EPISODE SUMMARY
Our episode today features Will Coffield, cofounder and General Partner of Riot Ventures, an LA-based venture capital firm focused on the intersection of where software meets hardware.
EPISODE NOTES
Today’s Pathfinder episode features Will Coffield, cofounder and General Partner of Riot Ventures. Riot has a proclivity for investing in early-stage companies with transformative tech ideologies dedicated to revolutionizing traditional industries. Today’s conversation also features the space and space-adjacent companies that Riot has invested in including True Anomaly, Integrate, and Azimuth.
In addition to Riot’s origin story, Mo and Will discuss:
- Mapping real customer demand
- Liquidity within deep tech
- Categorizing space investing
- Dual-use technology…is it a cover for defense investing?
And much more…
This episode is brought to you by SpiderOak, a US-based software company that builds space cybersecurity products and solutions for civilian, military, and commercial space operations. Learn more at https://spideroak.com/
• Chapters •
00:00 – Intro & SpiderOak Ad
02:31 – Will’s background
13:20 – Riot’s investment strategy
17:06 – Seed investments
19:54 – Mapping real customer demand
22:07 – Liquidity in deep tech industries
25:52 – SpiderOak Ad
26:40 – How do you categorizing space investments?
34:21 – Is dual-use technology a cover up for defense investing?
38:09 – Integrate and Azimuth
42:58 – Crowding in the market
47:02 – Starship’s impact on the ecosystem
48:48 – Technologies Riot is excited about
49:54 – Outside of LA, where’s the biggest space ecosystem?