Venture Stories

Peter Newell (@PeterANewell), CEO of BMNT, joins Lucas Bagno and Ian Cinnamon on this episode of Solarpunk. Takeaways:- Peter was “handed the Ferrari of skunkworks” when he came to be in charge of the Rapid Equipping Force. It was a program that handled over a billion dollars to deploy new technologies.- He became more of an entrepreneur after his time at the REF and that led to starting BMNT.- Often times procurement in the US military is HQ-centric and product-centric and does not take into account the needs of the people on the ground.- The acquisition system that was built in the 1950s in the US presumes that the military can perfectly understand the problem and build a perfect solution for it. However, this takes much too long to deploy and isn’t suited for modern times.- A founder can’t go all-in on selling to government — they have to be able to build for both government and commercial.- Often times companies will receive indefinite delivery contracts where it is unclear how much money they will actual