Christian Garrett on Hill and Valley's bipartisan dinner formula and government 'founder mode' as the missing unlock

Let's break it down. How's the day going? What's the latest with you? Is that your third or fourth coffee or are you on tea now? Because you're you losing you're losing your voice. I'm I'm a tea guy. I'm um tea guy. I'm half European. Okay. Uh and any way that I can dig at Delian by showing how strong the Europeans are.

I think one way I can do that is by uh drinking a lot of And you're also wearing a European watch today. We got the Cardier Santos on. I can neither confirm nor deny checks going on. It looks fantastic. How's the day so far? Is it I'm sure it's been Yeah, it's been awesome. Um I'm sure you've heard from folks all day.

You'll hear from more uh from founders, investors, um folks in office. I know you guys will have elected reps in and out over the next few days and today. Y uh the enthusiasm and excitement um is really really special.

uh this is the fourth year and just to see how big it is um is a testament to how much our ecosystem has changed. You know I talked about earlier uh it was less than a decade 9 years ago that Palunteer sued the army for commercial preference and violating title 10 US 2377.

Um and today you know Palunteer is seen as one of the greatest partners and the army particularly is one of the greatest partners to Palanteer into our ecosystem. Uh it's it's incredible. Apparently SpaceX sued as well and they use the same lawyers as Paler.

So whoever that has a lesson in that he's got a good uh got a good business going. I know that the theme is re-industrialization. What are the other conversations that are happening here? What are the other subtopics that people are digging into? Yeah. Yeah.

I think uh within that right you can go all the way down the supply chain or value chain to you know rare earth elements and minerals. Um, uh, we just had a panel recently with, you know, James Latinsky from MP Materials, Rafe Scoly from from Lyra. Uh, talk about right place, right time with MP Materials. Right time.

He's awesome. He's awesome. When did that company start? Years ago, right? Years ago. Oh, that company's been around for decades. Decades. It's one of the oldest minds and they they took it over. It's a great turnaround story. Oh, wow. Um, one of our partners, Lower Carbon Capital, and Clay Dum moderated that.

Congressman Richie Torres is in that. Uh, that was incredible. We then went all the way up to, you know, we had a panel with uh with Friedberg and Shawn Magcguire and Senator Todd Young on manufacturing which we hit on everything. We actually talked about how energy and education are the key unlocks there.

Uh and then you go up to defense, right? And and obviously has hit on this and you'll see more talks from Seronic and others talking about the work that all these defense companies and the existing primes are doing to uh shore up our industrial capacity. So I think you've just seen the full gambit.

I know Jensen hit on semiconductors as well. Yeah, Jensen's interesting because he's is I was asking this question of like is he a customer of reindustrialization or is he truly a reindustrializer? Oh, he's both. And I think you see where Nvidia is going, right? They're now selling full systems, right?

I mean, they're moving they move from just to GPU. I mean, they're doing the networking, the cooling. So, if you extrapolate where that company is going, um, and you look at where they are today 100%. You're right. They're on both sides. Yeah.

can't really be a trillion dollar company with just, hey, we just designed some stuff and then let TSMC handle the rest. There's so much more about that company. Yeah. Fascinating, Jordy. Um, yeah. I I'm interested more on uh who who on the on the on the hillside really gets it.

Richie Torres's names come come up quite a bit. Uh, how many people like that does the valley need to or in order to, you know, continue to be successful, right?

because I feel like a big a big a big part of what's exciting about this event is is it because it's you know bipartisan it's not about this admin right it's about the next 10 years it's about the next 15 years the next 20 years and so uh how many people are are you know we talk about this in Silicon Valley it doesn't take that many great CEOs to like transform an industry right sometimes just takes one right and so how many how many uh true allies do you think we need and and are are those people today or hoping, you know, next year we get more.

Well, I mean, one piece of that which is more of a meta point, but I think it would be great for government to have its own version of founder mode, right? We need to get back to that within government. Sean Sangard talks a lot about this and how that's something that's been missing.

And if you look historically, when we've had success, when we were really great at building, it was because we empowered individuals within government to own these programs and see them through. Um, so I think no one knows the name of the person who's responsible for highspeed rail.

I mean we Sean always talks about uh Admiral Rick Rover right is a great example of this person right I mean like we need these people again um now I will say today Congress uh there's a lot of champions in Congress there's a lot of people that get it they provide support they obviously draft policy they provide cover um but what you really need more of are these kind of founders at the individual level from the program officers to the folks running these departments and so you know I think that will be a big unlock um and then ciring asking your question, right, within Congress, look at the folks here today, right?

You have Senator Shaheen, um you have Congressman Richie Torres, you have Congresswoman Gabe Amo, um you have Senator Todd Young, um and then you have, you know, House Speaker Mike Johnson speaking later.

I mean, you really see across the board, both Democrats and Republicans, there are folks that understand the importance of this. And you know, the last panel said this, like this is as bipartisan as it gets, right?

like we want to have uh uh critical mineral and rare earth uh element uh dependence uh we want to get rid of our dependency on China there right we want to have redundancy there uh and a strong supply chain we want to have energy abundance right um and we want to have a strong deterrent strategy and a strong military um and so Democrats and Republicans align on that and the tech industry is preaching something that is in of itself aligning and unifying and so I think that puts us in a very good spot um to try to build bridges and be successful.

Yeah. Can you uh I know you work with a lot of later stage companies, but uh can you share some best practices for government relations lobbying that you're seeing tech companies get it right? What are they doing? Yeah, you know, I think what's interesting is um and I've talked a lot about this.

Um Mark Andre has a lot of great stuff on this. You know, tech doesn't have a trade association and that's actually a very good thing.

Um so it is on the onus of individuals, founders, entrepreneurs, operators, the companies and the investors I think as well to spend time within government educating policy makers on various subjects where they're experts in. Uh a lot of the work that you see here are from folks that do not sell to the government.

Right? There's no revenue to be had here. Right? There's just educating and making sure that their industry uh is a recipient of good policy, good regulation, and good support. Um, and I think that, you know, from from the first part, I think the best thing is like making sure you have these relationships with folks.

They are willing to take the meetings. Um, it's incredible. It's it's uh and so I think that would be the first step. Um, I think the second is also figuring out like where's the highest leverage thing that you want to focus on.

Like you don't want to come here and just take meetings for the sake of meetings either, right? You want to be focused on something very specific. You want to care about something very specific and that makes it easier for folks to to digest.

And so I think that's the other piece is like figuring out where your business should be focused on whether it's a potential contracting opportunity or something you want in a budget. Um or whether it's just a specific policy or regulation that you care about. So I think it's like first go build relationships.

Um go rely on your investors, go do this directly. Like that's the way to do it. Um and that's how our ecosystem is going to do and always has done it. And then number two is figure out what that high leverage thing is. And quite frankly don't go take the time in DC until you have that. Interesting. Okay. Cool.

Well, we'll let you get back to on a million meetings