Derren Burrell: Veteran Ventures Capital
In our Meet a VC series, we sit down with NVCA members to share the people, perspectives, and convictions behind the venture capital industry. This spotlight features Derren Burrell, founder and managing partner of Veteran Ventures Capital.
Veteran Ventures Capital invests in veteran-led companies building dual-use and national security technologies. The firm’s thesis rests on two convictions: veteran entrepreneurs possess leadership capabilities that the venture ecosystem has often underestimated, and private capital has an increasingly important role in strengthening America’s security, industrial capacity, and technological competitiveness.
From Public Service to Private Capital
Burrell’s path to venture capital was not a conventional one. He served in the United States Air Force for 21 years, retiring as a lieutenant colonel after assignments that included the Pentagon, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the White House Communications Agency.
Throughout his military career, Burrell managed complex financial, operational, and contracting responsibilities, including billions of dollars in resources supporting missions around the world. The experience taught him how disciplined processes, sound administration, and decisive leadership can turn a plan into an outcome—even under extraordinary pressure.
Those lessons followed him into the private sector. At TAG Resources, Burrell helped scale the business, navigate an acquisition, and deliver a return to its owners. The experience gave him a firsthand view of how operational discipline builds enterprise value.
It also helped him recognize a market opportunity.
Burrell saw that veterans were uniquely prepared to build companies in complex, mission-oriented markets. They had led teams, managed resources, operated under pressure, and learned how to execute when the stakes were high. Yet veteran entrepreneurs remained underrepresented in venture capital.
Veteran Ventures Capital was created to close that gap—not as a charitable initiative, but as an investment strategy.
“We believe veteran founders and veteran leaders are an underappreciated asset class within venture,” Burrell said. “We are not a charity or an affinity fund. These founders can make a real impact. You just have to back them.”
National Security as an Innovation Ecosystem
Burrell’s public-service experience shaped how he understands the relationship between government, startups, and private capital.
“National security is not just a government function,” he said. “It is increasingly being shaped by private-sector innovation, capital markets, and the speed at which we bring technologies to the field.”
Technologies emerging from startups are changing how the United States approaches defense, deterrence, resilience, and industrial strength. Government agencies and established defense companies increasingly look to entrepreneurs for advances in autonomy, space, cybersecurity, advanced manufacturing, and other strategically important sectors.
Venture capital helps move those innovations from concept to deployment. It gives founders the resources to build teams, refine technologies, establish production capacity, and create durable companies capable of serving government and commercial customers.
For Burrell, capital is not a replacement for government investment. It is a complementary force that can accelerate companies solving genuine mission needs.
Veteran Ventures Capital’s first fund backed 15 companies that collectively secured nearly $300 million in nondilutive funding in addition to the firm’s equity investments. That ability to pair private capital with government programs helped validate the firm’s model and supported the launch of a second fund three times the size of the first.
The results reflect what can happen when investors understand both sides of a complex market: the mission requirements of the customer and the commercial realities of building a scalable company.
Decisions Without Perfect Certainty
Military leadership also shapes how Burrell evaluates founders.
“You make decisions with incomplete information, but not casually,” he said. “You gather the available facts, understand the risk, and move forward with discipline.”
Venture investors rarely have perfect information, particularly at the earliest stages. They must assess the founder, team, market, technology, timing, and risk-adjusted opportunity while accepting that the plan will inevitably change.
Veteran Ventures Capital requires meaningful veteran representation within a company’s leadership and ownership. Burrell wants to see that experience embedded within the decision-making team—not attached as an advisory credential.
Military service alone, however, does not determine whether the firm will invest. Burrell looks for candor, coach-ability, clear communication, and an ability to prioritize. He values founders who understand what they know, acknowledge what they do not, and are transparent about the hardest parts of the business.
That honesty allows an investor to identify gaps and provide targeted support before those gaps become larger problems.
“Trust and coach-ability are really important,” Burrell said. “Trust should compound over time and become a real operating advantage.”
Turning Capital Into Outcomes
One of Burrell’s central lessons from building Veteran Ventures Capital is that execution matters more than presentation.
A pitch deck captures a plan at a moment in time. Building a company requires the ability to adjust that plan as customers, markets, technologies, and conditions change. The military calls it adapting and overcoming. In venture, it is called pivoting.
“You are going to engage with a plan that will change,” Burrell said. “Capital is important, but capital alone does not solve hard problems. Leadership, discipline, resilience, and customer focus are what turn capital into outcomes.”
That distinction is especially important in national security technology, where a promising innovation must travel a difficult path from research and development to initial production and, ultimately, full-scale manufacturing.
Founders can become so focused on the technology that they lose sight of the company required to deliver it. A technically impressive product must still address a validated customer need, navigate acquisition pathways, establish production capacity, and support a sustainable business model.
Venture capital can provide the time, expertise, relationships, and follow-on financing required to cross those gaps. Its impact is not simply the initial check. It is the long-term work of helping a company become fundable, scalable, and relevant to the market it intends to serve.
As Much Help as Founders Can Stand
Veteran Ventures Capital is known for active engagement with its portfolio companies. Burrell jokes that the team gives founders “as much help as they can stand.”
That support is direct and practical. The firm helps founders understand government customers, identify the right acquisition officials, determine which proposals to pursue, secure nondilutive funding, form strategic partnerships, recruit key employees, strengthen operations, and prepare for follow-on capital.
The goal is not to cheer from the sidelines. It is to offer honest guidance early—before a founder learns the same lesson later and at greater cost.
“We try to be useful across both sides of the business: the mission side and the market side,” Burrell said.
That engagement also strengthens the relationship between the firm and its limited partners. Veteran Ventures Capital maintains close contact with its portfolio companies and uses disciplined reporting processes to communicate where each company stands.
“When you support founders, you are also supporting your investors,” Burrell said. Active portfolio management gives limited partners a clearer understanding of how companies are progressing, where risks are emerging, and how the firm is responding.
It is another expression of the fiduciary discipline Burrell carried from public service into private capital: investors, founders, and customers are connected parts of the same ecosystem.
Service Beyond the Uniform
Burrell rejects the idea that veterans should primarily be viewed through the lens of need. While some veterans require meaningful support after service, the overwhelming majority leave the military ready to lead, build, and continue contributing.
“When veterans take off the uniform, the desire to serve, to be part of something bigger, and to make a difference does not go away,” he said.
Veteran founders bring that mission orientation to entrepreneurship. They often understand the government customer because they have lived the customer’s problems. They can translate operational experience into technologies that address real-world needs while also pursuing commercial applications.
Veteran Ventures Capital sits at that intersection of veteran entrepreneurship, national security, private capital, and technological innovation. Its role is to help move ideas from the boardroom to the field—and to build enduring companies in the process.
Burrell sees organizations such as NVCA as part of the connective tissue supporting that work. Veteran Ventures Capital joined NVCA while building its first fund and has since participated in programs including VC University, mentorship initiatives, and the Strategic Operations and Policy Summit. Those resources have helped the firm develop its team, deepen its industry relationships, and engage with the policy environment affecting its portfolio.
A Triple-Bottom-Line Opportunity
Burrell describes Veteran Ventures Capital’s work through a triple bottom line: supporting veterans, strengthening national security, and generating returns its investors can be proud of.
He is optimistic because demand for serious innovation is growing. The country needs founders capable of building durable companies around consequential challenges in defense, autonomy, space, cyber, and advanced manufacturing.
At the same time, new bridges are forming among government agencies, startups, venture investors, established defense companies, and regional innovation hubs. That connectivity can help promising technologies reach customers faster and strengthen America’s capacity to compete.
Burrell does not see the growing focus on national security technology as a passing investment trend. He sees a structural shift in how innovation is developed, financed, and deployed.
“Our weapon now is venture capital,” Burrell said. “When that capital is applied thoughtfully, it can help strengthen the country’s security and innovation ecosystem while scaling companies that matter.”
For Burrell, venture capital is another form of service: a way to back leaders, build companies, and help move critical technologies from possibility to practice.
“The best is yet to come,” he said, “both for us as a firm and for the country.”