Discipulus Ventures

SPRING COHORT APPS LIVE NOW! Apply in bio 🇺🇸

🇺🇸 EXCLUSIVE: @PalmerLuckey x @DiscipulusVent Spring Demo Day Fireside Chat. We cover Why El Segundo, Founding Anduril, Defense Tech Incentives, State of Hardtech VC, SVB Collapse, Erebor, Founder Advice, & more. Highlights: (00:00) Palmer Luckey (00:20) Why Anduril chose El Segundo over the Bay Area (01:20) The Facebook acquisition & Bay Area mercenary problem (02:43) Building across veterans, Democrats, Republicans & libertarians (03:33) How the four Anduril founders' roles have evolved (04:21) "Want to work on tech? Don't start a company" (06:02) What Palmer learned from Oculus about delegation (06:44) How not to become Lockheed or Raytheon (07:33) Why the government rewards being slow & expensive (09:25) Anduril's real failure mode: becoming Google, not Lockheed (10:21) The state of hardtech venture capital (10:55) Why ZIRP killed serious investing (12:31) The vibe shift toward energy, defense & agriculture (13:01) Erebor & the SVB collapse that almost killed Anduril (13:32) Why no American bank is actually aligned with America (15:18) How Biden accidentally saved Anduril (17:10) Palmer's one piece of advice for founders (17:38) Bonus: the One Piece anime fan edit

.@640oxford presents: PRE/INDUSTRIALIZE The pre-party to @reindsummit. Detroit. June 15th. Industrial bonfires, demos, installations, and whatever other crazy shit you can think of alongside those building the future of America. Hosted with @DiscipulusVent, @cantos, Riot Ventures, @CrucibleCap, @AcequiaCapital, @grid_cap, @trucksvc, @dugsong, & more. Located in a former wartime production stamping facility, and the home to @noxmetals & @beaconmfg. Powered by: @VulcanForms Link below:

The @DiscipulusVent Spring Cohort just wrapped up in the 'Gundo. 🇺🇸 Joined by @PalmerLuckey, @isaiah_p_taylor, @ADoricko & more throughout the week. 10 hardtech founders building for the American Interest. Companies below 🧵👇

@joel_chakra @jakobdiepen @ADoricko @DiscipulusVent @texheavy @fedpoasts Legit the best pitch day I have ever been to. Incredible companies pitched incredibly well.

if your demo day after-party doesn’t have hardware, you’re ngmi

Great @DiscipulusVent demo day @jakobdiepen (remain miffed that South Florida hasn’t built our own Gundo but great presenters and attendance)

The @DiscipulusVent Demo Day was the closest I've felt to Florence during the Renaissance. A place for smart people to gather and talk about important technology. Lots of optimism and big ideas. Grassroots movement for America. Awesome to see everyone come together.

@DiscipulusVent is standing room only. Excited to see demos. @akalmans

Annual 1517 pilgrimage to the Gundo for @DiscipulusVent

Legend in the house at @DiscipulusVent demo day! @PalmerLuckey

El Segundo was always inevitable @PalmerLuckey @DiscipulusVent

🇺🇸 @JoshuaSteinman is building cybersecurity for critical infrastructure at @Galvanick. Ex-Navy. Ex-senior staffer at the @WhiteHouse. He has three simple sentences for early stage founders pitching complex ideas. "You have to keep it simple. You have to keep it simple. You have to keep it simple." VCs listen to hundreds of pitches per day. Make yours the one they can remember without checking their notes.

🇺🇸 @Gundo_OG is a serial defense tech founder. He co-founded @epirus (a defense unicorn) and is now building next-gen electronic warfare at @CX2_Industries His advice for founders building in hard tech: endure. "Prepare to get punched in the face. Prepare to get punched a lot of times. Be tenacious. Have grit."

🇺🇸 @ScottNolan is building America’s nuclear fuel supply @GeneralMatter. Ex-SpaceX engineer, @foundersfund partner. He couldn’t find an American uranium enrichment company to invest in, so he built one. $900M DOE contract. His advice for hard tech founders in the @DiscipulusVent Cohort: “Don’t start a company if it’s not your life’s mission.” That ethos runs through the core of what’s being built in El Segundo. Missionaries, not mercenaries.

.@isaiah_p_taylor is building planetary scale nuclear reactors at @ValarAtomics. He dropped out of high school at 16, founded Valar at 24, raised $450M, and is building America's first nuclear gigasite. 🇺🇸 His advice for @DiscipulusVent hard tech founders: "Get to the hardware problems as soon as you can. You should be experiencing more hardware problems at a greater and greater pace over time."

.@JoshuaSteinman shared esoteric hard tech fundraising knowledge with the @DiscipulusVent Cohort (apply to the next one to figure out what is under the blurred text). "VCs want 3 sentences of renegade and 50 pages of Normie." — Be interesting enough to get attention, conventional enough to get funded.

May be the best Cohort yet… Teams to be revealed on April 15th at Demo Day

Cohort IV merch ready to go

At #GlobalAltsMiami 2026, @jakobdiepen, GP at @DiscipulusVent, discussed why mission-driven companies consistently attract top talent — even when they pay less. 🎥 Watch the full session: youtu.be/BCaCzR8Wrss #iConnections #VentureCapital #Startups #Innovation #Entrepreneurship @MFAupdates

Heard from a few sources that there were submission problems on Friday. Therefore, APPLICATIONS ARE RE-OPENED TILL TONIGHT🚨