In a new Forbes feature on veteran-led defense technology companies, Defense Unicorns CEO and cofounder Rob Slaughter shares how his experience modernizing software delivery in the Air Force led to the creation of Defense Unicorns. The article explores the company’s rapid growth, mission to get software to the warfighter faster, and why veterans continue to be a driving force behind defense innovation.
Read the full article here. An excerpt is included below.
Some ex-military entrepreneurs say they prefer to hire veterans. It’s not just altruism. Rob Slaughter, cofounder and CEO of the software startup Defense Unicorns, says vets make good employees because they’ve had to assume leadership roles early in their careers. Slaughter conducts every candidate’s final interview at the $1 billion company (January funding round). In the years since its 2021 founding, he has identified a “magic 2:1 ratio” whereby vets will “outperform somebody on the industry [side] with twice that experience.” About 40% of Defense Unicorns’ employees are veterans.
Ironically, he has an easier time hiring strong talent now than he did when he was an Air Force officer working alongside future cofounders Jeff McCoy and Andrew Greene to help the military deploy new software faster. Slaughter found it impossible to hold onto talent back then: His top engineers were contractors whose employers kept reassigning them before they could settle in. He came to believe that the companies were more interested in using their best people to score new work rather than execute the contracts they’d already won.
Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore. He left the military in 2021 to see if he could better execute from the outside. It’s working: Defense Unicorns’ platform, which helps the U.S. military keep its software up to date, is now embedded in more than 90 systems across the services.
Slaughter, 40, has made a fortune that Forbes estimates at $150 million—something he never could have imagined in the Air Force, where even officers must serve for years before they crack six figures. The private sector is more generous. As the money keeps pouring into defense startups, more veterans are discovering they don’t have to choose between pursuing wealth and serving the mission. And the stakes will only get bigger. In a market where tech moves faster than regulation, the rush for contracts and funding will yield lots of big winners, but also big losers, bad actors and collateral damage.
Opportunity beckons for America’s ex-warriors. Savvy veterans will harness the tools of entrepreneurial capitalism to help the Pentagon adapt to a changing battlefield—and profit from the gold rush that is just beginning.
