search-and-rescue
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James Kubik
James Kubik is the co-founder and CEO of Somewear Labs, a San Francisco company building satellite-and-mesh communications hardware and software for teams that operate where cell towers end. A Northwestern product-design engineer and former Intuit product leader, he launched Somewear in 2017 after a childhood friend drowned in a Lake Michigan sailing accident with no way to call for help. Somewear's pocket-sized devices - Relay and the hybrid mesh/satcom Node - now serve every U.S. Department of Defense service, federal agencies, wildland firefighters, and backcountry explorers. The company raised a $13.7M Series A in 2022 backed by a roster of Fortune 500 CEOs.
Bounce Imaging
Bounce Imaging makes softball-sized, throwable 360-degree cameras that first responders, law enforcement, and military teams toss into dangerous spaces to see what is inside before they enter. Founded out of MIT and the Harvard Innovation Lab after the 2010 Haiti earthquake, the company builds low-cost, rugged imaging and robotics systems - including the Explorer and the world's first thermal throwable camera, the Pit Viper 360 - that stream real-time omnidirectional video to a phone or tablet. Its devices are used by the FBI, U.S. Marshals, the Department of Defense, and more than 450 state and local agencies.
Francisco Aguilar
Francisco Aguilar is the founder and CEO of Bounce Imaging, the company behind a softball-sized, throwable 360-degree camera that lets police, firefighters and soldiers see inside dangerous spaces before stepping into them. He conceived the idea as a graduate student at MIT and Harvard after watching rescuers struggle to find survivors in the rubble of the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The original Explorer earned a spot on TIME's Best Inventions of 2012; the thermal-equipped Pit Viper 360 repeated the honor in 2024. Today his cameras are used by 300-plus police and fire departments and by defense customers including U.S. Special Operations Command.
Mark Strauss
Mark Strauss is the co-founder and CEO of WaveAerospace, a Stratford, Connecticut drone manufacturer building unmanned aircraft engineered to fly in the wind, rain and snow that ground everyone else. A Yale chemistry graduate, airplane racer and pilot who flew before he could legally drive, Strauss teamed with aerospace engineer Steve Bofill to design a new class of all-weather UAS - from the wind-beating Falcon II to the 300-mph Huntress turbojet - sold to police, emergency services, militaries and foreign governments including Ecuador. The company closed an oversubscribed Series A in 2023 at a $40 million pre-money valuation.
WaveAerospace
WaveAerospace builds unmanned aircraft that fly when nothing else can. Based in Stratford, Connecticut, the company designs heavy-weather drones, UAVs and hybrid VTOL aircraft for police, emergency services, offshore operators and the military - machines rated to operate in wind, rain and snow that ground conventional drones. Its lineup includes the all-weather Falcon II multicopter, the GPS-contested Nyx, the heavy-lift Mule, and the Huntress Turbojet, a hybrid jet that reaches roughly Mach 0.4.
Rob Theis
Rob Theis is General Partner and Chief Investment Officer at World Innovation Lab (WiL), a Palo Alto-based venture firm bridging innovation between the US and Japan with over $1.9 billion in capital commitments. With 18+ years of VC experience and a prior career as a tech operator at Sun Microsystems and co-founder of NEON (acquired by IBM), Theis has backed companies with an aggregate market cap exceeding $85 billion, including HubSpot, DocuSign, RingCentral, and Auth0. He also volunteers as a Sheriff cliff and mountain rescue specialist in his spare time.
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Jacob Kaplan-Moss is one of the co-creators of Django, the Python web framework that powers Instagram, Pinterest, and thousands of other sites worldwide. After 25+ years building and leading software teams - from a Kansas newspaper where Django was born, to Heroku's security org, to 18F's government tech unit - he walked away from the tech industry in 2024, training as an EMT and volunteering with search and rescue. He remains a board member of the Django Software Foundation, publishes the 'jacobian' newsletter on engineering craft, and is known for his influential writing on hiring, documentation, and the 'programming talent myth'.