San Francisco with my #Fam and Fam and Lessons Learned about Patience and Planning

As has been the case for our existence and will continue to be the case for months and years to come, provided we are doing things right because this is a start-up, we have a LOT GOING ON here at Sunflower Fuels.

Starting with the most recent thing, I'll share why I get to post a picture of my 12 year old superstar (my daughter Adelaide) here on LinkedIn: she came with me to my first ever MilVet Startups conference hosted by Context VC and sponsored by J.P. 摩根 and others in San Francisco last week. This is my #fam: fellow military veterans who started out or spent some portions of their careers serving their country, and have since moved on to building and funding businesses all around the world. My fam is, you know, my progeny. She and I had the pleasure of hearing from fellow veterans who have founded companies like Trident Coffee Roasters , Autoket (Techstars '24) , SABO Outdoors , Silent Crown , Onbrand , Miles for Military, Oply , and my personal favorite as a former involuntarily bald person and also person who likes a variety of hairstyles: WellCapped . I have so much love for folks who put themselves out into the arena and make their dreams into reality! It's a gut check unlike anything OTHER than the gut checks service members are faced with the moment they swear their oaths. It all makes sense.

Other than hearing from the founders, Adelaide's and my second most favorite session was our opportunity to hear from the inventors of Venture Capital, Pitch Johnson and Bill Draper , about their days in a blue Buick (IYKYK) driving around what was then not called Silicon Valley, and finding the right inspirational founders that had what it took to build amazing tech companies from scratch. Their words were exciting, innovative, and most special to me in this world: kind and full of humor. So glad I got to hear them and even moreso that Adelaide did.

(Always nice to see new friends like Jim Delaney , Tim Hsai, Gale Clark and old friends like Kathy Borkoski.)

Back here on the home front, we are dealing with an interesting challenge: our best laid plans. We are SO very grateful to our investors who have committed to our company, including Keyhorse Capital . Based on the money we have in the bank AS WELL AS the money we have committed that we expect to have in the bank oh so soon, we have made some exciting plans for our company including engaging Anne Oudersluys , engaging some fractional CRO help, and hiring a few individuals. We are chomping at the bit to do all of these things, and have told many of these outsiders as much, but there is one problem: the money not yet being in the bank due to some absolutely mandatory administrative matters that we must take care of on our end. We will execute agreements and share offers as soon as we get this stuff done. But it's a lesson learned on my part: be as clear with folks as possible on timing.

Thanks for reading, hit me up with questions and comments, and see you in a couple of weeks with more updates including, providing the critical path continues, introductions to new team members.