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Smart Women, Smart Power
Inside Modern Defense Tech
00:27:38
Erin Biggers joins to talk scaling Vannevar Labs' mission to equip U.S. public servants with cutting-edge defense technology.
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- [00:04]
Dr. Kathleen McInnis
This is Smart Women, Smart Power, a podcast that features conversations with some of the world's most powerful women. We feature thought leaders at all career levels where we explore, among other things, the many contributions that women make to the fields of international business, national security, foreign policy, and international development. Does having women in positions of power influence the outcomes of decisions in these fields? Why or why not? Join me, Dr. Kathleen McInnes, Director of the Smart Women's Smart Power Initiative at the center for Strategic and International Studies. For these incredible conversations.
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Vannevar Labs, at its core, has a bold bring the best technology American innovation can offer into close partnership with with the United States government to equip public servants with the tools they need to keep the country safe, simple in theory, extraordinarily difficult in practice to achieve. Today we're joined by Erin Biggers, the Vice President of Mission at Vannevar Labs, who began her career in the US Air Force and has since helped build Vannevar from the ground up, playing a pivotal role in scaling its both its impact and its operations. I'm Dr. Kathleen McInnis, and this is Smart Women, Smart Power. Well, welcome to the podcast, Erin.
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Erin Biggers
Thank you so much for having me, Kathleen. This is an honor.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Well, so our listeners know, we'd love to start with people's origin stories. How did you get into the field? How did you decide to join the Air Force?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, so if I'm honest, it started with the fact that I was poor, so I was a good student in high school, didn't have any money for college, and a friend mentioned that his uncle has gone to the Air Force Academy and it was free. So maybe I want to look into it. I did some quick research, had never heard of it before, and took a shot and applied. And as I was waiting for my acceptance, 9, 11 happened. And so I was accepted about two months after that. And so at the time, right. Like at 18, my thought was really just, you know, if my country was going to ask people to fight for them, I wanted to be a part of it. And so that was, you know, my origin story into the Air Force. And then I think my dedication, my real, true dedication to national security came, Came later during my Air Force time.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yeah. And what was. Was there a specific moment where you sort of realized, like, the gravity of the. The gravitas, the gravity of the mission just sort of hit you or.
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, yeah, I think so, for sure. So my. It was during my second deployment. So I was at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan, which is in. In Helmand province.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Oh, yeah. I'VE been to. I've been to Bastion.
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, yeah. Y. This was in 2010. So at the time I was working with helicopter search and rescue and casualty evacuation crews. We arrived in the spring, which was just after Operation Moshtarik had kicked off, I think in March of that year. And that was the operation for the Marines to kind of retake the Helmand River Valley, which British soldiers had been trying. Trying to hold, but it was at that point really overrun by the Taliban. So we showed up a few months after that kicked off and we were really the casualty evacuation options for the Marines taking that valley over the summer fighting months. My job, I mean, I deployed as an intel officer, but essentially what I became was kind of a mission controller. So I handled all the nine line drops, which is a casualty evacuation, sort of requests that come down. I handle all the spot threat reports and all the coordination back to hospitals and medical crews for the patients coming back on the helicopters. And so it was June 9th. Yeah, it was June 9th. We were executing a midday pickup for a gunshot wound patient in Sangin, which was a pretty hot part of the valley at the time. And one of our birds, call sign Pedro 66, was shot down. So it was later found to be. I mean, small arms fire was like, you beguit us across the valley at the time, but it was later found to be like what they called a golden bb. So a round hit the rotor at such a point that it essentially detached from the bird and it became completely uncontrollable. The pilot, Dave Wisniewski, somehow, Right. Got the helicopter away from the troops on the ground before crashed. But of the seven men on board, five died. And then the two that survived had like, really, really critical injuries. So it's just surreal. So that day, like my job became, right, the coordination for the survivors that we had back to the hospital and then the return of the remains of our co workers and friends. Yeah. And I think, I mean, your whole life changes, right, like in those minutes. I don't think you can really like process the proximity to that kind of tragedy at the time because you're still kind of working through it. But definitely in retrospect, I realized, like, I never really walked away from it. So for, you know, Wiz, Tony, Smitty, Aggie, Ben, Joel and Flores, there's kind of like who I was before their helicopter went down. And then there is who I am after just kind of forces you to grow up in that moment. We still had a couple of. Not a couple. We still had several months left on that deployment and we had, you know, more serious injuries. We had another co pilot that essentially got like part of his leg blown off later. And I, it was like trying to coordinate these evacuations with, you know, in a dusty tent with barely functioning computers on a fold out table. There's like literally mice running around chewing through wires, stealing paper from our printer to build nests. And like, I do know because, you know, some of those crews confided in me like how deeply scared they were. And then I would, you know, I'd get the nine line and I'd key the radio to scramble them and they would still like run at full speed out to the helicopter pad. And I think just made me realize that like the things we ask these people to do, they're just gonna do them no matter what. Like crappy resources. I think we were all kind of, you know, grieving in a way we didn't understand at the time. Yeah. And you know, operating in a moral gray area as we all do in war. And I. They're still gonna run as hard as they can when asked to. And it, I think it just solidified in me, like I wanna be part of a solution that helps them. It means a lot to me. I did walk away from national security at like one point in my career. I wanted to do something totally different. Wrote budget legislation.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Okay, so where were you telling me? Like, so you. Yeah, you transitioned after this deployment or.
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Erin Biggers
I was in for a few more years and went back to Afghanistan. Went to Kabul later on too. I got out in 20, 2014, did some national security work and then decided like going to try something totally different. Went and wrote budget legislation for like two and a half years, which awesome new learning curve to encounter, which is a great growth opportunity. Loved, loved the team that I worked with because it was like no ex military, totally new set of people. But I think after a few years I just realized that my heart wasn't in it. This wasn't my passion. Like I wanted to get back to national security in supporting the DoD specifically if I could. And I got lucky at the time. I got a connection to our co founders Nini Hamrick and Brett Granberg, when there was like five people working at the company. And so it was exciting to think about, you know, coming in and trying to build something from the ground up for, you know, that would support these people I obviously love very much.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Well, so that's a great segue into sort of the decision that you're. You brought to us today to talk about, which is this the decision to be part of, essentially part of a startup, like the risk calculations. How do you approach that? Holy God. Startups are crazy pants, right?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
And you're in the, you're, you're, you're at the bottom and figuring out how to get the rocket ship to take off. And when the rocket ship takes off.
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Erin Biggers
You got to hold up like all the things.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Right. So to set the scene, how did idea for Vannevar Labs happen? Where did the idea come from and how did it turn into a company?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, yeah. So my understanding from talking to Brett and Nini was they both come from kind of the CT world, but in different contexts. So Brett was at McKinsey and then in Q Tel. And in Q Tel, he was kind of bringing technology to intelligence community work mostly around like the seat, the counterterrorism mission. And I think he was like, really? What he's related to me right, is he was like really shocked that in some of these like premier centers, in premier agencies, the tech was like not responsive, not flexible, sometimes didn't even work for these folks that were doing this really.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Like, was it a Windows xp?
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Erin Biggers
Yes, exactly. Yeah. Really sophisticated work with, with particularly like some clunky tech and then like actual vendors that he didn't think were responsive enough. And then Nini was an actual intel analyst and was working the counterterrorism mission. So, you know, Brett was really set when he went to Stanford that he was going to start a defense technology company in particular and I think probably went to like find his co founder and then found Nene that had this like deep domain expertise. And obviously if you've ever met her, just like an extreme amount of intelligence and hustle. And so that's kind of like the, the seed that was planted to create Vannevar. And it was started in early 2019, kind of looking at the counterterrorism mission and they weren't really getting a lot of pull. But people kept saying, you know, maybe if you're focused on China, it would be really interesting because like not a lot of people are doing that. And so that kind of created the, the, the product vision pivot in like mid-2020. And then I came on board a couple of months after that.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
So walk us through the, that pivot if you could because I mean, there's been a lot of discussion over the years. Like we did so much work on ct, we did so much work on regular warfare, we did so much work on gray zone stuff. But then we're now thinking about these high end kinds of fights with Russian and trying to deter those. And so I think there's some parts of the community that still feel like, well, the CT mission set doesn't apply to the great power strategic competition, China. It sounds like you found the way to think about how those tools actually can help us think through the China threat. So thoughts on that?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, I think the pivot was just really around what is the data that fills the holes and kind of understanding these information environments and how do we get, how do we get after those. That's going to be a little bit different than counterterrorism and then the applications that sit on top of it. I think you can't really know if the core of the tech and the problem solving from counterterrorism applies to strategic competition unless, like you try something, right? You create something and then you get it in front of people doing this new mission set and you just kind of watch them work and inevitably whatever you create is wrong. It's always wrong. Right. And so like, then you just say maybe there's a 5% of that. That like, that's good. We can keep. Throw everything else out and kind of like just iterate relentlessly. So that's what we did. A lot of it was around, like really unique data access. How do you move quickly on that, how do you stabilize it and then the applications on top of it. Thinking about, like, not building something for a commercial customer and like shoving it into a defense box, but like building something specifically for defense around, like niche mission sets, we were very much willing to do that and we very much willing to move quickly. You know, in 2021, we had no revenue, no customers, a super beta product. Like, I think the biggest things that you need to do is like find product market fit and find a mechanism to scale. And that's just really, really hard when nobody knows who you are. Right. And nobody has any real incentive to listen to you.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
How did you all, you know without divulging any secret sauce, how did you get that customer interest? How do you get to the scaling? How did that work?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, yeah, I think that, I mean, it's both, like we worked really hard and we got lucky, which is usually always the combination. So in spring of 2021, so I've been with the company for like, you know, maybe five to six months. At the time, we actually bid in one, a defense innovation unit, commercial solutions opening. So a request for proposal against a problem. The problem at the time was kind of fast and accurate Mandarin and Russian natural language processing. That is something we had already been working on and like our engineers, which I'm biased but I think they're the best in industry, like had been really focused on since the pivot in mid-2020. So we bid and won this prototype ot so flexible testing contract essentially with Diu, which was enormously huge for us at the time, being a really, really small company and having competed against like you know, double digit other companies that were much bigger than us. So it was like a huge opening for us. Sure, there was one, there was one paying customer. So in like July of 2021, you know, they, they gave a seed investment of about 750,000 to kind of deploy our, our beta product. It's called Decrypt. It's just sort of an application that sits on top of our database to exploit that data across some of their units. And we had no common access cards to get on bases. We had no clearances. Again like I said, no reason for the government customers to really listen to why we could help them. And then my mandate as the person running this deployment was like go make this successful. So there's two pieces to probably success here and actually scaling the business. The first is how do you find product market fit? And the second is how do you work with a government customer? Essentially convince them that they should sponsor moving this testing contract to a full scale production contract which actually allows you to scale. Right. Because then it's a signal that this is not a beta that's being tested. This is a deployable full flesh product that anybody in the government can then just purchase. This is like a, a really hard thing to do pretty, pretty long term. So in terms of product market fit, you just go anywhere, you show up and you talk to anybody that will listen to you. I emails, cold calls, they just like do not work. I think people are much more likely to listen to you and have like a really good back and forth when you're sitting in front of them and also appreciate like you're meeting them where they are. In the early days, I mean it was convincing people to talk to us in food courts. I would sit at picnic benches and we couldn't be in their space but I my laptop and I'm like, hey, here's the Internet, here's our product. Show me how you might answer this problem and like try to pull information from them on like they can't really articulate. They're not going to like articulate. These are my gaps and this is my vision for like a capability in my toy. You have to pull that information out of them. So that was very, very scrat. Happy early days when we finally got clearances, got CACs, got access to these people, then you can actually sit in their space. Yeah. And I think you, you don't want to sit at like a conference table and like, have a conversation again, asking.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yes, reports and stuff.
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Erin Biggers
100%. Yeah. So, like, you sit next to them and you just walk, watch them work. You watch them literally, like physically move through their workflow, but also understand, like, how they answer questions. So I would, I would say, like, what's the last question you answered successfully? Show me how you did that. Right? What does the successful answer to question look like to you? Show me the last time you got. You got stuck answering question, like, walk, walk me through it. And then you have an engineer next to you and they kind of understand, okay, are there data gaps for us, right? Are there data gaps that they have here? Are there capability gaps? And like, is what we have even addressing this, or do we need to create a new application for them which we could on this, this sort of flexible contract? So that's really the. The first piece is just like, do anything to have the conversations initially, and then when you can get in the door, just like really, really intensely.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
It's very aesthetic approach, right?
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Like, it's very.
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Erin Biggers
You have to listen. Mostly you're listening and like, you ask a lot of questions and pulling information rather than like constantly pushing information on them.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yeah, no stuffing solutions down people's throats, just like, literally, like, tell me how it is.
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Erin Biggers
Well, because you kind of have to accept from the start that you probably don't have the solution for them. Right? That like, you're going to have to create something new, even if it's like a tweak to, you know, the existing beta product we had, or if it's like an entirely new application. Because, like, these workflows are really specific and some of them are pretty sophisticated or some of them are pretty niche. And so I think if you go in with the understanding that you don't have what they need, then you're going to, like, listen pretty intensely so you understand how you can actually give them something new.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
That's also like almost paradigmatic shift, right? In this town, in this field.
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Erin Biggers
A.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Lot of people feel that they need to have the answers to everything, Right. Like, they need to be the person with the solution, and that's often impossible, right? Absolutely right. And so being able to flip that on its head is actually quite pathbreaking in a way.
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Erin Biggers
Well, I think it also it's reality. And then it also like it brings the end user and the customer like in on the development. So I think like if you say we don't have what you need, but we want to create something, something for you, then they're, they're a partner in that creation. Right? Like it feels like they have some ownership over it, which I think like creates a good connection, but also like quite honestly a much better product in the end.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So where do you, where, where do you guys want Vannevar to be in like 10 years? 5 years?
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Erin Biggers
10 years? Okay. Definitely in startup spaces. I never go beyond like 24 months or so. I think that we definitely want to be multi product company. Like that is very, very important to us more than just like applications that are relatively adjacent to what we have right now, like completely new product verticals. And we really want to be like the defense tech prime for strategic competition. That's really like the vision for Vannevar. I think you do that in the same way we did it early days, which is show up in front of people, deliver like relentlessly and iterate constantly and build teams around that. Like you want to hire builders, not sellers. You want to hire people that, you know, default always to listening, that will do anything to answer a problem and not focus on money. Because I think if you deliver relentlessly, like the money probably comes later. And then people that understand that to scale the story you need to tell to government partners is really around mission impact rather than just progress for progress sake, which is truly not interesting to anybody. It's just like, how did this enable a decision that wouldn't have been made otherwise? How did you get there faster than you could have gotten if you didn't have this tech? What insight did you derive that you wouldn't have otherwise? Like, those are important for like telling a story around real true value and differentiation. I think that's really how we moved from this initial investment of 750k and a person like me that truly no idea what they're doing, right. And then like within 18 months a government partner that said, yes, we're going to sponsor, you know, your transition to a full scale production contract was awarded last year, you know, with $106 million that has been spent overall. And so that's, I mean it's like I'm really proud of where we've been, but I think the components of it are really just around building teams that are focused specifically on like what we talked about, like making the best product for a specific customer. And that is mostly just listening. And I think that's usually like pretty underappreciated and under articulated.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Well, yeah, and you know, when we think about scaling, scaling, we tend to think about homogenization of products.
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Right.
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And so that's really interesting. Like when you think about the problem sets of the different parts of the government are working with and thinking through like these one size fits all solutions do not work.
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Erin Biggers
They're not solutions.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
It's just stuffing bad solutions into weird boxes. And it just, it usually that's how we get to lowest common denominator policy decisions, at least in my view.
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, absolutely. Because we thought about this and this is why, you know, we went from like a 1 beta application to like 12 applications, right? Because like, if you stuff all the bells and whistles into one application, it becomes unusable over time. So really thought about, like, how do you build applications that are operationalizing specific data for specific missions and then you can like technically tie them together into workflows, but you create like an ecosystem of applications and depending on what your mission set is, you can check out and sort of connect those applications as you need to.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Well, so do you think your gender as a woman has had an impact on how you've approached your work to Vannevar and your leadership there? And if so, why? And if not, why not?
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Erin Biggers
I do think so. I've thought about this a little bit. So I think specifically when we're talking about kind of like the journey from, from 2021 for like this tiny little deployment to now, I think there's like three qualities that make you good at this or that set you up for success, I should say the first one is you need to be like deeply observant. I think that's the thing that's like usually underappreciated. And then you also have to be relentless and resilient, which is probably not, right, unexpected. But I think the observant thing, being a woman, I think makes you more naturally inclined to it. And what I, what I mean by that is I think that observing your environment acutely is potentially like hardwired into women's brains simply because of like how we have to move around the physical environment. You need to be like super attuned to how people are, you know, operating around you, really just based on personal safety. And I'm not saying like, men can't be good at this. I'm obsessed with the men that work at Vannevar. They are the best, but I think it might be more of an active Practice for them and more of, like, default passive behavior for women.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yeah.
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Erin Biggers
And I think, you know, based on what we talked about, when you're doing this work, and it's really about, like, listening intently to people, you're kind of, like, set up in a position where, like, that comes a little bit more naturally to you. And I think the jump you have to make is okay. I think that we're extremely good at understanding our environments. Now, can we take that back to our teams internally and have the bravery to, like, really articulate this strongly to our teams? And I think in Vannevar, we have that environment, but sometimes that jump is a little bit difficult. But I think the first part, the observance and the listening, I think, you know, comes pretty, I think, naturally to women.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yeah. And. And, you know, there's a lot of discussion that there is this, like, nature nurturing. It's almost like it doesn't matter.
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Erin Biggers
Right.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Like, we have different experiences. Men and women are different. There's different experiences. Experiences. Bring those to the table, right?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
And to conclude our conversation, what's your definition of power?
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Erin Biggers
Yeah, I mean, I think I can only speak for me and kind of how I understand. I mean, power to me is probably leverage, your ability to move people in things. And I think that comes with credibility. So you just constantly have to put points on the board. You constantly have to deliver in whatever context that you're operating, Operating in. And that's both, like. I mean, in this conversation, we talked a lot about, like, how you do that externally with customers, but I also think there's a piece of this that's internal within the company, which, like, when you're building a team, you have to listen to the folks that work for you, and you have to actually act on, like, what they tell you. So it's not just, like, complaints, but, like, when they observe things and they bring that to you, like, you have to take action on that stuff. I think it convinces people that you're a doer, that you're going to deliver on what you say that you're going to deliver on. And then, like, when. Then you need folks to do something for you, like, you're in a position to get that stuff done. I mean, I never really strive to have power, but I think that within my company, I. Both internally and externally, I strive to be, like, extremely credible. Like, we are here to build real solutions.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Yeah.
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Erin Biggers
We're here to give you something that's actually clickable, that answers a question. And then internally at the company, I'm here to build a really, really strong team. And the way that you do that is to always deliver in whatever context. So for me, being credible internally, externally, and making my team credible is all that I focus on, all I really care about.
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Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. This has been fascinating to sort of have a moment, think about experiencing, listening to your Ride on the Rocket show.
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Erin Biggers
Oh, thank you so much for having me. This was great.
- [27:19]
Dr. Kathleen McInnis
Subscribe to the Smart Women Smart Power podcast on Apple, Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to great content. Be sure to follow us on Twitter martwomen or you can follow me on Twitter jmcinnis1. Thanks for listening and join us next time.