The VC Firm Where the Founders Salute First
Justin Nahama and three partners are betting that the discipline that runs toward gunfire also builds companies. Their first fund is oversubscribed, their portfolio has raised over $350 million, and a $50 million second fund is now open.
Most venture capitalists build their reputations on the founders they discover in dorm rooms and hacker houses. The Veteran Fund goes looking somewhere else - in the ranks of people who have led teams through the worst days of their lives, and then walked into the technology industry looking for a second mission. The San Francisco firm has one rule that shapes every check it writes: back founders from the military community building technology the country actually needs.
Founded in 2022 by General Partners Justin Nahama, Ryan Micheletti, Mike Sherbakov and Lisa Song Sutton, the firm describes its work in unusually plain terms - "advancing America through venture capital." That phrase does a lot of work. It signals a thesis that is equal parts financial and civic, and it explains why a seed-stage fund most consumers have never heard of has quietly assembled a portfolio that has collectively raised more than $350 million.
01 / The thesisWhy veterans, and why now
The pitch is simple enough to fit on a challenge coin: military leaders make good founders. The Veteran Fund argues that people who have carried real responsibility - who have planned under pressure, moved teams through ambiguity and owned outcomes with consequences - bring a temperament that early-stage companies reward. "Veterans bring unmatched resilience, leadership, and mission-driven mindsets," says Micheletti, and the firm has built its entire selection process around finding that trait paired with technical ambition.
The timing helps. After a decade in which "defense" was a difficult word to say in a Silicon Valley pitch meeting, national-security technology has become one of the most active corners of venture capital. The Veteran Fund did not arrive with the crowd. It was already inside the veteran founder network - a community that is small, tight and hard for outsiders to reach - before that network became a destination for capital.
One of the most meaningful ways to support the veteran community. General Stanley McChrystal, U.S. Army (Ret.), advisor
02 / The productMoney, plus a network money can't buy
On paper, The Veteran Fund does what seed funds do. It writes checks of roughly $500,000 to $2 million into companies valued between $5 million and $25 million, and it is transparent that it is chasing the outlier returns venture demands. What sets the offer apart is what comes attached to the wire transfer.
How The Veteran Fund invests
The firm's advisory bench reads like a Joint Chiefs reunion - retired four-star generals and admirals alongside investors such as Tim Draper, Jack Selby and Ken McElroy. For a founder trying to sell dual-use technology, that network is not a vanity page. It is a set of introductions to the people who decide whether a government buys a drone, a boat or a data system. The fund also helps portfolio companies chase non-dilutive government funding - grants and contracts that add runway without taking equity - a lever most seed funds cannot pull.
03 / The portfolioDrones, boats, cargo planes and a data center on the Moon
"Dual-use" is the word the firm returns to again and again: technology that earns commercial revenue and also serves a defense need. In practice that produces a portfolio that is more interesting than a typical software fund. HavocAI builds autonomous surface vessels and has raised roughly $200 million since 2024. Vatn Systems makes underwater vehicles and opened a Rhode Island factory built to turn out 2,000 units a year. Natilus is designing blended-wing cargo aircraft and reports tens of billions of dollars in customer reservations. Lonestar is working on lunar data infrastructure - the phrase "data center on the Moon" is not a metaphor.
The recognition has followed the money. Glid won the Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025. TERN AI landed on TIME's Best Inventions of 2025. Proteus took a prime-contractor role tied to a large Missile Defense Agency effort. Firestorm, which builds expeditionary manufacturing for the military, has raised roughly $153 million. Below is a slice of who else is on the cap table.
04 / The modelA fund that behaves like a unit
The Veteran Fund makes money the way venture firms do - management fees and a share of the upside - but it operates more like a community than a cap table. It runs a $100,000 pitch competition for veteran founders, won in its 2024 cycle by EMPEQ. It hosts LP dinners with General McChrystal, a leadership expedition to Antarctica, and summit appearances that have included Cathie Wood. In 2026 it launched The Veteran Fund Syndicate, a co-investment vehicle that lets its network put money into individual deals alongside the main fund.
Our mission is about more than financial returns - it is about supporting veterans' transition into impactful entrepreneurs. Justin Nahama, Co-Founder and General Partner
That community is also the business advantage. When a fund's limited partners include retired generals and its founders share a language of service, the introductions, diligence calls and hiring referrals move faster. The firm operates across Silicon Valley, San Diego, Washington D.C. and Austin - the four cities where its founders, its capital and its customers actually sit.
05 / The partnersFour people, one shared language
The fund is run by four general partners who split the work of sourcing, diligence and portfolio support. Justin Nahama, based in San Diego, is the public face of much of the firm's founder outreach and frames the mission in personal terms - the transition from service to entrepreneurship is a path he wants to make easier for the people who follow it. Ryan Micheletti carries the investment thesis in the plainest language the firm uses, arguing that the traits the military selects for are the same ones early companies need. Mike Sherbakov and Lisa Song Sutton round out a bench that mixes operating experience with the community relationships that make the model work.
Around those four sits a network the firm has spent years assembling: more than 80 advisors and leaders, many of them senior military figures, others investors and operators. That group is not decorative. It is the machinery that turns a small seed check into disproportionate access - the calls that get returned, the diligence that gets done quickly, and the introductions to government buyers that a first-time defense founder would otherwise spend years trying to earn.
The competition the firm runs each year is a window into how it sources. The $100,000 prize, won by EMPEQ in 2024, doubles as a scouting tool, surfacing veteran founders who might never have made it into a Sand Hill Road inbox. It is a low-cost way to see hundreds of companies and to signal, loudly, that this is a fund built for a specific kind of builder.
06 / The marketWhere it fits, and who it's up against
The Veteran Fund sits at the intersection of two crowded categories: seed-stage venture and defense technology. It shares that space with veteran- and mission-focused firms such as Veteran Ventures Capital, Squadra Ventures and Shield Capital, and with larger generalist investors that have opened national-security practices, including Andreessen Horowitz's American Dynamism effort and Founders Fund. The differentiator is access. Plenty of funds can match a check; far fewer can put a founder in front of the four-star network that decides whether a dual-use product ever reaches a customer.
Fund I closed oversubscribed, a signal that limited partners bought the thesis. Fund II, targeting roughly $50 million, is the firm's argument that the first fund was not a fluke - that a portfolio built on drones, autonomous ships, cargo aircraft and lunar data can deliver both the returns venture demands and the strategic technology the country is short on. As the fund likes to put it, American sovereignty is not a permanent status quo, but an ongoing mission inherited by a new generation of builders.
For a veteran founder, the takeaway is concrete. The Veteran Fund is one of the few places where military service is read as a founding credential rather than a line to explain away, where the first check comes bundled with a path to non-dilutive government money, and where the person making the introduction may have once worn four stars. For everyone else watching the defense-tech boom, it is a reminder that the most durable edge in venture is rarely the capital. It is knowing who to call.