Recon Labs | Podcast on RSS.com

Recon Labs

by Renny McPherson and Alexander Mears

Entrepreneurship Management Investing

Season 1

Episode 15: Frontline Founders featuring Kyle Hanslovan

Kyle Hanslovan is the CEO and co-founder of Huntress. Prior to Huntress, he co-founded and built a defense consulting firm, StrategicIO, worked as a senior cyber vulnerability analyst at publicly-traded defense firm ManTech, and won the World Series of hacking (DEF CON's Capture the Flag competition). He is still active in the ethical hacking community. Earlier, Kyle spent over a decade supporting Offensive Cyber Operations within the U.S. Intelligence Community and began his career as a non-commissioned officer in the US Air Force.

Episode 14: Frontline Founders featuring Craig Cummings

Craig Cummings is the co-founder and General Partner of Moonshots Capital. He actively invests and advises technology startups, many of which are founded by military veteran entrepreneurs. Before Moonshots, Craig co-founded and was the COO of RideScout, a mobile app that shows users how to get from point A to point B by providing real-time ground transportation information. RideScout was acquired by Daimler (Mercedes-Benz) in 2014. Craig has founded and built several other companies and organizations, including Upskill, which develops augmented reality software for smart glasses to enable the hands-free industrial and commerce workforce. Craig is a US Army veteran who served for 17 years, most of which were spent as an intelligence officer supporting the National Security Agency. He holds a PhD from Columbia University, and is a graduate of the US Military Academy at West Point where he was their first Truman Scholar.

Driving Value Creation through Technology After Acquiring an Old-Line Services Business

Matt Bauer grew up in the Midwest in a small farming community. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Illinois and was commissioned in the Army as a field artillery officer in late 2006. Matt subsequently spent 6.5 years in the Army with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. After the Army, Matt moved to London where he attended London Business School and worked in private equity. In 2018, Matt successfully acquired two industrial services companies, American Scale & American Welding, in Charlotte, NC. He currently lives in Charlotte with his wife and daughter.

Leveraging Prior Experience as a Pilot to Acquire an Aerial Services Business

Aaron Kinsey is the CEO of American Patrols and Partner in Bear Capital. Aaron is a graduate of Texas A&M, where he was the Deputy Commander of the Corps of Cadets. He served 9 years as an Air Force pilot. After leaving active duty, Aaron attended Harvard Business School, where he focused his studies in small business and real estate. Following graduation, Aaron returned to Texas to lead a commercial real estate company before partnering to form Bear Capital and acquiring American Patrols. Aaron enjoys swimming, road cycling, and telling dad jokes to his wife Katelyn and their three kids: Barrett, Charlie, and Isabel.

Episode 11: Search & Acquire featuring Danny Fields and Steve Reis

Following their time in the military, Danny Fields and Steve Reis met in business school at Rice University and decided to partner on a traditional search in 2017. They ultimately acquired Holland Supply, a value-add distributor in Columbus, OH in 2019. Our conversation includes Danny and Steve's insights into how they drastically improved their sourcing during the search phase by narrowly focusing on several specific niches as well as how to put in place a range of systems into a prior generation small business to enable it to scale and grow after their acquisition.

Episode 10: Search & Acquire featuring John Hubbard

John Hubbard came from a military and law enforcement family, and joined the Army straight out of high school. He served on active duty for 13 years, with his first 7 years spent as an Infantryman in the 82nd Airborne and Africa Command, and his final six years in various roles throughout the United States Special Operation Command. Post-military, John spent a year as a city cop, a residential home builder, and an Operations Manager for an exterior remodeling company. While working full-time, John received his MBA from SMU in Dallas, Texas. He launched his search fund, Blue Cord Capital, in October of 2020, and acquired his current company, Express Trailers, in February of 2021. He currently lives in Tampa, Florida with his wife and two sons.

Episode 9: Search & Acquire featuring Andy Rougeot

Andy is a former Army intel officer, and the owner of RG Maintenance, a commercial maintenance business serving the self storage industry, which he acquired after completing business school. Andy has owned and operated RG maintenance for the last four years. He is lucky enough to be a dad to a beautiful daughter, and to have “married up” to an amazing wife.

Episode 8: Search & Acquire featuring Nick Vandam

Nick Vandam is the Managing Principal of Trophy Point Group and recently closed on the acquisition of Midwest CATV, a telecom installation and maintenance company, where he is now CEO and President. Nick has a fascinating background - after graduating from West Point, he competed on the US national team in the Triathlon, followed by a combat tour in Afghanistan where he was awarded a Bronze Star. Since leaving active duty, Nick earned a CFP while working as a financial advisor, completed a Masters in Global Management at Thunderbird where he interned with a Private Equity group in Zambia, and worked in both finance and government contracting. He launched a search in September 2020 and acquired Midwest CATV in May of this year.

Episode 7: Frontline Founders featuring Josh Lospinoso

Josh Lospinoso is the co-founder/CEO of Shift5. Josh is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in cybersecurity, data science, and system software engineering. Prior to Shift5, he co-founded RedOwl Analytics, an insider threat detection platform acquired by Raytheon/Forcepoint in 2017. Additionally, he served 10 years as a cyber officer leading teams to build dozens of elite hacking tools for the National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations, Army Cyber Command, and the Cyber National Mission Force. Josh is also the author of C++ Crash Course (No Starch Press, 2019), dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles spanning multiple disciplines, and multiple patents. Josh earned a BS in Economics and Operations Research from the United States Military Academy and a Ph.D in Statistics from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

Episode 6: Frontline Founders featuring Andy Salamon

Andy Salamon is a partner at Material, a venture capital fund and studio, uniquely focused on company creation. Before joining Material, Andy was a General Partner at Atomic Labs, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm. While there, Andrew was a co-founding investor and advisor to several technology-driven, operationally intensive startups including Hims, Terminal, Bungalow Living, among others, which together represent over $1B of enterprise value created from a $10M investment fund. Prior to Atomic, Andrew was a venture capital investor with First Round Capital’s Dorm Room Fund, a senior manager at Bridgewater Associates, and an Expeditionary Combat Officer in the US Navy. He holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University and pursued an M.B.A. at Wharton prior to leaving to found one of his previous ventures.

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