Securing Our Future
Securing Our Future
SOF 015: National Security and Innovation at Dartmouth with Allison Coukos
Host Jeremy Hitchcock sits down with Allison Coukos, MBA Candidate at the Tuck School of Business. With a passion for innovation, cybersecurity, and national security venture capital, Coukos has dedicated her career to driving excellence in the technology sector and is currently a venture fellow at Blu Ventures.
Prior to her MBA journey, Coukos was a Senior Consultant in Technology Strategy at Deloitte and received her Bachelor of Arts in Political Science at George Washington University. She is currently planning the inaugural Tuck National Security and Innovation Conference, sponsored by New North Ventures.
0:00
Introduction
Welcome
Getting Into National Security and Venture Capital
Program at Tuck
National Security and Innovation Conference
Vision and Plans
Conclusion
Outro
This editable transcript was computer generated and might contain errors. People can also change the text after it was created.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Allie, thanks for joining us today.
Allison Coukos: Jeremy, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Jeremy Hitchcock: So next month, I understand you have an event coming up but first love to hear, your current student up at Dartmouth at talk and love to hear how you got to thinking about doing a National Security focused event up at Dartmouth.
Allison Coukos: Yeah, so I went to undergrad in Washington, DC went to GW and had always loved the national security defense space thought that was where I was going to land a friend of mine, my senior year of college. He had graduated your prior to me, and he was up at Deloitte loved his job. He said, I really think you should look into this government consulting thing. I had never even heard of it didn't think it was a real job, but sort of trusted him and applied and got the job and fell into Deloitte's defense, security, and justice practice. I was really fortunate. I got placed with my first client Got my first or my security clearance. I was top secret about, at the time
Allison Coukos: During my first year and a half on the job and really it was sort of off to the races working in defense and security. I loved the work that I was doing and being able to support national security mission and seeing what they were doing from a strategic side. But also an enterprise side working with different clients across DoD a couple of three letter agencies. And as I was spending more time at Deloitte, I started to shift a little bit more into our product innovation side within our defense, security and justice, practice and loved it. I fell in love with this intersection of innovation and defense and national security, and was realizing pretty quickly that there are a lot of silos when it came to that. So you would have what middle management was doing within these agencies you'd have leadership. You'd have private sector who had these solutions that they wanted to sell in, but didn't know And so I started to take a step back and thought, how do you bring all of these different pieces together and the natural next step for me, really seemed like venture capital as a sort of driving
Allison Coukos: course for that. So I decided to go to business school, came up to talk. I was really excited about Dartmouth just because of how small it was. Also the New England national security. Ecosystem was fascinating to me because we think a lot about defense and national security as DC focused. But there is a much broader one beyond just the hub of DC and so wanted to explore that a little bit. Dove into and turning for two capital funds, alumni ventures, and then blue ventures. And got to see the work that they were doing the early stage VC space and really dip my toes into, what does Jewel use national security and defense look like from a VC perspective.
Allison Coukos: And as I was doing that work, I decided, Okay, I'm gonna bite the bullet and I'm gonna actually put on this conference. The thing that I wish I had, I want to do and HbS and MIT have a really incredible policy focus conference. But I wanted to take it in a different direction to focus on what does collaboration in this early stage venture capital e National security space with public sector players actually look like today not three or five years from today when you talk about policy. So that was sort of where I started and kind of how we got to where we are today with me at Dartmouth and doing a lot of work in the national security space up here.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Hurt yourself. that sounds like quite a journey explained and in just a couple minutes, but how did you think about getting into the national security space in the first place? what would you have been doing otherwise? was it something where just Hey, this looks like an interesting problem set. I'm gonna go work on this. Yeah, I think I can find some solutions or was there some other reason and if you weren't in this space, what would you be doing instead?
Allison Coukos: Yeah, I think it was always going to be this space, to be honest. It's funny talking to my parents even when I was home over the summer, they said you this is the stuff you loved When I was in high school. I was reading books about the Cold War and code cracking with Enigma and just everything of that space entailed and loved the CIA. So that was sort of the place that I wanted to be in. And I actually at times almost fought that I said, No, maybe I'll go look at the space. Maybe I'll look at, going into mergers acquisitions more generally or financial services and every time it was getting pulled back into national security because I love being able to support the mission. I think, one of the best things about the US is the fact that we have strong military national security apparatus and
Allison Coukos: But they can't do that alone. There needs to be support from all different facets of the economy. And so being able to do that from a private sector side, has been really rewarding and so I think even as much as I sometimes would try to stray from it, I always ended up coming back to it. It's been something I've loved since as long as I can remember and so getting to do that now has been just incredible and seeing it involved over time has been really exciting too.
00:05:00
Jeremy Hitchcock: so I'm biased in this question, but clearly the draw to venture capital as a tool for helping push things along or making things leaning further ahead and into the future is something I find near and dear. why we invest in companies that are in this space, but curious how you came to find venture as one of those places where you saw possibility in trying to think about the silos thinking about where the futures going and also solve some problems.
Allison Coukos: I think the reason I viewed venture really as this ecosystem builder is because the people involved in it are just that
Allison Coukos: When you look at some of the big defense contractors, they're really good at what they do, but they're very focused on what they do. You take the lockheeds of the world, you frankly can take the deloids of the world, doing the consulting side, and they have a very narrow mandate. And when it comes to the government side, these are people who really want to do a lot of good, but they might not necessarily know where to go. And so you have these pieces of the puzzle that are really operating silos, the startups themselves, sometimes don't even know, they might be people. It's defense tech who come former military and they have this great idea, but How do you sell into it? What does that look like? Whereas venture, you take that step back, you have folks who are typically especially defense tech either have a background in the space pretty well. They have some sort of technical understanding, a lot of the time you will see former founders become venture capitalist partners. And so you have people whose job it is to create ecosystems.
Allison Coukos: Build communities into build networks. And so, I think, when you view the entire national security and defense apparatus, as An eco building exercise and trying to drive that innovation. almost the natural next step to doing that because they are the ones who have the incentive to create the strong community. A Deloitte, or a lucky doesn't necessarily have that, but eventual capitalist does. And so they are really in any unique position to actually just go forth and do that. Unlike I think a lot of the other players who are really integral to the space,
Jeremy Hitchcock: No, it's cool. So, talk as a great program up there in the MBA side of their programming, but it's not It tell us about how has your cohort of class come together on this and then love to start to hear a bit more about the program. You guys have intended for later in October.
Allison Coukos: Yeah, I think Tuck is really great. In fact that we have a lot of phenomenal resources, more, broadly, a Dartmouth. We have the Dickey Center for International Understanding Dartmouth College it's called ists. I think it's their Technology Services Center that has done a lot of work in the past, with computer sciences and got a lot of government work with DARPA, Air Force Advisory Board, and things like that. And within my cohort, I think talk is one of the top MBA programs when it comes to vets. So they're sort of this.
Allison Coukos: Lifeblood among talking Dartmouth more broadly where students are actually really excited about this topic. And when I started posing this to classmates last spring people jumped on it, people who are interested in venture jumped on it. In terms of just understanding the venture capital ecosystem, more broadly, classmates of mine who are interested in the startup space. We're excited about the concept classmates and wine who just general former vets were or Former military folks were coming and saying, Hey this is really cool what can lead you to help. And so people got really excited about the idea. I think it's been great to have a community kind of coales around this, to take something that was just an idea a year ago and actually bring it to fruition now And so, yeah.
Jeremy Hitchcock: That's cool. tell us what we can expect in October.
Allison Coukos: Yeah, so the conference is on Saturday October 28th really excited about it and it is much more. I think again, juxtaposing against the HbS MIT conference is a very policy heavy. We're taking it down to tactical level. So we have some phenomenal keynotes speakers who are coming in. Hopefully from the government side of the House to actually talk about that higher level policy. What they look at in terms of the innovation landscape the culture around it. The role that sort of policy makers can be playing in this space and then we'll be doing a lot of tabletop exercise. I think that's one of the big things that we wanted to do was, can we show in real time? What this collaboration looks like? So we have Nick Reese, who's the former director of emerging Tech policy from DHS?
Allison Coukos: Leading a session on government as an incubator. And what does the role of a government directorate? I think we're talking a little bit more about Dhs's S&T, In that sense. How did they foster innovation? We'll be doing a panel on the DoD and the IC and how the DoD historically has scouted technology how they're integrating and deploying it. But what's changing today, in terms of that collaboration between the public and private sector, we'll be diving into topics around cyber security. So, we have some folks, from SIS actually who are going to be leading around table on. You have a strain of AI malware coming through, What does government regulation? Look like, How does the private sector step in with players like Google or Microsoft? But also where does startups fit into this equation? Because you have a lot of startups that are disrupting a lot of these more dinosaur industries that you have some great incumbents but they might be focused on one piece of the problem and are kind of ignoring an entire others, peace event. So we'll be doing a lot of really interesting and exciting table top exercises across a variety of different topics.
00:10:00
Allison Coukos: With some amazing speakers Jeremy, you'll be on one of the panels and we're really lucky to have new North ventures sponsoring it. We'll also have folks like Nate Ashton, who is the executive director for the Alliance of Commercial Technology in Government on the panels, Pete. Mathias, who is an amazing thesis called American Attack from alumni Adventures on it. So a lot of really exciting folks on the panels in the morning and then in the afternoon we're breaking out into small group discussions. So doing a roundtable.
Allison Coukos: Conversation around, VC and government and what collaboration looks like. So that's a very tactical conversation about. You have totally different incentive structures. How are the VCs working with government? What does that ecosystem in collaboration? Actually look like and how can you start to move forward in today's current environment? We're not talking about policy in three to five years but what can you be doing today? And then also we're trying to do a government buyer diet. So one thing that's really important to us is How can startups actually sell into government One thing. I think sometimes that people miss the mark on when they talk about selling into government is market versus mission need and so you might have a market need for it, but does it actually mean a mission? Need that government has and so we're trying to help startups who are interested in this space actually understand how they can start selling into government and get those more lucrative contracts longer term and then closing out the day with the demo day. So startups, who are doing dual use across a variety of different sectors and industries. Not necessarily just to funds tech.
Allison Coukos: I advance manufacturing biotech cybersecurity geospatial thinking about it more broadly than just their later stage, but the end rolls, and the palantiers of the world. But what does dual use look Broadly. So we have a very packed agenda for a single day but I think it's gonna be really exciting to get all these different folks in the room and having these conversations.
Jeremy Hitchcock: It sounds like it'll be great nda. Very hands-on if nothing else people should come. Because I'll happen to be a part of the speaking program so I hope to hope we'll have a fun time. But it is interesting…
Allison Coukos: Yeah.
Jeremy Hitchcock: because Dartmouth does have an interesting history of that collaboration space and I know from even some of my personal travels.
Jeremy Hitchcock: It's also a lot of Internet things that came out of Dartmouth, I think Elm as an email program, has its roots there, a bunch of other programs and projects that have.
Allison Coukos: they like to say, they sounded AI and ML so that they will say that came out of Dartmouth
Jeremy Hitchcock: what's the story behind that? There must be some truth of it. Do you know of it?
Allison Coukos: They I want to say was in the 50s. They hosted the first AI summit up here and…
Jeremy Hitchcock: Yeah.
Allison Coukos: so now any class you take in analytics or computer science, even at the business school, they will happily say that Dartmouth College is the birthplace of AI and ML.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Yeah, I've heard that story and was supposedly I don't think was a weekend or was some short period of time.
Allison Coukos: Yeah.
Jeremy Hitchcock: They said eight weeks later We're gonna nail this ai thing and of course we're still playing with it eight decades later. very cool. what are you hoping to that attendees are able to walk away from this knowing working together and As you're preparing people to be a participant. How do you think that this session? And this event will Correspond with other events you mentioned that the Harvard MIT Security Conference. But what other type of dialogues do you hope to spur from this?
Allison Coukos: I think one of the things that we really want to have happen is opening the lines of communication. You have a lot of big events. You have capital factories fed, supernova, and you have these events with amazing speakers. But what we really want to do is bring this down a level and make it a dialogue. And so, for participants coming from the government side, thinking, strategically about where you say, either as an acquisitions officer or policy side, How the venture capital ecosystem can work for you. How to start? You might be working with startups being coming in with an open mind, Asked questions from the VC side. I think, unless you're a venture capitalists who's well-versed in the defense and national security space, you have a ton to learn because so often I hear VC, We don't look at companies that sell into government because they fail and that's not a really reliable revenue stream and so I'll say back to them. Do you actually know who they're selling to know, what type of contract vehicles, they have? Because that does make a difference?
00:15:00
Allison Coukos: Need, the right color of money in the right kind of money. So for VCs it's really coming in and actually learning and understanding these Startups that are going to business with government and for the startups frankly, just incredible exposure, you're going to talk to folks in government, you're going to talk to VCs, you'll have amazing access to folks who are invested in your own personal development growth as a company. So, Really just coming in with an open mind, Ask a lot of questions. Ready to be engaged in the hands-on dialogue? I would say This is not going to be a passive, observer, converse conversation or conference. you really have to come in and want to be involved and engaged out of the gate.
Jeremy Hitchcock: No, certain. So there's no sit in the back and just a passively paying attention.
Allison Coukos: definitely
Jeremy Hitchcock: You're gonna be put to work.
Allison Coukos: Yeah, And I think everyone will be better off for it.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Very cool. what parting thoughts how do you think that this has changed your MBA experience have been not too many people have the opportunity to put a conference together. what are your early learning lessons in this?
Allison Coukos: gosh, there are I think the biggest thing and I've said this to classmates time and time again is, Don't be afraid to send the email, a quick little anecdote. I reached out to Ambassador Fick, who is the US ambassador for cyberspace and digital policy at State over the summer? Just sent me email saying, Hey, I'm really interesting what you're doing. You're a Dartmouth alum I'd be great to talk to you, just learn about your career and I got to talk to him about the conference. He is not attending, but he was incredible in terms of thinking through what's useful from a government side from someone from his position. And so
Allison Coukos: What this conference has taught me is really the power of just putting yourself out there and asking the questions and the power of networking. A lot of the time especially as MBA students, I think folks are a little bit afraid to send that email and say What if it comes off as you pushy, they're not going to answer it to which I say a lot of people want but the people who are really interesting excited and I think that has been something we've seen putting this conference together is just you have to ask and if you don't ask or don't try, you don't know. And also I would say The power of people who are inspired by mission is something that I'm continuously seeing the way this conference is coming together. It's really interesting to see folks across private industry across academia involving Dartmouth come together to actually drive this conference forward and seeing folks who are really excited about it. It's
Allison Coukos: One thing that sometimes can get lost in the business world as we talk a lot about profit and loss we talk about revenue and we focus on very hard financial metrics when it comes to defining success. But this conference has showed me that success especially in a space like national security is so driven by mission. It's not the financial incentives are nice. But what you can do when you have a group of people who are driven by mission, you can become unstoppable and you can really get the ball rolling on things. So that has been something. I've seen a lot of and I think hopefully as I continue to do work throughout my career, being able to bring that sense of mission to what I'm doing and using that as a driving force is going to be really exciting and cool for me.
Jeremy Hitchcock: awesome, what a cool story and looking forward to it October 28th up at Dartmouth and Hanover New Hampshire, and where can people register, or find out more about the conference
Allison Coukos: they go Google talk. National Security Innovation, Cop and innovation conference. It should be one of the first things that come up. We also are going to be heavily advertising on social media as well as LinkedIn. So it will be coming but a quick Google to talk National Security and Innovation Conference will get you to the registration.
Jeremy Hitchcock: We're looking forward to it and thanks for joining us and tell us about the program, ally.
Allison Coukos: Thanks for having Jeremy very excited.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Perfect.
Allison Coukos: All right. Thanks so much. this is really exciting.
Jeremy Hitchcock: This is cool. No, I mean, same thing with the Harvard MIT people was really excited that they was a groundswell and again very different that you guys. You do have a very different approach like there, they were so excited about having ash card or it's fine he's and was great was wonderful to hear his remarks but on a roll to sleep, do something. So This will be cool.
Allison Coukos: Yeah, yeah, and that's the thing I was talking to Akil our children, who's saying when they started this, he's like it was a policy conference that was the intent of it.
Jeremy Hitchcock: Yeah.
Allison Coukos: And so when I talked to music, you are really doing something different yes because I'm not gonna try to compete on policy with HBS and MIT, That's just not even something. I'm gonna try to do, but we can take it in this other direction and offer a different value that is still going to be useful in this space. So I think and it's just interesting and cool to see the grounds of it happening with MBA programs because you have it happening with, I think the VC world. But to get VA students involved and…
00:20:00
Jeremy Hitchcock: Yeah. that's…
Allison Coukos: excited is a really cool thing.
Jeremy Hitchcock: how you can tell that that's investment banking was the thing in the 90s and it was VC and…
Allison Coukos: Yeah.
Jeremy Hitchcock: sultans and calm companies in the arts. and so if this is the precursor of the world to come feel pretty good about this. Cool.
Allison Coukos: Yeah, not a bad place to be.
Jeremy Hitchcock: If there's other stuff along the way we can be helpful on conference wise again excited to have a great collaboration space and looking forward to some great dialogue.
Allison Coukos: Super excited. Yeah, we'll keep you guys posted as things kind of just keep progressing. Awesome. Thanks so much Jeremy.