E442: Nelson Mills on Building a $100 Billion Company, the China Threat, and the Future of War

Nelson Mills (0:00)

Anduril proved that you can build a start-up in the government space, that you can grow revenue rapidly, and you can do that while still remaining agile and fast moving.

David Weisburd (0:12)

You wanna become the next Defense Prime. What needs to happen between now and then for you to become this great Defense Prime?

Nelson Mills (0:19)

Recently, we transitioned our first product, our S6 vehicle, to full production readiness. We've won over 40 million in contracts. And if you do that, you create defensibility, you create a significant price advantage, and you can build a hundred billion dollar company.

David Weisburd (0:39)

There's this impending potential conflict between China and Taiwan. Is America ready to go into a naval war?

Nelson Mills (0:48)

I don't know. If this had been a war a decade ago, we were probably.

David Weisburd (0:53)

So Nelson, you grew up homeschooled on a sailboat in the Caribbean. How much of Vatn starts there?

Nelson Mills (1:00)

It's a great question. I spent my entire life on the water, really grew up on it. And for Vatn, I always wanted to build a maritime company, right? I worked on a bunch of ideas in the maritime space, then ultimately came to Vatn.

David Weisburd (1:13)

And when did the ocean become something that you decided to turn into a business?

Nelson Mills (1:18)

For me, it was really like looking for the right opportunity, right? I think blue tech started having its moment where people realized like, hey, there is this opportunity to take new technology and apply it to one of the oldest industries in the world, which is maritime trade and commerce and naval warfare, and that this was a new emerging market, right? And so, marrying those together really just came up as, hey, this is the right time to do it. But I was kind of seeking that for a while, right? I worked on like an electric boating idea for a while. I worked on an electric ferry concept. I went through a series of ideas until I kind of finally found the one where I felt like the unit economics and the market was there for us to really scale and grow this into something important.

David Weisburd (2:09)

Most of this reverse career move from venture capital to founder, a lot of founders go to become venture capitalists, but not too many venture capitalists go to become founders. What made you want to leave venture to start, Vatn?

Nelson Mills (2:22)

I always saw venture is really a stop along the way to being a founder as it was a way to learn how to raise money, to build the network, to raise money, to understand how investors think about companies. I never really saw it as the end game.

I think that's reflected in my background too, because I did about nine years of operating at startups, where I was helping build products, bring product to production. And so venture was just another kind of learning experience, building that muscle of the finance VC side, so that I felt ready and in a good position to start a company.

David Weisburd (3:03)

Perhaps it's obvious, but why does being a venture capitalist make you a better founder?

Nelson Mills (3:06)

In many ways it doesn't honestly, but I think the ways in which it applies is it makes you a founder who is gonna be better at raising capital, right? And if you're bootstrapping a company, is VC gonna help you be a better founder? No.

But if you are going to be raising venture capital, it definitely helps to have and understand that network. The only skill set I think that really applied from VC is I was at a fund where they made us do a ton of cold outreach on LinkedIn. And I took that and applied that to recruiting the right engineers and people for my team. And that's the only skill set I think that directly applied besides fundraising.

David Weisburd (3:45)

I started my second business, really, my first real business in high school, immediately after I had to do door-to-door selling. And I've thought a lot about why is that. It's because the brain, when it does something brutal and so challenging, everything else seems easy. And it just builds this new muscle that just enables you to do these remarkable things.

Nelson Mills (4:06)

I agree completely. And I think VC was also really good for me personally because I hadn't really considered myself to be an outgoing person or a networker. So VC really taught me the power of a network, how to network and connect with people and build a group of people that you can kind of turn into business decisions or outcomes.