From Submariner to CEO: Cameron McCord's Journey Building Nominal

Lauren Bedula 0:00 Welcome back to Building the Base. Hondo Geurts and Lauren Bedula here with a really interesting guest. We have Cameron McCord with us, and the reason I'm so excited about this is Cameron joined us just over two years ago and has done a ton since. Just for a refresh, Cam is now the Co-Founder and CEO of Nominal, and they're focused on validating mission critical systems efficiently, so in the T&E space, we'll hear more about that. But Cam has spent time serving both in the Navy on the Hill has done some really interesting work in academia. When we last chatted, we were talking to Cameron and a group of others who did the MBA program at Harvard and dual political science degree at MIT. Cameron has has done quite a bit since, including his work with Saildrone, Applied Intuition and now as a Founder. So Cameron, thanks so much for coming back and updating us. Cameron McCord 0:56 No, it's awesome. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, it's awesome to be here, and Hondo, good to see you as always. And as you said, yeah, a lot, a lot has happened in two years. So excited to chat about it. Hondo Geurts 1:07 Yes, so for those who may not have listened to Cameron, we had him on the "young guns" show a little while ago, and he at the time, I think made the the announcement he was going to get married, I'm proud to report that he did, in fact get married, and they're still married, so that's good, but at the time and not yet publicly known, you know you were talking about wanting to start your own company and do that. We'll get into that in great detail. But how about refreshing our listeners a little on your background, and you know all the things you did before taking the leap into being a Founder. Cameron McCord 1:42 No. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Hondo, yeah. I think Lauren as you kind of covered, you know, I've been been a practitioner in the national security space for for a while now, and through a couple of different lenses. So I think starting at the beginning, I grew up in a really big Navy family, particularly my uncle was a pretty senior Admiral, retired as a very senior Navy official. And so I grew up as a little kid basically watching him rise through the ranks and go through that. And so I was always fascinated and very service oriented and aligned with that. I, you know, the quick version is, I think I realized that the world that my uncle, you know, grew up in is very different than the world that we're living in now, I think, both from a technology perspective and the kind of national security and adversarial landscape. And so, you know, the short version, I served in the Navy. So I was a submarine, submarine officer for eight years, lots of really good, good stories and good times there, and over a year underwater, but made the choice to separate from the Navy, and since then, have sort of been on a sprint to assume a lot of experiences in the national security technology, defense tech venture ecosystem, and all of that kind of leading to what Nominal is doing today. So when I left, I worked at Anduril industries. Was fortunate to be there very early on. I had met Trae Stephens and Brian and a lot of the Anduril team, and they brought me on board and led some of the early product development efforts for their counter UAS system. Worked at Applied intuition, another really well known company in this space. More on the software for modeling and simulation side, saw a company build incredible commercial software and transition that into a defense offering. Worked at Saildrone. That's where I really got to know Hondo. So see another sort of domain and another side of autonomy, which was really exciting, and then Nominal is sort of the culmination of a lot of those experiences seeing and identifying an area where I thought software was still lacking, which is specifically, as you alluded to, Oren specifically, the testing and validation of these software defined hardware systems. Lauren Bedula 4:22 So how did you know you wanted to start a company and talk about that process a little bit? Because I'm sure there are others and those that are listening, that are thinking through I've got this really good idea I would love to build something. Can you talk a little bit about that experience? Cameron McCord 4:37 Yeah, it's a really good it's a really good question I love. It's a question I love also, you know, debating and talking about with aspiring entrepreneurs. So if you're listening to this, feel free to reach out. I'm always happy to discuss. I think the simplest explanation I can give is, I think, as an entrepreneur and founder, you have to fall in love with the process, the technology and the idea that you have, like, it will change over time. Like the market will force it to change. Technology will, like, has a vote on it. Competition has a vote. So, like, you have to have an exciting idea, something that's you're passionate about, like you really have to love, just like the nitty gritty process of, like, telling a story, trying to convince people to join your like crazy expedition, thriving in ambiguity. And I think like going back to the submarine days, like in many ways, like I this might seem paradoxical, but I thought of my time in the Navy as and sort of being a officer deck on a submarine thriving in ambiguity, leading a small, agile, really high performing team, you know, having to just, like, solve problems constantly. I just love that. I always have loved that. And so I think it was really like, as I was coming through, you know, Anduril, and seeing what that culture looked and felt like, I instantly clicked to me that that that's what I wanted to do. And really, you know, hell or high water. I was, I was going to do it. Lauren Bedula 6:01 And so you've sat on so many sides of the key stakeholders in your domain. You've served both in the Navy on the Hill, you've worked in startups, and you also spent time at a VC. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like as a founder going through the process of fundraising, or, you know how that's gone so far for you? Cameron McCord 6:22 Yeah, it's, you know, the time that I had working at works, at Lux capital, and was sort of doing investment and doing some operating there, and a lot of time was spent just thinking and ideating on what Nominal would be. But that time in the venture world was extremely valuable. You know, it's very, it's, it's very nerve wracking, I think, as a founder, your first time like raising institutional capital from a from a VC. And so I was very fortunate to understand in detail what that process looks like on the other side, how those decisions get made, what is actually valuable in the earliest days, and I think there's a lot of different frameworks for it, but in the earliest moments, when you're raising a pre seed round, it is really about, you know, I think the humans involved, like first and foremost, and the vision, but just really like convincing people that you're the team to Do it, sort of the founder market fit and why? You know, it's different at Series A, and, you know, different yet again, at B and C and so on. But I think one observation that's been interesting just in the time, you know, the last seven, eight years, you know, when I went to go work at Lux, you know, I think Lux was one of the earlier practitioners in the defense space, in sort of making investments there. But it was still relatively new or newer in the ecosystem. I think now it's very different. You know, almost all of the sort of mainstream firms have a national security either person or focus or thesis in some way, shape or form. They might call it frontier tech, or it might be more industrialization, but I think investors have gotten genuinely a lot smarter on the defense space. But that's interesting. And Hondo, I'd be really curious to your thoughts on it. It's almost like this, maybe like the uncanny valley, if you know that sort of expression, as people learn things like, I think people have learned a ton, and now might still think that they know more than they do. And so if you're a founder and you're raising money in this world, you should expect investors to ask, like, much more sophisticated questions around, you know, congressional cycles and funding, and you know the you know, far clauses and you know, all these IDIQs and obligated versus commited. You know, people ask these types of questions, but you have to realize, like, they might still really not get some of the bigger picture things of like, what it actually takes to succeed in this domain. But, yeah, some observations. Hondo Geurts 8:57 So Cameron, we're going to get into submarines, eventually we're going to go back to somebody spent a year underwater, and your funniest story there. But what surprised you? I mean, because you you could be susceptible to the same problem, right? You see in what being a founder is from a bunch of different perspectives, but you haven't been a founder before, and so you might think you knew what it was all about because you've seen it. What surprised you, maybe in a positive sense, and maybe in a Oh, man, that hurt my head a lot harder than I thought it would sense as kind of in your founder experience. And then, you know, maybe talk about how your product idea has also shifted with the marketplace a lot. You know, you had the you had your original idea, and how has that had to shift over time? Cameron McCord 9:49 Yeah, no, it's really, it's, it's so true. I think, um, I'm really grateful. It's a really good question, Hondo. I'm really grateful for the experiences of being able to see, in my opinion, what world class looks like at places like Anduril and Applied Intuition and Sailrone, but there's no substitute for doing it and for being like the you know, the the person that you know has to sort of make the calls. Now, I think, you know, people describe the entrepreneurial journey as a roller coaster, and I think that is just like such a an accurate description. I think I under appreciated. How, you know, in the span of a week, you can have, like, the highest highs of you know, this, this, this big customer demo goes really well. You get news from the, you know, from a user, that they love it. Love something like the contract comes through these, like an amazing hire that you've been, you know, courting for nine months, like, says, yes, these incredible moments that mean so much. And they can, they come within minutes, often of the exact opposite. And so there's no substitute, even when you're working at an early company like, you know that that's happening, and there's a lot of volatility, but like, when that all sort of bubbles up, in some ways, it's a lot. And so I think you even in the three years that sort of Nominal has existed now, like, you get a you get a little, not in a bad way, but you get desensitized to it. Like, you know, you know that, I know that as soon as some bad news comes in, like, I just got to wait because, like, some good news is coming, because the team's cranking on something. And so that, I think that's been a really interesting observation. And then on the product front, we started showing a bit more about Nominal quickly. It's like we build a software platform and software products, our North Star is accelerating how people test and operate mission critical hardware systems, so very advanced software defined systems, some of them are autonomous and some are more robotic in nature, but all of them generate massive amounts of data. And our whole belief is that the tools built here have not really been innovated against in many cases for decades, and certainly in the national security domain, the nature of warfare is changing rapidly, and everything is getting more complex. And if the software used to test and validate and field that equipment reliably doesn't also modernize rapidly, we're going to be in a really bad, bad place. We started out building a product very focused on testing on T and E, as the DoD would define it, but just the process of, how do I validate, you know, a system in an r, d, sort of, in a commercial sense, maybe an IRAD internal program, really rapid iteration. That's a great place to start. There's always funding. There is high appetite to experiment, and there's generally an opening to sort of insert a new tool or a new process. We're getting pulled really quickly, in an exciting way, into operations. And so I sort of find, you know, a lot of our thesis now is, if you can win with a new software product that helps people test faster, and, frankly, monitor and observe the performance of a system under test, then they're going to want to use that same software when they're doing fleet, you know, sustainment or fleet readiness, you Know, flea monitoring use cases, or that that asset, or that thing that you help them test is deployed 10 100 1000 times over. And so I think I under appreciated in a good way, how quickly our customers would basically say, Hey, I love that we're using it in our testing use cases. Can that same software show me, you know, the hundreds of drones that are, you know, out doing X, Y, Z, and can they boil up those that statistics, that data, those metrics, which has been exciting, Lauren Bedula 13:29 I imagine, you have to navigate a partnership environment if you're getting access to data or different systems or different players and making these evaluations. Can you talk a little bit about how you've approached that, or any best practices you've learned on the kind of B to B side, or partnership side and industry? Yeah, Cameron McCord 13:47 No, totally. At Nominal we're gluttons for punishment. So we, we like to, you know, engage where there's four or five stakeholders often, you know, between the, you know, commercial, maybe the government side, etc, on the B to B question, you know, I think that area the business, is going very well. You know, we've been able to, I think, pretty quickly, pretty quickly escalate the value impact that we're having within these, these testing organizations. And so the simple model I talk about a lot with the team is, you know, in the earliest days, we started with conversations around with, you know, engineers, technicians, flight testers, hardware engineers, etc, around the incremental value that a product like Nominal provides when they're doing their daily job. It's a lot of quality of life. It's a lot of efficiency gains. It's time savings. It's, you know, better root cause analysis or triaging, and that's sort of one kind of conversation. You know, then moving at a higher level in the organization, we're able to have a conversation with, you know, maybe a vice president of software or a head of test that their mandate is to build, or. Own that type of a solution for their organization, and we're able to have conversations there that are, you know, how much is it costing you to do this internally, and is that really the best use of your of your resources? And if you could buy a solution, you know, like, Nominal, that works and requires zero upkeep and maintenance from your organization, like, How valuable is that to you? And then the most exciting conversation, I think the ones we're having now are much more, you know, hey, business unit leader or, you know, program manager, in the sort of commercial aerospace context, you just won a, you know, 200 300, 700 million dollar program, with the Department of Defense. How valuable is it if I could tell you that the 24 month test and validation campaign could reasonably be done in 20 months or in 18 months, and here's the data to back that up. Here's like, what, what Nominal was able to sort of show from a time savings perspective, and that's when you really get into larger value, yeah, type of conversations. Lauren Bedula 16:08 So a lot of what you're talking about is almost, you know, translating value to each different community and stakeholder and back to your background. You've sat where your customer is, you've sat where your investor is. You've sat where your sales team is. Have you learned anything about best practices that you can share, about that translation between these different stakeholder groups or communities, or, you know, anything worth sharing on that front? Cameron McCord 16:34 Yeah, I think the shortest version, I think, is probably just ask questions. It's it sounds so simple, but I think it feels uncomfortable. Often it feels uncomfortable to do. I mean, if you're coming in and you're, you know, you're coming in as the CEO of this company and trying to, ultimately, like, persuade someone that your product is extremely valuable, I think the you often want to lead with confidence, and sort of, here's how we're but I think if you just ask questions, it, people will share the things that are really valuable to them. And it's very you know, the art becomes understanding that very genuinely and being able to sort of frame what our our team and what our product is doing to sort of solve those use cases. So I think it's a lot of asking Yeah, it's a lot of asking questions, and then I think maybe the second answer would be, you know, not a thing. I think I'm learning, you know quickly is also not forcing it when it's not a fit. I think is a really, really like it's hard, it's hard, as an entrepreneur, to say no, but it's, it's massively clarifying for the team. And I think we're finding that in our you know, industry, and at least in our sort of use cases in target area, it's often not no, it's often just a like, not right now. And I think we're seeing a high revisit rate where, you know, now, people understand, they understand the technology, they understand that the solution like this is out there. And as they work through their processes, they're resourcing their constraints. They're reaching back out to Nominal and saying, hey, it wasn't the right time four months ago, but, like, we're very interested, and we're very ready to go now, because XYZ has changed, and if you understand those constraints, it's very useful. Hondo Geurts 18:23 So Cameron, I think, over the last five years, innovation was probably the most overused word. I think, you know, AI is now the most overused word this year. Running a software company, you've gotta, I mean, you're in the AI in the practical sense, not in the theoretical sense, how do you see that impacting these software intensive organizations, companies like yours? Where is it really adding value? Where is it mythical and just kind of a false stream? And how you see, how are you integrating that into your strategic thinking over the next couple of years? Cameron McCord 19:03 Yeah. Now a really good, really good question, and maybe I'll answer it in sort of two, two tranches. The firstly, you know, Nominal internal like, how do we think about AI? And then secondly, sort of, yeah, strategically in our in our product roadmap and development, I think in the first point, you know, so much has happened. It's AI is incredibly powerful. And so I think we have certainly embraced, embrace AI tools at, you know, at Nominal. And I think that a lot of it is about just putting the right, you know, guardrails on, you know, certain portions of within, within, within engineering, you know, making sure that the unit testing and the, you know, various like validation, no pun intended, testing that Nominal is doing on our own software. But there is a human in the loop still, you know, you never want you sort of get this bias effect right that I think, is still being sort of understood when you have, you know, AI writing validation, unit testing on on the code that it. Actually written to, right? So you don't wanna do that. So there's some natural just like, checks and balances there. I find it super useful in terms of just, you know, summarizing and presenting information. I imagine we all, like, you know, dump things into, you know, chatGPT, right, to get answers. So we've leaned in there on the external side. It's been very interesting. We've actually, sort of, I joke, we've spent the first, really two, two and a half years of the company, pretty emphatically, you know, I have to say a lot like, we're not, we're not an AI company, for those that can't see I, you know, put air quotes on that, in terms of, like, a lot of where we our software is being used, either in with commercial customers or in the DoD context, is mission critical, and so, you know, often with our customers, you know, high side programs like very, very secure, very expensive, very complex areas, there's a questionnaire, you know, or is any of this sort of, you know, are you implementing Gen AI or agentic capabilities, and sometimes, if the answer is yes, like, it's just a No, thanks, right now. So we, I've spent the first two years, three years, building a really powerful product that I think solves a lot of like low hanging fruit through more basic automation, and just like best data technology practices, I sort of say we believe we're kind of taking the testing and validation industry from a software perspective, from, you know, 2002 up to like 2019 I think we've gotten them to 2019 and now it's a really exciting time To go from 2019 to 2025 2026 and so we are, you know, now have a lot of pull from customers that want to see even more and want to embrace even more of the frontier. Now that we have huge amounts of test data and telemetry in our platform, being able to do those, you know, those types of anomaly detection and automated alerting, I think, is really exciting. And then if I make one more point for us, a lot of the AI frontier right now, in terms of whether it's LLMs or agentic workflows, is all about understanding the user workflow and using AI to optimize that process. And it's really exciting for us, like, for us that is, what is the what is a test engineer do? And I think it's really interesting to think through. It's basically the scientific process. But, like, I have an instrument. It generates data. I need to collect it, manage it, organize it. I so much of this is visual. I'm going to plot, you know, telemetry and logs and other sensor data, maybe a map to, like, understand what happened, and then something goes wrong. It always does, you know, we our systems contact reality, as we say, I need to change things, do more analysis, you know, and then I ultimately get to an insight or a conclusion, and then I want to generate a report. I want to summarize that it's a pretty well understood workflow, and it's amazing how AI aside, there's very little software that actually aligns with that workflow. And so we've really built with that North Star of what is it that a test engineer or technician or systems engineer does on a daily basis, and how can we make that 10x or 100x better? And I think AI does have a place to play in that. Lauren Bedula 23:27 So you had vision around a problem and interest that we're now hearing from the Secretary of Defense about reorganizations going on. I think he stated pretty directly that test and evaluation should not slow down getting technology into the hands of the warfighter. So if you know, we had our last conversation two years ago, if we are chatting again in two years, like, what is your vision? Anything exciting? Where do you want to be in the two years from now? Cameron McCord 23:58 No, it's a really good yeah, it's a great question, Lauren, and I think with the sort of, yeah, the T and E, sort of restructuring, you know, I Well, it's not, it's not my place, I think to comment directly on, on how the department is sort of thinking about organization and structuring. I think in general, you know, a lot of our thesis is, is aligned with the idea that we need to rethink the way that we are testing and validating systems within the department, I like to use the SpaceX analogy. It can be an Anduril or a Tesla analogy. These are all companies that have basically invested in the idea that testing constantly. Testing iteratively is the way to move extremely quickly. SpaceX did that to an extreme, where they're quite literally willing to blow up rockets on the launch pad, assuming that they get data from it. And so I think that is the big piece here, where we're in a zone right now where we, we can't afford to, you know, lose systems and lose assets. But I think a lot of that is because the infrastructure we have, from a software perspective, isn't optimized to gain the insights from these types of tests. So what I would love, I think, to see, you know, moving forward, I think there's, great, you know, there's a lot of really good work that's happening here within TRMC, Test Resource Management Center. I think we have a lot of support with our customers at across the various test centers. Air Force Test Center being one that has been really forward looking here, you know, I think embracing commercial innovation, and I think that aligns with a lot of the, you know, the recent sort of executive order for software modernization. I think there's a lot of really best in class commercial technology here around testing and T and E that I'd love to see just more widely embraced and adopted, all under the theme of, how do we not have testing be looked at as a bureaucratic piece of red tape that slows down getting capability to the warfighter. How do we flip it and sort of say, No, like testing does it has to happen. How do we make it as agile, as rapid, as iterative as possible, so we don't even need to think about it as a step in a process. It just sort of is ubiquitous and uniform with how we develop new capabilities. And that's that's very in line with, I think, Nominal's mission. Hondo Geurts 26:29 So as we're finishing up here Cameron, you know, if you were the 19 year old version of yourself and wanted to be a founder, you probably would not have chose this course, and probably when you were sitting underwater for, you know, four months at a time. You know, being an entrepreneur is probably a far off dream, maybe not something that may be aspirational, but not practical in the next couple weeks. How do you what lessons you have for folks, Junior folks coming up on the, you know, the benefit of this wide experience setting, not kind of getting locked into a traditional if you want to be a founder, you need to go to Stanford, and then you need to do this, then you need to do that. Because when I look at most of the most successful folks in any career, rarely did they come up only through that. It was through this kind of, you know, what advice do you have for folks early on about not getting locked in on something too early and being opportunistic? Cameron McCord 27:30 Yeah, no, there's a couple. I think there's a couple of things there. Hondo, I think one, one central theme that I or piece of advice I think I would offer is, if you're on the fence, you know, just you got to, like, take the take the leap. And it sounds very simple, but people will tell you, and this is true on the entrepreneurial side, like the moment you, I sort of say, like, actually set out from, from the pier, like you you leave the ship is it's you're in the ocean, and you're now doing the journey. Resources come, they cut it comes from everywhere. Like everyone that you've ever known in your network is now when they actually see, like, this person is doing it, like they they have left it behind, like they've stopped what they're doing. They're not, you know, one foot. So I think that that's definitely a theme. Like I experienced that the moment that nominal became real, and I was doing a lot of different things, but when I really said, like, No, this is, this is what I'm doing, the whole network kind of came activated to sort of help. So I think that's one piece. And then I think another, you know, piece of advice that I got from some mentors here, I think, is to study, to study the market that you're interested in, over jumping to a conclusion on the solution. And I think, you know, you kind of referenced, you know, Stanford, Hondo, like, you know, as a product of Harvard Business School. I think it's a thing that the MBA track often gets wrong, which is, you narrowly focus on these micro case studies that sort of presuppose a conclusion about how technology or a business change will solve a problem. And I think, you know, I was able to whether it's through operational time, time and Anduril. Applied Intuition, Saildrone, I think just observe what was happening and what trends were going on in this sort of software defined hardware space for several years, and just not thinking that I knew better about what a solution would be, until it really, really, like jumped off the page in me that this was obvious, that like software for improving the way that we tested validate these systems like needs to happen. And then looking around and saying, Well, no one has really innovated here for decades, and looking at trends like it now feels so I wake up in the morning, it feels so obvious to me that nominal is what I need to be doing with my life. But I think, like, you know, it takes a little while to get there, but yeah, if you focus on the market before the solution is key, Hondo Geurts 29:56 All right, and then for the many in the world who have never spent four months where it's 72 and fluorescent, what surprised you the most about going underwater for long periods of time and in the nuclear navy? What just kind of blew you where? When you look back on it, you're like, wow, and it's hard to believe, Cameron McCord 30:17 Yeah, I think, well, I'll react immediately to one of the things you said, you know, 72 and fluorescent and I say, you know, I was on a submarine that that did a lot of deployments to the north, north Atlantic. And you know, when you think about it, a giant metal tube in very, very cold water, it gets pretty cold. And so I did not appreciate it. For us, it was more 52 and fluorescent, I think, a lot of times. So a lot of my, my deployment time was, you know, with a two sweatshirts and a beanie hat on, trying to stay warm just inside. So that, I think that that's a big, you know, a big thing. I also, I think people talk a lot about the camaraderie, but unsurprising, perhaps, if you spend, you know, that much time I've spent 484 days underwater, that was my sort of, you know, but who's counting? You build really, really strong, you know, relationships and really strong friendships. And I joke a lot with the team at Nominal, you know, we work really hard here. We have long days, you know, we're in the trenches doing this together. I kind of joke with folks, imagine if you slept 18 inches below your boss, because for so long, you know, is literally sleeping on the rack, the submarine rack, like, right below the my boss. And so I think you build really good, good relationships and good and good kind of rapport there, which has been great. So, yeah. Lauren Bedula 31:47 Well, Cameron, I can't help but think, you know, when Hondo and I talked about starting this show over three years ago, it was really with the focus on trying to drive energy and talent and entrepreneurs towards strengthening the industrial base and solving hard problems. And it's so cool to chat with you now after our conversation just a couple of years ago, to see all of this progress and see how much energy you're dedicating to the space. So before we wrap any final thoughts or anything we missed for our listeners? Cameron McCord 32:18 No, thank you, Lauren. I really, yeah, I appreciate it. I'm excited, and I we, you know, some, some good news that's coming out of Nominal off the back of the success we've had, we raised a $75 million Series B that I think is a testament to the opportunity in this space, and kind of what we've done, you know, to date as a business. And so that round is led by Sequoia Capital, which I think speaks volumes to you know, what nominal is doing in the opportunity space, and also co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners who's done a lot of really exciting investments in this, this world. So all systems are very Nominal, as we say, as our company slogan, and we're going to be growing and growing and expanding. Lauren Bedula 33:07 Well, huge congrats. Thank you. We know how busy you are for taking the time to come on and share this story, and we'll mark our calendars for two years from now so we can hear that update. But Cameron, thank you. You're the best. We appreciate your time and coming on to share today. Cameron McCord 33:23 Awesome. Thank you Lauren and thank you Hondo. Yeah, we'll do it in two years. Transcribed by https://otter.ai