Intro + Opening (3 min)
“My name’s Tanveer, and I run Pioneer1890 — we’re a small-business investment firm that acquires and scales defense and industrial base companies that keep the country running and secure.
Before this, I spent time as both a venture investor and an operator in dual-use technology — working with companies serving both DoD and commercial markets.
I’ve had the privilege of seeing scale from a lot of angles — startup to private equity — but never from the seat that actually controls the budget. So it’s a privilege to be here with the people shaping how capital and national security intersect.
When people talk about economic statecraft, they often start with policy — sanctions, export controls, industrial policy. I come at it from a different angle: the financial engine that makes all of that real.
From where I sit, capital is strategy. The next arsenal of democracy won’t be built with smokestacks — it’ll be built with balance sheets.
The United States can’t out-subsidize Beijing, but we can out-mobilize it — if we treat capital allocation as a form of national power.
At Pioneer1890, we’ve invested in and scaled companies across defense, energy, and critical infrastructure. And I can tell you from experience: most of them didn’t fail because of technology. They failed because they couldn’t carry 180 days of receivables, fund cleared facilities, or bridge the gap between prototype and production.
That’s the gap this discussion is really about. Innovation isn’t the bottleneck anymore — finance is.
And the frontier of economic statecraft is how we mobilize private capital behind national objectives.”
Point:
The “valley of death” isn’t a technology problem — it’s a capital problem. Most dual-use companies die because their balance sheets can’t survive the DoD’s timeline.
Example/Story:
I’ve seen defense founders forced to shut down programs with real demand because they couldn’t carry working capital through 6–9 month payment cycles. Meanwhile, primes with less innovation win contracts simply because they can float the cash.
Conclusion:
The solution isn’t more R&D grants — it’s financial infrastructure: bridge financing, faster payment terms, and structured partnerships between investors and government.
Point:
Private capital doesn’t need patriotism — it needs predictability.