Vannevar CEO Brett Granberg walks through his founder journey, from the first days to a $1.5B valuation. We cover his lessons learned and key decisions he made along the way: why Vannevar is not dual-use, how to think about defense TAM, why you should reference-check your investors, and building credibility in the early days. Finally, Brett explains what shifts once you do raise venture capital – how incentives and expectations change, and why managing founder psychology and energy becomes part of the job if you want to build something durable.

Highlights

-- The $16K bill that triggered the leap
-- Why defense-only > dual-use for actually shipping value
-- How to talk TAM in defense (and how not to)
-- Building credibility from zero with “part-time hooks”
-- Reference-checking your investors
-- Founder psychology and burnout, from survival mode to scale

🔗 Careers at Vannevar: https://vannevarlabs.com/careers/

Outline
00:00 The very beginning
01:08 Deciding to drop out of school
02:24 Making the leap
03:23 The early co-founder partnership
05:46 Product development before customers
07:26 Fundraising then vs. now
09:39 The dual use trap (and why we avoided it)
12:33 How to think about defense TAM
15:47 Recurring revenue in defense
18:03 Screening investors
20:26 Building credibility as an unknown quantity
22:13 Biggest surprises about being a founder
24:08 Mindset shifts from zero to $1.5B