Defense Tech Underground #016
Andy Yakulis is the co-founder and CEO of Vector, a venture-backed defense tech startup building modern warfare capabilities at startup speed for the U.S. military and allied forces.
Yakulis began his career as an Army Officer and Special Operations Commander, serving 18 years before walking away from a guaranteed military pension to build Vector. During his military service, he led tactical combat operations, integrated cutting-edge technology into the Department of Defense, and became a pilot-in-command with the FAA’s highest commercial aviation rating.- Helicopter Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certification. Before founding Vector, he co-founded the health tech startup Medeloop.ai, scaling it to secure initial customers and raise millions in venture funding, and helped co-lead the early formation of the Office of Strategic Capital, where he worked to bridge private investment with national security innovation. He earned his Master of Science in Management as a Sloan Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business, focusing on technology innovation and venture capital, and holds a Master of Arts in Defense and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. Together with co-founders Matt Long (a retired Navy SEAL Team Leader) and George Matus (founder of Teal drones), Yakulis founded Vector to tackle one of America’s most pressing challenges: delivering next-generation warfare capabilities faster and more effectively than traditional defense contractors.
In this episode of Defense Tech Underground, we sit down with Andy to explore how a Special Operations veteran is bringing Silicon Valley speed to modern warfare. We cover:
- Stanford and the Office of Strategic Capital – how his time at Stanford GSB and helping launch OSC shaped his understanding of what defense innovation requires, and which dual-use startups succeed versus stall.
- Burning the boats – the conviction required to abandon an 18-year military career and guaranteed pension, and what made him believe Vector could outperform both traditional primes and purely commercial players.
- MedeLoop to Vector – lessons from building a health tech startup that shaped how he thinks about talent, information flow, and capability development in national security.
- Modern Warfare as-a-Service – Vector’s thesis on where startups can win against primes, why they chose Utah as their base, and how they raised $61M in just 14 months.
- Drones, manufacturing, and resilience – the reality of onshoring production, decoupling from China, and what Vector is doing to address the “Unleashing Drone Dominance” mandate announced in June 2025.
- Founder lessons – advice for mid-career officers and civil servants on when to stay inside the system versus jump out, and what the ideal Vector candidate looks like.
This conversation highlights how a Special Operations commander turned entrepreneur is applying lessons from the battlefield, Stanford, and the venture world to rebuild American defense industrial capacity.
This episode is hosted by Andrew Couillard
Full Bio:
Andy Yakulis
Andy Yakulis is co-founder and CEO of Vector, the only global Modern Warfare as-a-Service provider. He served 18 years as an Army Officer and Special Operations Commander before founding Vector, where he leads the company’s mission to deliver cutting-edge warfare capabilities at startup speed. As a pilot-in-command and air mission commander, he holds the FAA’s Helicopter Airline Transport Pilot (ATP) certification with extensive experience piloting both military and civilian aircraft. Yakulis co-founded Medeloop.ai, a health tech startup that scaled to secure initial customers and raise millions in venture funding, and helped co-lead the early formation of the Office of Strategic Capital, where he worked to drive private investment into defense technology. He earned his Master of Science in Management as a Sloan Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business, focusing on technology innovation and venture capital, and holds a Master of Arts in Defense and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College. A graduate of West Point with a Bachelor of Science in Geospatial Information Science, Yakulis was also a Division I lacrosse athlete and four-year varsity letterman.