Dustin Sheffield, MBA

Big thanks to Robert MacFarlane and Jeff Watkins for having me on the 435 Podcast to talk about transformation in Southern Utah, the perils and thrills of the aerospace industry, and a bunch of other stuff. https://lnkd.in/dG4Upysp

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This assessment is intriguing as I think about clients adopting new technologies as well. Bolting on AI because you know it's where we're headed may be ill-fated if you don't start at your foundation as a business, assess your value and who you are and then understand how to move forward with that core value in tow. That may not mean attaching AI solutions to all you do, it may mean some automation, it may mean new systems, but a hard look at a business' core value may reveal that simply adding tech without thoughtful attention to who you are may not be the beneficial and stable growth you seek.

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Today, we are thrilled to introduce Valinor to the world! Valinor is a first-of-its-kind company providing a go-to-market engine for the world’s best technologists building products for government missions. Despite more than $52 billion dollars in private funding that has been collectively poured into top defense and government tech companies, only $22 billion in federal funding has been awarded to the companies in this ecosystem, and more strikingly, 81% of the total amount awarded by the U.S. Government went to a single company, SpaceX (SVDG, 2024). This is not sustainable. Why is this happening? While startups attract the best talent and often build the most innovative products, many fall into “the Field of Dreams fallacy”, believing if you build it, the contracts will come. In practice, building and selling technology to the government is incredibly challenging, requiring credible feedback from end users, accreditation and clearances, flexible procurement strategies, and a deep understanding of the human terrain at all levels. The go-to-market is often an afterthought and companies get stuck on R&D dollars while struggling to convert efforts into long term, budgeted programs. What does this mean for government missions? The best products often never make it into the hands of the users that desperately need the latest capabilities. Our country is facing unprecedented challenges on multiple fronts from defense to healthcare to infrastructure, but process is drowning out the voice of the operator. It is critical we change this paradigm now. In May, after more than a decade of launching businesses with brilliant engineers at Palantir, and driving more than $2B in net new USG revenue, I decided it was time to give back. I want to spend my time making the world a safer place with the smartest people I know, especially now that I have two young daughters. I believe there are better ways to identify critical mission gaps, fulfill these important needs, and drive sustainable gov focused businesses, while ensuring technologists lead the vision and retain outsized ownership in the products that drive impact for the world. I’m thrilled to be on this journey with Catherine McAnney. Thank you to our strategic partners Palantir Technologies Anduril Industries and Helsing notably Shyam Sankar Brian Schimpf and Torsten Reil who are committed to our mission, and Teresa Carlson Dylan Field Veronica Daigle Peter Sorrentino Katherine Gordon Robert Fidler Kurt Freshley Matt Grimm Matthew Steckman Joseph Larson Parag Shah Matt Van Sant Matthew B. Scott Sanders for your early support. Valinor is proud to be founded in partnership with Founders Fund Red Cell Partners and General Catalyst. Thank you Trae Stephens Grant Verstandig and Paul Kwan, who had a vision to better equip, support, and sustain gov and defense tech builders. Are you a hardware or software engineer seeking to build better products for gov missions? Build with us www.valinor.co.

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Announcing Long Walk Technologies. We are: 1) Building programs to connect startups with government customers (more soon) 2) Reimagining defense/natsec industry events from the ground up, focused on raw authentic expertise & new forms of competition: Our mission is to ensure America's warfighters have the technology they need to deter or defeat any adversary. Long Walk is our quest to drive REAL competition. To eliminate waste. To unlock American ingenuity. Our first event is Manifest: Demo Day, which exists for one purpose: to showcase the technologies that will shape the future of American defense. We've stripped away everything that makes industry events exhausting to create a single day where American ingenuity takes center stage. Check it out!

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Christine co-founded BlueSpace.ai a few years ago and it's amazing how they have expanded their technology offerings to not only provide autonomy for consumer vehicles but a whole slate of technologies for defense, space, mining and other industries. (Bluespace part of video begins at 1:30 left) Winning a contract with the U.S. Army was the first step, and now they are working with defense companies building for the modern battlefield with their GPS-denied positioning, predictive perception, real-time mapping, and other cutting-edge technologies in the works. "Redefining Autonomous Solutions for Defense and Industry with AI Built for the Toughest Conditions: BlueSpace.ai, a leader in next-gen autonomous vehicle (AV) software, operates at the crossroads of defense and industry. Focused on 'doing more with less', BlueSpace excels in challenging and austere environments, where the infrastructure required by conventional autonomy is not supported. Whether it’s lacking GPS signal or lacking relevant data to train on, BlueSpace delivers best-in-class higher accuracy and lower latency solutions." #defense #usarmy #nasa #AUSA #GPSdenied #autonomousdriving #autonomy #autonomousvehicles #Infrastructurefree #OffRoadAutonomy #Bluespaceai #GPS #AI #artificialintelligence Christine Moon

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The last month at Defense Unicorns has been one for the books! ✅ Brought nearly 200 unicorns to Denver for a company-wide offsite that filled our cups and reaffirmed our purpose. 🦄 ✅ Announced Unicorn Delivery Service (UDS), an airgap native platform built exclusively for the U.S. Department of Defense that makes software delivery easy for complex mission environments. We're tired. We're excited. We're humbled. These milestones are the culmination of over three years of relentless focus on simplifying delivery of software capability for America’s warfighters.  💪 🇺🇸 👩‍💻 👨‍💻 Like my colleague Bryan Finster, I too joined Robert 🦄 Slaughter's band of unicorn dreamers over 3.5 years ago. Playing a small role in helping our team reach the above milestones so that our military can reach theirs has been the greatest privilege of my professional career. While UDS has been in use for some time (looking at heroes like you, Project Blue 🐙), it’s public announcement puts secure software delivery within reach for the entire NatSec ecosystem, wherever the mission occurs. As an end-to-end solution for the software development lifecycle, UDS is making it faster and easier than ever for our Defense Department to maintain and extend our capability advantage. That's one. heck. of a game-changer for national security posture and global stability. MUCH more to come in the following weeks on UDS, but check out the link in the comments to immediately learn more. If we can help you or your mission, reach out. As for me...I’m heading into the weekend with sheer excitement for what’s ahead. 🚀 🦄 💫 #onwardandupward

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Costco Wholesale’s longtime finance chief Richard Galanti stepped down after nearly 40 years. Jennifer Williams visited him recently to talk about his remarkable career and wrote about how the executive, called the “voice” of the company, has been unique among CFOs, from his tenure to his casual style. 👉 What do you think of Costco and its growth over the past four decades? Join the conversation below.

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"Who's going to do the job?" A crucial question posed by VP, Senior Labor Economist Ron Hetrick at Lightcast on the TroopHR Podcast. With our structurally shifted US workforce, let's unpack some key insights on AI's impact: ☑ Adoption is Nuanced  An National Bureau of Economic Research study predicts only 20% of US labor tasks are exposed to AI, with just 5.4% likely impacted in the next decade. Interestingly, only 27% of that 5.4% can be profitably automated, suggesting a more nuanced adoption landscape than often portrayed in media headlines. I anticipate that the economics of LLMs will improve as more cost-effective, smaller LLMs become available ☑ Will AI Solve a Shortage of Human Talent?  Ron highlights a critical staffing shortage: "You just think about what is by far the biggest need in this country. It's not even close. If you look at job postings..The biggest job by far is registered nurses, and we're going all over the globe to try to find these people." Recent studies indicate that "easy-to-learn" tasks show potential for 27% labor cost savings, while "hard-to-learn" tasks may see only 7% gains. Nursing, with its complex, context-dependent decisions, likely falls into the latter category. While AI may alleviate some easy-to-learn tasks in nursing, it appears to be more of a complement than a substitute for human talent. ☑ Historical Perspective  SF Fed President Mary C. Daly reminds us, "Technology has never reduced net employment over time for the country." While current AI applications focus on productivity gains, the technology is evolving rapidly. Gartner's research predicts that "By 2027, foundation models will underpin 70% of natural language processing (NLP) use cases, up from less than 5% in 2022." This rapid advancement underscores the urgency for adaptation. 💡 Talent Leaders: Focus on developing skills in prompt engineering, identifying AI use cases, and implementing AI safely and ethically. These competencies will be crucial in navigating the AI-augmented workplace of the near future. #AI #Workforce #HumanResources #TaylorFromHR

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"Labeling is disabling" Wisdom from Marty Keller, a former Marine Corps Recruiting recruiter and my seatmate on a flight to Madison, Wisconsin. We had a fascinating talk on the power of empathy to build connection with others, something that he had to do every day as a recruiter. His job was hard, but his focus was always on the people he was enlisting. How could the United States Marine Corps be a path to them achieving the life they really wanted. If we label someone (such as ourself) as being "unfit", or "unintelligent", or "not a good leader", or "not good at business" we are disabling them. At the same time we don't want to go to the opposite extreme, implying that there is no room for progress. #growthMindset requires that we balance these two extremes to create a potential difference that can bring growth and change.

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Great summary Jennifer George and all too true of so many large companies. The interesting thing here is that these are mission-driven companies. These new executives couldn't see the mission being executed at the exec level so they rightly went to the front line employees. While shiny object syndrome can redirect the C-suite easily, the front line is what keeps the organization from failing. And showing the front line the respect they deserve and hearing their concerns is exactly how you stabilize the executive chaos and refocus on what matters.

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Looks like the job market may be on the upswing (based on anecdotal info I'm getting from my product leader network). 🤞 Yesterday, one of the VP product leaders in my network shared with me that he had 2 competing job offers and accepted the offer with a PE-backed company that had better business fundamentals (stronger margins, customer retention, unit economics) but less sexy on the surface than the unicorn VC-backed company with an all-star team (based on unicorn logos) that raised a bunch during peak-ZIRP but had to go through rounds of layoffs with eroding morale. Would you have made the same decision that my friend did choosing the less sexy business with stronger business fundamentals? (Why or why not? Discuss!) I also shared with him the blog post that I had written about Unit Economics when I was in venture capital and he encouraged me to share this more broadly. The link to the post which is now on Substack is in the comments. 👇 ----------------------------------------- Also, this is a good time to share that I've moved all my past writing (previously on Medium, etc) to my new "Beyond Leadership" Substack. I'll be sharing more long-form blog posts here from time to time. I'll be writing about leadership and what's beyond leadership, culture-building, startup life, fractional life, building a dream career, networking & community building and more. Please do subscribe if interested: https://lnkd.in/geApUfD2

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Nice summary of leadership, change management and communication. Hope both the iconic companies are able to turnaround under new leadership. Thanks Vijay Sampath for sharing and Jennifer George for the post. #changemanagement #leadership

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This release really highlights LendAPI's focus on efficiency and flexibility. The tenant management and performance boosts show you're scaling smartly

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Nothing better than "real time" case studies for leaders to learn from. Take a look... and thanks Jennifer George for sharing how there can be similar work challenges in very different industries, and even more interesting, the steps they are taking to fix them. #CEO #Leadership #challenge https://lnkd.in/ekp3BT7u

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How do you get from bootstrapping and maxing credit cards to $100M ARR? Every aspiring founder and executive can hear first hand from Huntress' CEO, Kyle Hanslovan, what the journey has been like during this gritty and raw interview with Huntress investor, Kleiner Perkins. #grit #growthmindset #CEOs #startup #bootstrap #cybersecurity

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Really interesting analysis of two leaders grappling with turning around their companies - and how communicating the company DNA (linked to purpose) plays such a crucial role. Great to see *direct* #employeeengagement (face-to-face, on the shop floor) also features heavily. #communications #internalcommunications

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I'm no fan of Industry Conferences - the full effort required to make the juice worth the squeeze rarely occurs...TechCrunch Disrupt is an exception to my rule. I shared the staged with 3 absolute professionals within the Space Industry discussing insights related to early-stage companies supporting the dual markets of Government and Commercial. Here are a few takeaways: 1) We have an obligation to engage government at the policy level 2) Market focus is critical to our growth and to returning value to our investors 3) Tech innovation is assumed while GTM talent is required Aria Alamalhodaei expertly moderated our panel which along wth me, included Debra Emmons (The Aerospace Corporation) and True Anomaly CEO, Even Rogers. We missed having Space Workforce For Tomorrow chief (and Slingshot Aerospace co-founder) Melanie Stricklan on the stage to share in the discussion. Watch the full panel here https://lnkd.in/gZTg-Jem #TechCrunchDisrupt #Space #Defense #CommercialSpace #VC

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