to speak of that thing. And so hopefully we’ll see space refueling in the future and that’s what Orbital Prime and other efforts across the world are trying to do. Excuse me. But I think absolutely you should be looking at commercial resilience and there is a budding insurance game in space and everything that we do in our lives if you stop and think about it in some way involves some sort of space capability and it is becoming a fabric of what we deliver. So if we think about are there threats to that, a lot of times, well, threat may not necessarily be a traditional actor in a nation state of what you think of it, but there will always be some sort of vulnerability that may be exploited or simply may just go wrong. So absolutely, I would say that if there are protection solutions that you think you can offer, there will probably be a customer for such if there is a potential loss of investment or capability.
Matt Tompkins:
That’s a great question.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I completely agree with you, and it really helps illuminate this intertwined connection that the government and the private sector does have because what I’ve seen, at least in innovation, this moves very well into our dual use. Second part of this is policy and regulation oftentimes runs like five to seven years behind capabilities. So I think that innovation really needs an RD really needs to prove what’s possible from a capability stance and an industry and private sector really help drive that in order for the government to understand how to adopt it, how to use it, how to regulate it. And so this whole concept, as you mentioned of resiliency in space, I’ve seen it as be a pervasive theme that’s come up a lot, whether it’s in space traffic management or as you said, refueling depots or satellite structures and how you’re actually going to manufacture them and de-orbit them or reuse them in space. I think that it’s important to understand what the baseline of possibility is on the industry side in terms of capabilities so that the government can figure out a framework around it. What are your thoughts on that?
Matt Tompkins:
In that same thread? So, I’ll say I am, but in space servicing, assembly and manufacturing maintenance, in that case, the White House was incredibly helpful in drafting new policy and saying, this is what we think we want to encourage. Here’s how that worked. The military took that policy and said, we’re going to build some initial programs to see what’s out there. And they released an orbital prime STTR phase one and did a whole, gosh over 1220, something like that. And then that is going to move on to a phase two here, I believe in March, and then eventually on to ventures looking at supplying TFI and stratify financing in the future. At the same time, NASA is also using that policy to do their own on orbit servicing, assembly and maintenance programs and stuff like that. So we’re seeing policy drive, government activity. What that government activity is going to turn into is potentially palming and sorry, programming for dollars.
And then what that’s going to do is send a demand signal. The government is going to create a demand signal for then industry to start doing their own irad or independent research and development dollars to then start building up that national industrial base. It’s working. We’re really seeing this now, and I think it’s important to start demonstrating that capability. My 2 cents on that is that we now need to move into the allied portion of that and grow all that because I think that’s incredibly important and we won’t be able to really realize all of that without our allies, but that’s the next logical step and I know that they’re already considering it. So I would say policy has an opportunity to drive things and
I saw a perfect example of that, the White House really coming out with a fantastic policy.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Yeah, I agree. I think it’s on both sides. Sometimes innovation, what I meant by my earlier comment, it sometimes surprises us to realize, oh, we’re technologically able to do X, we need to figure out how to adopt it. But then a lot in space, and I talk a lot about this with the Artemis mission, so the fact that NASA has reoriented for what Artemis wants to bring to bear with the successful first launch and the recovery of the capsule, it’s almost guiding as a north star to a lot of industry about where policy and space collectively wants to go to figure out how to create these strategies for scalability. But a lot of it also comes down to then how you communicate the technology so people understand it. And this was a comment that somebody made in LinkedIn about transparency, and I think it plays really well into this dual use because one of the things that I find interesting, we talked about government as a stakeholder, private sector as a stakeholder, and how they deem and term ROI is commercialization and the ability for a technology to fly means different things to different people.
So when I used to work with innovators, I would say that really if you’re moving from a government atmosphere of having as an integrator, the government is a use case and wanting to move purely into this private entity. And it’s interesting that you talked about the Valley of death of people not understanding it. They might not understand it, but I know they inherently feel it because I talked for these companies, they’re like, my technology works, the government funded it, I fielded it, I integrated it. Why doesn’t the market want it? And what I would sometimes tell them is that there’s two proofs of concept. It’s if the technology works and if the commercial market wants it and the commercial market wanting it, when you’re moving purely into a private sector, it gets stickier because you’re dealing with humans and business cycles and investment and emotions and all of these things that are not necessarily quantifiable. And so there is an art to messaging what the technology means and how it impacts the customer so that it does have legs to get over that valley of death to actually integrate into new or intended markets.
Matt Tompkins:
Yeah, that’s a good point. When works really started to come into the light, it was very clear that we started using this thing needs to have dual use applicability, so it has to have both commercial and defense application. Why did we do that? I think it’s become clear that part of it was to make sure that the DOD is encouraging overall economic health of these companies. So if you are breeding companies that have defense only applications, it’s not necessarily all that healthy. It’s not as healthy as it could be for the US economy, which ultimately is the charter of the small business administration where all of that funding comes from. Okay, so economic health is one reason. The other thing is just to kind of hedge your business in general. If you only have one type of customer, it’s not a really healthy business to begin with.
So on the business side, we are trying to make sure that people have an understanding of is this commercially viable because we don’t, the dod shouldn’t be the only person looking at your product because if for whatever reason funding can’t do it this year or this quarter or whatever quarter, we don’t want to be the cause of having a business go under. I think the other thing is timelines. The government tends to be a little bit slow to start but then can ramp up very quickly, whereas the commercial industry may be able to give you an initial investment and then we’ll kind of wait and see how you do. So I think because of that, it’s almost like investing in personal finances. You have your stocks and then you have your bonds, and so you want to have a really balanced portfolio. And I think that’s what companies need to really realize and that also that is a factor in getting selected for an AppWorks innovation or space works innovation thing.
There are entire huge sections on how is the commercialization of this technology going to go? Where do you see it coming to market? Tell me about all that. Show me that there’s a beachhead there and you are rated against that. And I think it’s important for people to realize that there’s a huge differentiator. So technologies that may already have a commercial market and that we’re simply looking to repurpose them for defense, those can look very, very attractive. And so if you can show proficiency in both, that’s great. The reverse is also true. If you have a company and you’re saying, look at all these government contracts that I have, it’s a really good stable business that looks like a stable investment and I’m trying to do something on the commercial side, family investors or high net worth individuals should notably take that as a fantastic sign that that investment has been de-risked. So you can use it to your advantage going either way if you have both.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
That’s a fantastic point. And there is, as you know, there is a strategy to being able to show credibility in both markets to leverage investment and interest in the other. That’s why when a lot of young entrepreneurs or companies will talk about wanting to work purely in the commercial sector when it comes to space, I always remind them that there is a touch point with the government. If you’re not going after a government grant to be able to develop your technology, they will still be your regulator, they will be a customer, they will be a validator, they’ll be an integrator. There are all these other ways that you’re going to have to work within that ecosystem and that sort of stakeholder environment. So you have to prepare and plan for both. I do want to broaden this conversation slightly because you’ve dropped the word allied into the conversation a few times.
And as you know, innovation is not just this duality between the private sector and the US government. It is global and especially when it comes to space, you have a lot of innovation and RD portfolios that are not geographically bound. And the future of space really needs to be this intrinsic, collaborative and competitive environment in order to really achieve our collective wish for where we’re going. And so, I know that you were really involved in the development of innovation ecosystems and funds globally and particularly with our allied nations and with NATO. Can you talk a little bit more about that and what is really happening? What’s the pulse? How can companies think about it and take part of it?
Matt Tompkins:
Great. It’s my favorite topic. So yeah, we, to start, I think initially I started looking into this and saying when I was working international affairs force based systems command just as a contractor, but supporting that, I started to notice that the technology that we used when working in a coalition environment was already fielded for the most part.
It was already something that was either commercial off the shelf or something that had been fielded and operational for a while. Now we were looking at making subtle improvements to those things, but usually the baseline technology was there. So I started asking questions, show me a technology where country A, B and C all put money in and then I’ll get to use it on orbit. I got a few examples, but that where it stopped, it was just a few examples. It wasn’t we would say in that office by design as part of a process. And so I think it really became prevalent when you started looking at the trail of dollars. So Ken, just as an open-ended question, can US defense dollars that are earmarked for the defense of our nation that come from our taxpayers, be sent overseas and spent on another company in another country that will go to their economy?
It gets tricky. There’s really not a whole lot of flexible legislation or programs that allow us to do that. There are programs, there is legislation, but those programs are usually just one or two. And the legislation is quite frankly outdated. I’m talking about 20 plus years old. So much has changed in the financial world. So much has changed in the RD world that requires that update. There have been things, the army had a venture fund called OnPoint, which recently closed, and then just more recently the DOD put in something called the trusting capital marketplace, which is about to now move into something separately with the Office of Strategic Capital. So there are programs we are learning, we are adjusting, but by and large, I’ve noticed that for TRL two through six,
There’s a serious lack of collaborative r and d funding from the us. Now, a good example of that is this NATO innovation fund. Now it’s a brand new fund. We don’t know exactly how it’s going to be used or executed, but we are a part NATO. To my knowledge, I don’t believe the US is going to participate. Now, maybe that could be that we’re waiting and I hope the answer is that we’re going to participate soon, or maybe it’s because we don’t have flexible congressional legislation or maybe it’s just because this should be a variety of factors. But I think these are important questions for us to ask and look at. Something interesting also at NATO is the Diana program, the Defense Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic. I think I got that right. But Diana will be only giving out $50,000 grants, $150,000 grants.
You’ll never be able to do a prototype on that. So I think it’s important to know how NATO intends to bridge that gap from maybe doing a study to providing something of higher TRL. So even our allies are also coming into the fold, but we can do a lot more. It should be painfully obvious that by now in the Ukrainian effort, when I think Putin thought he was going to be there for a couple months, has strike out quite longer. And I think that is a testament to allied cooperation and collaboration and was technology involved, if you look it up, I would say technology helped turn the tide of the war with what we’re doing with advanced communication and some of the drone efforts that are happening in Ukraine. So I’m really excited to see a lot of those inch stones moving forward. But I think what’s needed now is for us to ask what is it that is needed and what can we do? And I think it starts with financial legislation in the United States.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
It’s a very interesting concept, especially going on this point that I made earlier, that space needs to be collaborative while competitive. And I’m curious, what have you seen be at least some of the initial themes, innovative themes that the funding would go toward? Because from the point that you made earlier about investment from different countries going into this fund that might not directly economically benefit them. I don’t want to say it throws a wrench into it, but it does complicate things slightly in terms of that ROI cost. And what’s interesting about also this shift about where space is going is during the Apollo era, I like to say, is that engagement in space was very much a national security, national posturing endeavor. And so you had countries that wanted to prove capabilities and then everything was sort of vertically aligned. And technological progression or exploration was sort of this second order impact. Not that it wasn’t important, but it came after. Now it’s very much on the forefront. What can we push the boundaries of technological progression when we retire the ISS and now we move over r and d collaboratively to these commercial space stations. What does that look like? So there’s a lot of opportunity, as you said, to kind of redraw the landscape of what that cooperation looks like. And I’m just curious what innovative themes are on the forefront of that to give a proving ground for broader legislation or for broader collaboration?
Matt Tompkins:
Sure, great question. Hopefully I’ll try to answer that with some sort of focus areas or space mission. So I think initially people are looking at collaborating with allies in two main areas. One meaning satcom, which should be obvious on making sure you’re coordinated. And the other just in general remote sensing, and I’ll give you an example. So within the defense department, we have the commercial integration cell, the joint space operations Center. So within the commercial integration cell, there are already a few commercial companies, but they are either remote sensing or satcom. So it should be very clear that initially that’s how we are coordinating internally allies are a part of that. But I’d like to see some allied companies, Yvette, and we are starting to see that coming in. I Dunno the latest of the number of the companies, but I do know that hopefully that’s on the horizon.
The second thing is look at small launch. You talked about Apollo and everything like that. Look at how small launch has totally changed or even heavy launch with the ES four ring, which there was just a launch I believe on Monday. And seeing people just in general, the cost of getting to space and space lift is drastically reduced. But from an ally perspective, it’s happening all over the world, right? Norway is looking at Trump, so we’ve got things going up in the UK and Scotland, Canada is looking into it, and even parts of Eastern Africa, but still heavy launch really from an allied perspective only happens in four places, right? The US ion has it down in French, Guiana, India and Japan. So from an allied perspective, that’s all the heavy launch. So I would like to see additional cooperations in heavy launch and in small launch because that could be a really easy way to unburden or share resources at least initially.
Beyond remote sensing and satcom while you’re on orbit, I do have to plug the in-space servicing assembly and maintenance for two reasons. One, because I think there’s a clear commercial use case. So we’re already seeing a lot of commercial companies like microgravity as a service, reach out to pharmaceuticals and stuff like that. So there’s a clear commercial line of business there. But then also think about the long-term, really kind of blue sky things that people want to do in space. I’m talking sis, lunar human tourism space, flights and even asteroid mining, which was tried and we’ll try again, but in space servicing, assembly and maintenance, if you can really exist out in orbit, that will provide the enabling technologies that help all those previous things I just mentioned. So I think that there’s a lot that we can do, and I think that, I said this when I first met you, nobody does anything really amazing on their own. I truly believe that. And if we want to do amazing things, we’re going to have to share and get help with that. Really excited to see that.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
I agree, the environment, even though space is so large, I think anybody that’s in the space environment always jokes about how small and incestuous it feels because we all are crossing paths and collaborating on different things because it really is, it takes a village in a lot of ways. And I do agree with your topical focus because the way that I think about enabling the opportunities, especially in earth orbit, is you have to make getting there ubiquitous. And you mentioned that with small launch, it has to be cheap, reliable, as easy as getting on an airplane turnaround time, one to three days as opposed to one to three months, but also taking earth out of the equation. And that’s what you were talking about with the I a portfolio. Because when you don’t have to rely on earth as a sustainer for any sort of activity, it really opens the aperture for what you can do.
And like you said, launching into other orbits and other opportunities like sis lunar and beyond is really critical. In our last few minutes, we could continue on probably for another hour, but in our last few minutes, we talked a lot about innovation happening around the world and the government and the private sector with our allied nations. If there was a company that was looking to further along their RD portfolio or pivot from an existing one, what kind of advice would you give them resources to look at? Where should they start? Everyone’s roadmap is different, but I think it’s important for people to know what’s out there for them to take advantage of.
Matt Tompkins:
That’s a great question. And I love the space is potentially small, which seems like a joke, but you know what? When I go to Space Symposium here in a couple months, it’s like a high school reunion. Sometimes you can’t walk like five people five feet. And so yeah, it’s a fun time. So I got to be careful what I say here. Hey, I hear you say something when you were talking to Kelli. Yeah. Alright, so my last bit of advice for companies, and I do a small company advisement for space companies right now, I would say look at all the varieties of funding out there for you. I think a lot of times people just, they say it’s too hard to break in traditional acquisition, I have to deal with the primes and there’s just loads of people looking at PaaS. It’s really hard. There are a ton of broad agency announcements out there in traditional contracting and trolling same.gov is not easy.
There are a lot of resources to be able to do that. The next is innovation and going and doing the SBAR route and hopefully that works. And then going on to tag fi and stratify, which continually changes. We’re only in the third year of tag fi and stratify and every time I apply it looks totally different than the previous year. But then you have Defense Production Act money, you have Congressional plus up money, all of these are still within the larger government and DOD space, but they’re different pots of money. And so I would encourage companies to really kind of take a look and say, where does the money come from? And then what’s the best vehicle for me to attach to that? And there are a variety of options and to really plan out. The second thing I would say is you’ve got to be really capability focused.
It’s not about putting as many irons in the as you can. It’s about I want to be the company that does this the best and this is what I’m focusing on for this fiscal year. And so all those contracting and all those efforts and all my network of contacts that I’m going to look at has to in some way focus on this capability or these two capabilities. I think a lot of times people, especially small companies, like, well, I could do that. I could repurpose my technology to do that. And I would encourage everyone to just really remain focused and to put a plan in place at least for a fiscal year and saying, this is what I’m going to do and all of my activities have to in some way go toward advancing DISC capability and I’m going to beat out the competition. And then hopefully something will come through and then you can pivot because a commercial company and you can pivot
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
The art of the pivot. I think that’s great advice, particularly because I think a lot of times there can be analysis paralysis because there’s too many options and what’s hard for people when they’re very tightly coordinated on a goal and a tech progression timeline, moving in one direction inherently means moving away from another. And that can be very scary for folks. So I like your advice on focusing on one capability and really understanding the best options to drive that home because it’ll allow you to be more focused, but also know if you are moving forward with intention or if you need to pivot into a different possibility.
Matt Tompkins:
See, you said it better.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Well, I’ve been living in that commercialization space for so long. It’s like all the themes start coming back. But yeah. Matt, no, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate you sharing your expertise and your advice to the folks listening because it is really important and especially moving into this new year, we’re seeing investment across innovation portfolios, especially in space growing. And I know we’re getting a lot more interest from entrepreneurial companies or companies in other industries that want to come join us. So it’s a really critical topic to help illuminate some sort of pathway.
Matt Tompkins:
Well, it’s just been fantastic to be a part of that ecosystem in general. And when I come out to the Space Symposium and walk around and see friends and people that I used to work with, that’s just a fantastic feeling to know that you’re just kind of helping and being a part of that in general. It’s really great and thank you, Kelli. Appreciate it. This has been fun. I appreciate all the time.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Absolutely. So if anyone needs to get ahold of you, they can find you at the Outpost. I know that we LinkedIn and Twitter and for all of our viewers, we do put out vector conversations once a month. So make sure to follow Space Foundation on LinkedIn and Twitter and you won’t miss the next episode. Thanks for joining us, and Matt, thank you for your time.
Matt Tompkins:
Bye. Take care.
Kelli Kedis Ogborn:
Bye.
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