space-force
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The Recruiter and the Rocket Scientist Funding America's Hard Tech
A recruiter who once staffed early Snap and Tinder teamed up with a rocket engineer to fund the companies most VCs can't read a spec sheet for - and got the Space Force to sign first.
Even Rogers
Even 'Jolly' Rogers is the co-founder and CEO of True Anomaly, the first company built exclusively around space superiority for U.S. national security. A former Air Force space operations officer and Weapons School graduate who helped write the U.S. military's foundational space doctrine, he left uniform and 12 days later started building autonomous spacecraft and mission software for combat in orbit. Under his leadership True Anomaly raised a $650M Series D in April 2026 at a $2.2B valuation, crossing $1B in total funding.
True Anomaly
True Anomaly is a Colorado-based space defense company building the hardware and software to operate, defend, and win in contested orbit. Its flagship Jackal autonomous orbital vehicle - a highly maneuverable, refrigerator-sized spacecraft - is paired with Mosaic, a full-stack mission autonomy and command-and-control platform. Founded in 2022 by Air Force and Space Force veterans, the company sells primarily to the U.S. Space Force and Department of the Air Force, has raised more than $1 billion across four rounds, and is valued at $2.2 billion after its April 2026 Series D.
Northwood Space
Northwood Space is an El Segundo, California company building the ground side of the space economy: rapidly manufactured, software-defined phased-array ground stations that pull data down from satellites. Its flagship product, Portal, electronically steers beams to track many satellites at once instead of mechanically pointing a single dish, which the company argues removes the bottleneck choking modern satellite constellations. Founded in 2023 by CEO Bridgit Mendler, CTO Griffin Cleverly, and head of software Shaurya Luthra, Northwood has raised $136.4M total, including a $100M Series B in January 2026, and holds a $49.8M U.S. Space Force contract to modernize the Satellite Control Network.
John Gedmark
John Gedmark is the CEO and Co-founder of Astranis Space Technologies, a San Francisco-based aerospace company building next-generation geostationary satellites. He previously helped shape the commercial space industry as co-founder and executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, where he influenced President Obama's 2010 decision to use commercial space transportation for NASA missions - a shift worth over $10 billion to the industry. At Astranis, he has led the company from a Y Combinator startup to a $2.8 billion valuation with a $1+ billion backlog, operating a fleet of MicroGEO satellites that bring dedicated broadband to underserved regions across Alaska, the Philippines, Mexico, and beyond.