Startup lessons Silicon Valley won’t teach you | Cameron McCord (Co-founder of Nominal)

**Cameron McCord** (0:00)
Things go wrong on the submarine. You're operating high stakes nuclear reactor, people at sea, but this is the game. You earn the right to stand the night watch. Being picked to be the officer that the captain has enough trust and confidence in to actually try and sleep, that is such a critical trait. These kind of quiet operators who you know are just safe hands. A lot of founders and CEOs are performing. They act a certain way in front of parts of their company, and then that's not really kind of who they are. And so I think earnestness and leadership just like being yourself is incredibly valuable. Stress is the body preparing you for greatness.

**Nakul Mandan** (0:35)
Cameron McCord spent the first decade of his career inside operating cultures most founders never see. Five years as a US Navy submarine officer, 484 days underwater, then on Capitol Hill as a Navy congressional liaison, then early at Anduril, Saildrone, then a stint as a VC at Lux Capital before he started Nominal in 2022, which is building the data infrastructure and testing stack for hardware engineers. This is the software powering the physical AI revolution that's coming. Not surprisingly, within three and a half years of founding, Nominal is already a unicorn. Today, we talk about what operating and leadership influences Cameron carried from the Navy, how he's scaling Nominal's culture through a fast ramp, his read on physical AI, and how his unique background has prepared him on the inner game of being a founder CEO. Knuckle Up.
Cameron, welcome to the show.

**Cameron McCord** (1:34)
It's great to be here.

**Nakul Mandan** (1:35)
So before any of this in your life today, you spent 484 days underwater as a submarine officer. What did that embed in you deeply as an operator and leader that you still carry with yourself today?

**Cameron McCord** (1:47)
Yeah, it's really good. It's a good question. I think I think about probably three main things. The first that I learned, sometimes the hard way on the submarine, is earnestness in leadership is what I call it. And so I think the submarine is too small of a place to be hiding anything.
People see you 24-7. They see you in all sides of your life. They literally see you when you're brushing your teeth. And what I found is I think a lot of founders and CEOs are performing a lot of the time and they act a certain way in front of parts of their company but that's not really who they are. And so I think earnestness in leadership, just like being yourself, is incredibly valuable. And I've certainly lived that on the submarine. I think a second one that really comes to mind is being direct in conflict, direct in disagreement. That's something that I learned on the submarine. It's too small of a space again to say, I disagree with that person, but we'll sort it out later. That just, there's no later. And you have to be direct. And so that's something I've tried to take into the company building and into leadership. And then I think the third is maybe a more classic takeaway. But certainly, you are only as strong as the weakest link.
And so when you get to a submarine, you're kind of embodied with this mentality of, it takes everyone on the team, performing at a world-class pace. Even if you're the person that's turning a wrench on a pump, if you don't do your job, the team could be at risk because everything has to come together. And I think that's so relevant to building an amazing company.

**Nakul Mandan** (3:30)
Is it a stressful environment through and through, or does it have a roller coaster of like, normally it's calm, but then suddenly the stress spikes because of some situation?

**Cameron McCord** (3:39)
It's a really good question. It's definitely the latter. I mean, there's always an underlying stress, but this is something I learned. I kind of thought it was going to be non-stop. But actually when you're on mission, it's what they call it, you do a lot of training, a lot of preparation, but when you're actually out there doing the high-end missions that submarines do, you'll go off in multiple days, maybe even a week with it being pretty steady state. I think there's some learning in there as well, which is like building a company is a marathon.
And so not everything needs to be dire. But on the submarine, I think like, yeah, there are definitely these instances where you would try to bank up on sleep and kind of like rest. Because at a moment's notice, external factors would contribute and you would have to potentially stay up for 16, 20, 30 hours. I've stayed up for, I think, over 30 hours a couple of times.