Russia / Ukraine Crisis Update

1 March 2022 - New North Ventures' Perspective on the Unfolding Crisis 🇺🇦

With Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine, world dynamics have shifted.  Russia has brazenly crashed into the comfort zone the world had largely come to see as static and deceptively predictable.  Static no more, Russia has, with one broad stroke, assaulted democracy, international rules-based order,  global supply chains (food, fuel, and raw minerals), alliances, and the prioritization of national budget expenditures – amongst a myriad other things.

With the threat of cyber attacks, supply chain disruption, information integrity in question, further escalation of kinetic attack and the fear of conflict spreading to other countries – a renewed emphasis of government and industry working together is now a critical, if not existential, issue.

Dual-use investment strategy brings together, and fuses, the best practices and guiding principles of Silicon Valley’s innovativeness, Wall Street’s laser focus on creating wealth, and Washington DC’s allegiance to American geo-political leadership.  Critical and emerging technologies for American leadership are clearly articulated and prioritized with bipartisan support, across administrations, and are seen as strategic, enduring needs. 

New North Ventures was created precisely to build a portfolio of resilient companies which thrive in this new world order – ambidextrous in both providing innovative solutions to complex realities of today’s national security priorities and providing commercial capabilities that can scale to serve the needs of America’s global industrial leadership.  New North Ventures was founded by proven leaders from the high tech commercial world, financial wealth management, and national security/global risk management domains.  The dynamic uncertainty brought by disruption of the status quo is not new to us, in fact, this is where our team itself thrives – and as such, has the ability and temperament to spot startup companies capable of thriving now and into the future.

To be clear, these are stressful times without clear parameters for a fully defined end state.  Yet at the same time, we are confident of the technologies which will prevail and we know the leadership traits required of Founders, CEOs, and CTOs that will rise during hard times – and dominate.  AI/ML, cybersecurity, and next generation communications are at the cornerstone of every government and corporate need.  Vision, market fit, grit and the ability to execute with speed and decisiveness are hallmarks of winning teams.  We know what winning looks like and have decades of experience building, and selecting, winning teams in times of uncertainty and apprehension.

Currently, we have a portfolio of companies already punching above their fighting weight with the determination, grit, business acumen, and technical capability to go big.  Our portfolio is in alignment with America’s prioritization for critical and emerging technologies:  advanced computing (Reality Defender), AI (Anno), communications technologies (Beacon.ai and Prelude), semiconductors (Efabless) and space technologies and systems (Hawkeye360).  We have other stellar companies in our pipeline competing for our attention, guidance, and resources too.

New North Ventures is built for exactly these times, we’re ready and mission focused on winning.