It was late in the evening on just another Saturday. I hopped on a Zoom call, and my eyes were immediately drawn to an American flag prominently displayed on the wall, something becoming more common in places like “Gundo” but still a rarity on Zoom calls with a tech founder.

At college campuses, coffee shops, and networking events, many young people toy with the notion of going all in to build a groundbreaking startup, but optionality often keeps them wondering. For David “Yukon,” keeping optionality wasn’t an option. David has been driven to build since a young age. His dad, his inspiration, completed a dual degree in chemical engineering and went through dental school. Although coming from extensive institutional education, he saw beyond traditional education, supporting David's decision not to attend college. He nurtured the environment for building, taking the essentials of institutional education and merging them with allowing David to explore his curiosities, enabling David to tinker and build hardware from a young age. David launched Canine Rocket Technologies in middle school and tinkered in rocketry from the eighth grade onwards.

Now, less than a year out of high school, David is going all in on his company, Canine Defense Technologies, foregoing college to build. Canine Defense Technologies aims to fill the gap in defense tech hardware and reshore drone manufacturing in America.

Canine Defense Technologies' main focus is the development of an American-made, modular drone called the Valor sUAS (small Unmanned Aerial System). In the midst of the interview, David got up and showed me the stealth quadcopter with a focus "to serve as a multi-mission tool in tactical environments, search and rescue operations, general surveillance, payload delivery, etc. The system consists of the rugged UAV, Spot-T optics pod, field controller, battery charger, and ground station." A focus on open architecture allows the further development of autonomous abilities, which David is planning to implement later on. The emphasis on “later” comes after David, after dozens of customer discovery interviews, realized autonomy was not a “must-have” for those out in the field; more so, the importance was around developing low-cost, sturdy, American-made drones. David focuses on rapid hardware development, embracing “duct tape prototypes,” stating that something could be perfect in the CAD model, but you need to get it in your hands to understand what is lacking. You need that to “prove the core functionality.” In addition, he “finds that it's easy to get caught up in manufacturing and mechanical design when being a hardware-focused builder. Seeing your hardware ultimately as the body for software to do work in the physical world, and truly scaling what I like to refer to as 'software-defined hardware' is how the future will be defined by both software and hardware capabilities together.”

The vision for Canine Defense Technologies has been driven by the fact that our adversaries are not slowing down drone production and they can outproduce faster. David believes that “warfare comes down to economics,” and the U.S. needs to produce not just the quality but the quantity of drones needed to compete onshore. This will “determine the outcome of war in the coming decades.” David would rather his products never see warfare, as he understands the best deterrent of war is a cutting-edge arsenal and motivated troops.

David’s success has been driven by an insane tenacity to just build, and his build-in-public mentality has allowed the right people to find him. In addition, David is not afraid to reach out to whoever he needs to talk to via cold email and Twitter DMs, noting the immense leverage of using Twitter DMs to reach high-profile figures. As the space moves fast, David keeps abreast by scouring the FAA website for any updates that may change the direction of his company and following the FPV Community.

Currently, David's company is bootstrapped, and he aims to understand the levels of onshoring required to support drone production in the U.S. before rushing toward funding. David does note, "I definitely believe we possess the technical talent domestically by a large margin. Much of the R&D for drones produced in China is actually done in the U.S.

"David continues to be excited every day about building the future of defense and urges anyone with an itch to build or join the industry to do it.You can learn more about Canine Defense Technologies here:  @K9DefenseTech

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