Building for Both Worlds: What It Takes for Technology to Succeed in Government and Industry
Interview with Kyle Johnston, Ridgeline Venture Partner
The venture world has spent the past few years rediscovering defense technology. Capital is flowing, headlines are multiplying, and a new generation of startups is building tools for national security.
But as Ridgeline General Partner Ben Walker recently argued, the most important companies in this space are not just defense companies. The technologies that matter most: AI, advanced computing, robotics, and new infrastructure for the physical world, are transforming both government and commercial markets at the same time. The strongest companies are those that can operate in both.
That dual-use reality is one reason Ridgeline recently brought on Kyle Johnston as a Venture Partner.
Kyle spent more than two decades in the U.S. Army. As a U.S. Army Green Beret and senior operations leader, he worked at the intersection of technology, strategy, and real-world deployment. In roles ranging from the Joint Staff, Secretary of Defense’s Strategic Thinkers Program fellow, and Special Forces Battalion Commander, he helped integrate emerging technologies, from unmanned systems to cyber capabilities, into environments where failure isn’t theoretical.
That kind of experience provides a rare vantage point on early-stage technology. Kyle has seen firsthand what happens when promising innovations meet the realities of field conditions, institutional bureaucracy, and mission-critical operations.
In this interview, Kyle shares how those experiences shape the way he evaluates emerging technologies today, from what makes tools actually work under pressure to what founders often misunderstand about building for complex institutions.
For anyone interested in the intersection of technology, national resilience, and early-stage innovation, his perspective offers a window into what it really takes to move ideas from the lab into the real world.
You’ve spent over 20 years deploying technology in high-stakes, real-world environments. How has that shaped the way you evaluate early-stage technology today?
KJ: One of the truths about technology adoption, especially in government and defense, is that there isn’t one buyer. There’s no single person who has skin in the game when it comes to using the technology and the authority to purchase it.
When I think about technology adoption in national security, I tend to frame it across three big buckets:
The first is the tactical user: the people who will actually be hands-on with the technology. They have to believe in it and be able to quickly adapt and integrate it into their workflow. Whether it’s software or hardware, it has to fit into how they accomplish the mission day to day.
On the other end of the spectrum is the regulatory and procurement system. The institutional bureaucracy has to understand how that product fits within regulatory compliance. People often overlook this. For example, you might have a technology that works great for military use overseas, but if it touches the electromagnetic spectrum and you want to train with it in the United States, it needs FCC compliance. That’s often well outside what founders think about when building a defense product.
Then there’s the institutional middle layer: the leaders and managers who have to bridge those two worlds. They need to understand both the regulatory environment and the tactical application and then integrate that capability across the organization.
So when I evaluate technology, it’s not just about whether it’s the best widget in the world. Sometimes the best widget won’t work because something in that chain breaks. Maybe the adaptation cost is too high. Maybe it doesn’t work in the field, the desert, the jungle, or expeditionary environments. Or maybe it’s a great tool that teams want to use, but regulatory or procurement hurdles make it impossible to deploy.
Those three layers: tactical user, institutional leadership, and regulatory framework, have to align for technology to actually succeed.
In Special Forces, technology isn’t theoretical, it either works in the field or it doesn’t. What separates technologies that perform under pressure from those that fall apart in real-world deployment?
KJ: It might sound cliché, but extreme field testing isn’t a “nice to have”. It’s a necessity.
A lot of technologies are built to solve a specific threat or problem, but over time, the underlying assumptions behind that problem change. You might design a system to counter a certain type of unmanned aerial system, for example, but the threat evolves, or the environment shifts. Suddenly, the system you built doesn’t perform the way you expected.
Another issue is that technologies are often tested in controlled environments that don’t reflect the real conditions where they’ll actually be used. In the field, you’re dealing with weather, terrain, power limitations, logistics challenges, and a hundred other variables that don’t show up in a lab.
The technologies that succeed are the ones that are tested early, tested often, and tested under the worst conditions possible. They’re designed with the assumption that things will go wrong and that operators will need to adapt on the fly.
If you don’t do that level of testing, you end up with something that looks great on paper but falls apart when people actually rely on it.
“In my experience in uniform, the best products have often come from technologies that were first developed for commercial use and then quickly adapted.”
You transformed your battalion’s approach to small unmanned systems from expensive acquisitions to scalable, in-house fabrication. What did that experience teach you about speed, cost, and adaptability in innovation?
KJ: I had 75% of my Group 3 unmanned aerial systems sitting broken in a maintenance bay. I could not work on them because that would void the warranty, but the repair parts and maintenance weren’t scheduled to arrive for months. These platforms were were all high-six figure paperweights taking up space in my hangar. Same story with my Group 1 “small” unmanned systems. Tens of thousands of dollars for each system, with contracted maintenance, meaning we could not test, train, and iterate on. Most importantly, my operators were afraid to push these systems to their limits, and test them under the harshest environments because they knew we couldn’t fix them if they broke, and they would be left with nothing to train on.
We had to build capabilities ourselves that were scalable, adaptable, and affordable. This is as true for sUAS as it is for electronic warfare, counter-UAS, and technical surveillance capabilities.
With small unmanned aerial systems in particular, we knew we couldn’t just build new drones. The technology and tactics were changing too rapidly. We needed to build the infrastructure for operators to build the robots that were needed at the edge. We built institutional knowledge and acquired the tools to push additive and subtractive manufacturing to the edge. We built the infrastructure for rapid iteration and deployment.
That reduced cost and adaptation timelines, and created a model where capabilities could scale across the organization.
The broader lesson is that adaptability often beats perfection. Systems built from the ground up that can evolve quickly are far more valuable than systems that are optimized for one specific scenario but difficult to change.
You’ve led teams across complex, multi-agency environments. In your experience, how important is the human element (training, culture, and leadership) when integrating advanced technologies?
KJ: The first “SOF Truth: is that humans are more important than hardware. The human element is everything. Technology doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s always part of a broader system that includes people, processes, and culture. You can have an incredible technical capability, but if the organization doesn’t understand how to use it or doesn’t trust it, it won’t matter.
Training is a huge part of that. Operators need to understand not just how to use the technology, but how to integrate it into their workflow and decision-making. That takes time and deliberate effort.
Culture matters as well. Organizations that reward experimentation and learning tend to integrate new technologies much faster than organizations that are risk-averse or overly bureaucratic.
Leadership plays a critical role in bridging those gaps. Leaders need to understand both the operational problem and the technological solution, and they have to create an environment where teams feel comfortable experimenting and adapting.
Ridgeline focuses on helping early-stage companies bridge into mission-critical institutions. From your perspective, what do founders often misunderstand about selling into government or complex enterprises?
KJ: One of the biggest misunderstandings is how complex the institutional environment really is.
Founders often focus on building a great product, and that’s important, but in government and large institutions, product quality alone isn’t enough. You also have to navigate procurement systems, regulatory frameworks, budgeting cycles, and organizational culture.
Those systems move slowly and involve many stakeholders. Success often requires aligning incentives across multiple layers of the organization. Some of that is changing, but large organizations take time to reorient cultural norms.
Another challenge is understanding how the technology will actually be used in the field. The people buying the technology are often not the same people using it. Bridging that gap is critical.
Founders who succeed in these environments tend to spend a lot of time understanding the problem from the operator’s perspective and that is critical. But that is only half the battle — you have to invest in relationships and build understanding of how decisions move formally and informally across the line-and-block chart.
Through the SecDef Strategic Thinkers Program, you studied the long arc of strategy and conflict. How does thinking in those terms influence your view of emerging technologies today?
KJ: One of the core lessons from studying strategy is that decisions always involve tradeoffs.
When leaders ask the question “At what cost and to what end?” they’re really asking about long-term consequences. Technologies can create advantages in the short term, but they can also create unintended consequences. As they say, “the enemy gets a vote,” and our adversaries and allies alike respond and adapt to new technologies on the battlefield.
Looking at emerging technologies through that lens helps you think beyond the immediate application. You start asking questions about second- and third-order effects: how a capability changes behavior, how it alters incentives, and how it reshapes the competitive landscape.
That kind of thinking is important when evaluating early-stage technologies, because the impact of those technologies often unfolds over decades.
When you meet an early-stage founder building in foundational industries like energy, manufacturing, or supply chain, what signals tell you they can execute in complex markets?
KJ: The biggest signal is whether the founder truly understands the problem they’re trying to solve. Complex industries have a lot of hidden constraints, including regulatory requirements, operational realities, and institutional incentives. Founders who have spent time close to those problems tend to build solutions that are far more practical.
I also look for resilience. These markets are difficult to navigate. Sales cycles are long, stakeholders are numerous, and progress can be slow.
Founders who succeed are the ones who are willing to stay engaged, adapt their approach, and keep pushing forward even when things get complicated. It takes grit.
Lastly, what drew you to working with Ridgeline?
KJ: There are two things. One is the team. All three partners have committed a large part of their professional lives to public service, and that matters. That shared commitment to service is important to me.
The second is the investment thesis. There are several venture firms focused purely on defense products, and there’s real value in that; we need it in the ecosystem. But in my experience in uniform, the best products have often come from technologies that were first developed for commercial use and then quickly adapted.
Ridgeline’s thesis: that a founder, product, or team should have commercial traction or viability alongside an application to national security, really resonates with me. It aligns with my desire to continue serving in some capacity and to give back.
I also believe it’s the most effective path to delivering meaningful capabilities to the people who need them most: service members, intelligence professionals, and others across the U.S. government.
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