After eight years as a Navy submarine officer, Cameron McCord joined Anduril and Saildrone before co-founding Nominal to fix the testing bottlenecks slowing down aerospace and defense hardware. These notes cover his experience navigating hardware engineering, defense procurement, and technical teams.

Visual summary of operating lessons from Cameron McCord.

Part 1: The Navy Foundation

  1. On submarine culture: "When you spend 484 days underwater, you realize exactly what it means to rely on mission-critical hardware where failure is an absolute impossibility." — MIT Alumni Profile
  2. On zero-defect engineering: "In the Navy, we operate in environments where a single hardware defect can be fatal. That standard permanently alters how you view system reliability." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  3. On trusting equipment: "Sailors have to trust the machines around them implicitly. That trust is built long before deployment during the rigorous testing and evaluation phases." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  4. On operating under pressure: "A submarine teaches you that physics gets a vote. You cannot negotiate with the physical realities of the ocean." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  5. On hardware fundamentals: "Software can be patched over the air, but once a physical system is deployed in a hostile environment, its baseline engineering must be flawless." — Nominal Platform Vision
  6. On transitioning to tech: "Moving from the military to venture capital and startups meant translating the life-or-death urgency of the fleet into engineering velocity." — General Catalyst Interview
  7. On the cost of slow systems: "The military understands the cost of mechanical failure, but it is still learning the strategic cost of moving too slowly in product development." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  8. On discipline: "You never rise to the occasion in an emergency. You sink to the level of your training and the reliability of your tools." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  9. On mission alignment: "The military aligns thousands of people around a single operational goal. Startups need that exact same clarity of purpose." — MIT Alumni Profile

Part 2: The Hardware Bottleneck

  1. On testing delays: "Testing and evaluation is the hidden bottleneck in national security. We build advanced systems but validate them at the speed of paperwork." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  2. On legacy tools: "Engineers building the most advanced hardware on the planet are still forced to analyze their data using Excel and MATLAB." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  3. On the test-analyze-fix cycle: "The speed of hardware development is gated by how fast you can run a test, analyze the telemetry, and implement a fix." — Nominal Platform Vision
  4. On PDF workflows: "Relying on static PDFs to validate complex defense hardware is a recipe for stalled innovation." — General Catalyst Interview
  5. On data overload: "Modern sensors generate millions of data points, but the infrastructure to actually catalog and understand that data has lagged years behind." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  6. On engineering friction: "We are asking top-tier talent to spend half their time wrangling messy data instead of solving actual physics problems." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  7. On the validation gap: "The Department of Defense often procures great hardware but lacks the modern tools to rapidly validate if it performs to exact specifications." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  8. On hardware stagnation: "Hardware has lagged behind software because the tooling for continuous integration and continuous deployment simply did not exist for physical things." — Nominal Platform Vision
  9. On unblocking talent: "If you want engineers to build better planes and rockets, you have to give them tools that eliminate manual data entry." — General Catalyst Interview

Part 3: Building "Software-Defined Hardware"

  1. On physical AI: "Hardware companies are increasingly becoming physical AI companies, blending advanced algorithms with kinetic systems." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  2. On the GitHub for hardware: "There needs to be a central nervous system for hardware data, a place where engineers can author logic and track changes systematically." — General Catalyst Interview
  3. On the verification layer: "Software needs a compiler to verify code. Hardware needs a verification layer to prove the machine will work in the real world." — Nominal Platform Vision
  4. On telemetry data: "Telemetry is the absolute ground truth of hardware performance. Treating it as an afterthought is a massive strategic error." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  5. On modernizing the stack: "Replacing legacy analysis tools with a modern software backbone changes the entire cadence of industrial engineering." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  6. On system reliability: "When you transition from manual checks to automated validation logic, you catch edge cases that human eyes simply cannot see." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  7. On test data as an asset: "Test data should never be discarded after a successful run. It is a historical baseline that informs the next generation of design." — Nominal Platform Vision
  8. On closing the loop: "The feedback loop between the hardware test stand and the software engineering desk must be measured in minutes instead of weeks." — General Catalyst Interview
  9. On bridging disciplines: "Software-defined hardware requires mechanical engineers and software developers to look at the exact same data in real-time." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  10. On scaling autonomy: "You cannot deploy autonomous systems reliably at scale without a system of record that mathematically proves they are safe." — All Quiet on the Second Front

Part 4: The Defense Technology Gap

  1. On defense procurement: "We have to change government incentives to reward program leaders for fielding systems quickly and economically, rather than just adhering to safe processes." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  2. On the frontier of advantage: "In modern conflict, test data and validation speed represent the next frontier for national security advantage." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  3. On dual-use technology: "The best defense technology often mirrors the tooling used by top commercial aerospace and racing teams. The physics problems are identical." — General Catalyst Interview
  4. On bureaucratic drag: "National security is compromised both by poor engineering and by the administrative drag of approving good hardware." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  5. On commercial off-the-shelf: "Handing a commercial drone to the military is only half the battle. The military needs the digital infrastructure to ingest its data." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  6. On asymmetrical threats: "We cannot counter cheap, rapidly iterated hardware threats using multi-decade procurement cycles." — Nominal Platform Vision
  7. On modernizing the base: "The defense industrial base requires modernizing the digital nervous system that connects factories as much as it requires building better physical assembly lines." — General Catalyst Interview
  8. On defense investing: "Venture capital in defense tech focuses as much on funding the software that makes complex manufacturing repeatable as it does on the weapons themselves." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  9. On continuous upgrades: "Hardware in the field must be capable of receiving continuous software validation updates to adapt to emerging threats." — All Quiet on the Second Front

Part 5: Missionaries Over Mercenaries

  1. On hiring criteria: "You want to hire missionaries rather than mercenaries. You need people who are willing to run through walls for the end goal." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  2. On true believers: "When the product involves national security, you cannot fake conviction. The team has to genuinely care about the operators downrange." — General Catalyst Interview
  3. On enduring friction: "Hardware startups are painful. Mercenaries quit when the physics get hard while missionaries stay to solve the equation." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  4. On filtering candidates: "During interviews, you have to push candidates to see if they are interested in the prestige of the company or the grit of the actual work." — MIT Alumni Profile
  5. On team culture: "A culture of zero defects requires a team that is comfortable with radical honesty about what is broken." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  6. On alignment: "If the engineers do not understand the tactical value of the machine they are building, the product will fail the end user." — Nominal Platform Vision
  7. On venture capital pressure: "Missionary teams are the only ones capable of sustaining the long development cycles required to build a billion-dollar industrial company." — General Catalyst Interview
  8. On leadership responsibility: "Founders owe their team a clear mission. You cannot ask people to work weekend shifts for a vague objective." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  9. On building hardware: "It takes a specific type of optimism to build hardware, combined with a deep, paranoid pessimism about testing it." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  10. On scaling culture: "As the company grows, the biggest risk is diluting the intensity of the early team. You have to institutionalize the urgency." — Italian Tech Week 2025

Part 6: Lessons from the Vanguard

  1. On observing success: "Watching companies like Anduril scale taught me that you don't ask the government for permission to innovate. You build the product and prove it works." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  2. On the dark side of VC: "Spending time in venture capital at Lux showed me how capital flows, but it primarily highlighted the massive gaps in industrial software." — General Catalyst Interview
  3. On ocean autonomy: "At Saildrone, we saw firsthand how difficult it is to deploy hardware in the ocean. The environment actively tries to destroy your product." — MIT Alumni Profile
  4. On software simulation: "Working with companies doing advanced autonomy proved that physical testing must be seamlessly paired with digital simulation." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  5. On category creation: "You cannot wait for a defense prime to define a new software category. A startup has to dictate the new standard of operation." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  6. On capital efficiency: "Hardware requires intensive capital, but software infrastructure for hardware can scale with the margin profile of a traditional enterprise business." — General Catalyst Interview
  7. On early product velocity: "The defining trait of the breakout defense startups is their unwillingness to accept normal industry timelines for testing." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  8. On identifying pain points: "The best startup ideas are usually found in the tools engineers complain about the most during their lunch breaks." — Nominal Platform Vision
  9. On operating speed: "The default state of a startup should be extreme velocity, because the default state of the industries we sell into is stasis." — Italian Tech Week 2025

Part 7: The Data Infrastructure Playbook

  1. On structured data: "When test data is properly structured and searchable, it transforms from a liability you have to parse into an asset you can mine." — Nominal Platform Vision
  2. On breaking silos: "You cannot have the propulsion team and the avionics team looking at different versions of the truth. The data infrastructure must be unified." — General Catalyst Interview
  3. On authoring logic: "Engineers should spend their time writing validation logic that runs automatically, rather than manually staring at strip charts." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  4. On system architecture: "A modern industrial data stack needs to handle millions of rows of telemetry per second without crashing the user's browser." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  5. On cloud adoption in defense: "The military is increasingly ready for cloud infrastructure, provided it meets the strict security boundaries required for classified testing." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  6. On automating compliance: "Compliance should be an automatic output of your engineering data system rather than a separate paperwork exercise." — Nominal Platform Vision
  7. On error reduction: "Most hardware testing errors are actually software tooling errors, like someone copying and pasting the wrong cell in a spreadsheet." — General Catalyst Interview
  8. On scaling engineering teams: "Good infrastructure allows a hardware company to double its engineering headcount without doubling its communication overhead." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  9. On data portability: "Test results must be portable across the entire lifecycle of the vehicle, from initial research all the way to field maintenance." — All Quiet on the Second Front

Part 8: Leadership and Execution

  1. On maintaining focus: "It is incredibly easy to build a tool that does everything poorly. The hard part is building a tool that does one specific thing flawlessly." — Italian Tech Week 2025
  2. On managing engineers: "The best way to lead high-performing engineers is to remove the obstacles they didn't even realize were slowing them down." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  3. On setting the pace: "The CEO's job in an industrial startup is to constantly compress the timeline between an idea and a physical test." — General Catalyst Interview
  4. On dealing with failure: "When a physical test fails, the reaction should be immediate curiosity about what the telemetry data reveals rather than blame." — Nominal Platform Vision
  5. On selling to government: "Selling software to the government requires immense patience combined with an aggressive product delivery schedule." — All Quiet on the Second Front
  6. On founder mentality: "You have to approach building a company with the same intensity as operating a submarine. Assume leaks will happen and know exactly how to patch them." — MIT Alumni Profile
  7. On continuous improvement: "Making testing ten times faster is the result of compounding small improvements in the engineering workflow." — General Catalyst Interview
  8. On cross-functional respect: "Software engineers have to respect the physical constraints of hardware, and mechanical engineers have to respect the architecture of good software." — Sequoia Capital: "Training Data"
  9. On measuring success: "We measure success by how quickly our customers can get their vehicles off the ground, not by how much code we write." — Nominal Platform Vision
  10. On long-term vision: "We aim to alter how humans validate the machines they trust their lives with, rather than merely replacing legacy software." — All Quiet on the Second Front