On this episode of The Founder's Sandbox, Brenda speaks with Salvador Badillo Rios. Salvador is Founder and CEO of EquiTech Innovate, a strategic consulting and advisory firm aimed at helping underserved and overlooked founders bring innovative and disruptive technologies to market. He is also Senior Associate and Portfolio Manager at National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC), a component of the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), aimed at accelerating early-stage dual-use deep tech startups toward commercialization

At DIU and NSIC, Salvador supported 21 early-stage dual-use hardware startups across 12 states with ~$50M over three years leading to over $335M in total follow-on private capital (up to 20X funded amount at up to 11X prior to funding valuation).

They speak about Sal’s origin story; how despite being from a disadvantaged background, this has not deterred his purposefulness and positivity to make a difference particularly in underrepresented communities. Listen as Sal shares how he eventually settled on an engineering degree after choosing over music and English literature. What he does today as a senior portfolio manager in the DIU defense innovation unit’s National security innovation capital is a long way from Rancho Cucamonga.

You can find out more about Sal at:

Linked IN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/salvador-badillo-rios

https://equitechinnovate.com/

Transcript:

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01:01 As a thank you to Founders Sandbox listeners, you can use code SANDBOX25 at checkout to enjoy 25% off your membership costs. Thank you.

01:19 Welcome back to the Founders Sandbox. I am Brenda McCabe, your host to this monthly podcast that reaches entrepreneurs and business owners who learn about building resilient, purpose-driven and scalable businesses with great corporate governance. Guests to this podcast are founders themselves, professional service providers, corporate board directors and investors.

01:47 who like me want to use the power of the enterprise, be it small, medium, and large, to create change for a better world. And I do storytelling with each one of my guests that starts with their origin story. And then we'll get into the contents of the podcast with each of my guests, and we touch upon topics around resilience, scalability, and purpose-driven.

02:15 initiatives or what drives the guest. So thank you for joining me. And I am absolutely delighted this month to have Salvador Badillo Rios, Sal, as my guest. So thank you for joining me, Sal. Thank you, Brenda. I'm very excited to be here. Excellent. So we met not too long ago. I am a member of Angel Capital Association and attended their national

02:44 Summit in Columbus, Ohio. And I'm from Columbus, Ohio. So I kind of killed two birds with one stone. And I was blown away. So I've been a member for three years. And this year they had for the first time a breakout session on deep tech and dual technologies. And Sal, you were one of the panel members. And I myself

03:11 love to work with deep tech companies. So we had a lot of synchronicities. And that's when I asked you to join me eventually here in the podcast. Yeah, yeah, no. Yeah, that's where we met. And I think it was an amazing opportunity to really connect with the angel community. I think oftentimes, you know, there's a lot of focus on VCs, but angels really drive that early start to these companies and to these technologies. And so

03:37 I wanted to make an effort to reach out to the angel community, educate, inform, you know, angels about deep tech and a lot of the DOD opportunities that there are for startups and potential collaborations and synergies. So yeah, I'm happy to have met you. So we're going to touch on a couple of those points because you do have a multifaceted career and background and diverse founder yourself of your own.

04:05 strategic consulting and advisory firm. So you are founder and CEO of Equitech Innovate. And it's really working towards serving underserved and overlooked founders that bring innovative and disruptive technologies to market. So kudos to you. That's amazing. Thank you. Thank you, yeah. And another hat you wear, and I don't know where you find the time in the day. Frankly.

04:33 And this was your speaking capacity when I met you earlier this year, your senior associate and portfolio manager at the national security innovation capital, a component of the defense innovation unit, DIU. So lots of acronyms in our department defense. So INSEC and DIU. And I was fascinated because that particular area, what you're involved in is it's accelerating early stage

05:02 dual use later on, you're going to tell us what dual use is. Yeah. Deep tech startups toward commercial commercialization. So, um, again, thank you, um, for joining me. We're going to talk about deep tech. We're going to get into also your own work that you're doing with, um, underserved founders. And I always like to have a title of our episodes. Um, and this one, I really think we're going to talk about scalable businesses. So what you're doing.

05:31 particularly with NSIC and the DIU is scaling, identifying early stage companies that truly have the promise of scaling. So scalable businesses. And you know, in a short period of time, you have scaled and then we'll get into the questions, but I was also very impressed with the focus of the work at the DIU and NSIC, you've used yourself have supported 21 early stage

06:00 dual use hardware, all right, not software, hardware startups across 12 states with over $50 million over the last three years. And that's led on to lead on it investments of 335 million of private capital and up to 20 times funded amount at up to 11 times prior to fund evaluation. Amazing, amazing, amazing. Thank you, yeah. All right. So can you...

06:30 describe for my, let's get into your origin story. Your PhD aerospace engineering, first generation Latino. LGBT, tell me what would be your tagline if anything. What I mean, this mashup of deep, tell me your origin story. How did you know what you're doing today? Yeah, thank you, yeah.

06:55 I mean, yeah, I mean, I was thinking through the tagline and I was like, well, I think maybe one could be, you know, life through punches, but I turned them into power and purpose. And so I think, you know, everyone, I'm sure has their own set of struggles, right? Everyone has dealt a different set of cards, right, in life. And it's really what you make of that, right? That really defines you. So for me, right, I grew up,

07:24 Here in Southern California. So I grew up in Rancho Cucamonga, about an hour East of LA without traffic. And so yeah, I grew up, my background is Mexican. So my parents are from Mexico. They met here and I'm the oldest of three. So I have two younger siblings. One is a year younger and then the youngest, seven years younger, but he has

07:53 down syndrome pretty severely. So I grew up in a disadvantaged background in a community where really I didn't know anyone that went to a four-year college, no one that went into any STEM field, right? And so, and my parents also, right, had never gone to college. So a lot of it was just learning and figuring things out along the way.

08:20 But I was lucky to have teachers that believed in me, that saw sort of something in me in school. And they would say, oh, yeah, you need to go to college. Or they would say, oh, you're good at math and science, things like that. And so they would reaffirm those things. But even once I got to high school, I really hadn't really planned for the future. I didn't really have thought about what major I wanted to go into or what college I wanted to go.

08:49 And so it was around being around other students that had thought about that a little bit better or had parents who were engineers or doctors that when they started asking me about it, I was like, oh, I don't know, but let me start thinking about it a little bit more. And so, yeah, so in my classroom, one of my teachers said, oh, the UC applications opened up. And so that's how I found out.

09:17 you know, that I should apply to college. There were several interests that I had, write music, English literature, and then STEM, right? And so I decided to go and try engineering and initially started with civil engineering, transitioned into mechanical and then added aerospace, just as, you know, being in college and taking different courses and being involved in different projects and clubs.

09:47 That's sort of how my interest kind of evolved. But even then, right, I didn't know about what a PhD was, or venture capital, or the field that I'm in now. So a lot of it has been a bit of a learning process. And I'm lucky to have had different organizations along the way geared towards underserved communities in STEM.

10:15 you know, PhD or things like that, that help create awareness for me about th...

Scaling Deep Tech