Andreessen Horowitz, Lux Capital and Point72 Ventures are backing a new generation of startups in El Segundo, leaning into a MAGA-fied, pro-Christian, mostly male-led vision of Silicon Valley.
By David Jeans, Forbes Staff
Last April, in a warehouse in El Segundo — the LAX airport-adjacent neighborhood that has become the center of Silicon Valley’s defense tech movement — then-20-year-old student Jakob Diepenbrock was hosting the future of the American industrial complex. Over the course of a week, he and a cohort of similarly college-aged entrepreneurs brainstormed startup ideas, pumped iron and kept themselves focused and fed from a fridge stuffed with Monster energy drinks and 50 pounds of ground beef. “Fuel of legends,” he proudly told a Forbes reporter who attended the event, held by his firm Discipulus Ventures.
Almost a year later, El Segundo’s founders, or self-identified ‘Gundo bros,’ command the attention of some of the biggest venture capital outfits around. Lux Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and Point72 Ventures are among those who have backed more than half a dozen founders from Discipulus’s first cohort alone. They’re pouring money into seed-stage companies Durin, which is developing autonomous drilling equipment for the mining industry; Rune Technologies, which is building software for military units to manage supply chains; and Vanguard Defense, which is building a data product for electronic warfare.
Now, Discipulus has launched its own fund to back the second cohort of entrepreneurs that it plans to host for a week-long event in coming months, raising $6 million from investors like Eventbrite founder Kevin Hartz, North Carolina-based Champion Hill Ventures and venture capitalist Leo Polovets. It’s a small fund, but one with big Y Combinator-style ambitions that align with the Trump administration’s priorities. “It’s not like he’s building an ad network trying to make money,” Hartz told Forbes. “He believes in his core mission of restoring industries and furthering the innovation edge of the United States.”
Champion Hill and Polovets confirmed their involvement; Andreessen Horowitz and Point72 declined comment. Lux didn’t respond to a comment request.
Top investors’ support of Discipulus’ portfolio companies suggests they see potentially huge upside for a chance to back the next hot company out of El Segundo. The surrounding area spawned SpaceX and weapons manufacturer Anduril (which is currently in talks to raise funding at a $28 billion valuation). More recently venture investors have poured capital into local companies like missile maker Castelion (which recently closed on a $100 million funding round), Varda, which tests pharmaceuticals in space (and has raised $300 million), and precision manufacturing startup Hadrian ($200 million raised).
Some hope that Discipulus will evolve into a next-generation Y Combinator, the storied Silicon Valley accelerator that birthed the likes of Airbnb, Stripe and DoorDash. Recently, it too has begun eyeing the defense and hardware sector. Last August it launched its first weapons company, a missile startup called Ares, and in December it joined a lobbying group focused on military tech and manufacturing. But those on the ground in El Segundo see it as late to the party.
“If I’d gone to Y Combinator, it would have been largely useless to me,” said Rune’s founder, Peter Goldsborough, who recently secured seed funding in a round led by A16z (he declined to share the amount). “The people there don’t have experience in the sense that matters to me.” (Y Combinator didn’t respond to a comment request.)
Discipulus’ backers agree. Josh Manchester, who led Champion Hill’s support for Discipulus, said he’d previously backed Y Combinator founders, but hoped Discipulus could rival it one day. “It has a more overt focus on traditional American values,” he said. Investor Polovets said, “I don’t think competing directly with YC is a good idea,” but added that “offering alternative products is smart.”
The El Segundo community is lining up behind Discipulus’ accelerator, with leaders from Varda and Hadrian expected to advise the next cohort of founders. Augustus Doricko, a Thiel fellow who started a cloud seeding startup called Rainmaker, will soon host the group at his company’s warehouse. “There’s a lot of talk about defense, hardware and American dynamism,” Doricko said. “When push comes to shove some of these people will become wildly successful.”
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For Doricko, one of several very online Gundo bros, this second Discipulus cohort is further evidence of a shift away from an era of investment in consumer apps and B2B solutions toward a new one that favors America’s national security interests and military prowess. It’s a so-called “vibe shift” that has inspired a MAGA-fied, pro-Christian vision of Silicon Valley tightly aligned with Elon Musk and the Trump administration’s goals; the billionaire venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, for example, has backed a venture firm called New Founding, which is building a Christian real estate enclave, and hopes to be part of an effort to “forge new models and institutions that can shape the direction of Western civilization.”
Discipulus is leaning into this message: “Ideals that once spurred innovation and societal growth – religion, patriotism, family – have since lost their appeal, particularly at academic institutions and top corporations,” its website explains, adding a call for “founders with a transformative vision for the future by combining their entrepreneurship, personal virtue and obligation to our country.”
Durin CEO Ted Feldmann, for example, told Forbes that he’d joined Discipulus’ Diepenbrock at a Friday night mass during the first cohort last year. He thinks Disiplus has helped him “grow in my faith” and “become a kind of better person and founder.” Diepenbrock agreed that religion was a common thread among the founders he hoped to attract. “The point here is America was founded on values that are reflective of a Judeo-Christian way of looking at things,” he said. “I think that’s what our founders look for as well.”
It’s worth noting that, at least at this point, those founders are predominantly men. Last year, just one woman applied to Discipulus, Diepenbrock said, but she wasn’t admitted because her pitch centered on a consumer app. “Most founders that start hard tech companies aren’t women, to be honest,” he said. “I think it’s just the way that culture and people turn out.” Asked if he expected women to apply to the second cohort, Diepenbrock said: “I don’t know who will apply but if they’re building companies that America needs then I hope they do.”
Diepenbrock, who is now 21 and currently on leave as a computer science and finance student Northeastern University (he’s planning to dropout), arrived in El Segundo after meeting Doricko at a conference in El Salvador. At the time Doricko was working on the idea for his cloud seeding startup, and asked Diepenbrock to be his finance director. Diepenbrock didn’t take the job, but he did see an opportunity in El Segundo to funnel more founders into the neighborhood to build deep tech companies. “Silicon Valley really failed to latch onto this and I realized there was a need here,” Diepenbrock said.
Since conceiving Durin during the first Discipulus cohort, Feldmann said his mining startup now has offices in El Segundo, and expects to announce a funding round in coming months. “There’s nowhere else in America that has the early stage hardware startup ecosystem like El Segundo,” Feldmann said. “The vibes here are immaculate.”
