Navy SEALS in Southern California’s Tech Community
from ussocom via flickr
There’s been a lot of attention given to the Navy SEALs in the last few weeks since the Osama Bin Laden raid, so I wasn’t surprised to see the post from Jeff Bussgang, a well followed venture capitalist blogger, this week. Jeff posted a few tips on what entrepreneurs can learn from the NAVY SEALs, based on an event in New York. However, did you know that Southern California’s own technology community has two Navy SEALs (not to mention a huge swath of others with military background?) It appears that there must be something in (particularly, those in the special forces) which lends itself to high tech entrepreneurship and investing.
Ted Alexander, a venture capitalist at Mission Ventures in San Diego is a former platoon commander from the US Navy SEALS. Beau Laskey, a venture capitalist at Disney’s VC arm, Steamboat Ventures, was at SEAL Team One and Eight.
More military links here? Dan Beldy at Steamboat was an F/A-18 Hornet jet instructor pilot for the U.S. Navy; Samit Varma, of Anthem Ventures was a U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Officer; Frank Monstere, President and COO of LegalZoom was in the U.S. Army Special Forces; Kelly Perdew, CEO of FastPoint Games, was an Airborne Ranger. Paige Craig, CEO of BetterWorks and a prolific angel investor in Los Angeles, was in the U.S. Marines. Apprently, there is something you learn from the military training that lends itself well here to becoming either a venture capitalist or investor, or a high tech CEO.
