Black Flag

We give founders $250k - $1M solving problems critical to the USA 🇺🇸 We then help go to market, raise additional capital and connect with top mentors 🏴‍☠️

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

500+ founders. 1,500+ nominations. 100 companies.

The Black Flag 100 is back 🏴‍☠️

No VC votes. No fund picks. Just pirates chasing storms over certainty.

The 2026 list 🧵🏴‍☠️

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Watch this episode and others here: https://t.co/ts2lvQTl8V

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Definitely a theme this week from the latest @BlackFlagVC Pirates Only episodes: Both @_chandlerl and Brian Taylor (from Lux Aeterna) are ex @SpaceX , and both are taking the learnings of scale into their new ventures.

In the latest episode, Chandler dives in to how first-principles thinking can be applied to the American missile shortage, and how re-thinking everything from the engineering to the scaling is required to solve this problem.

Watch the full episode here on X 🏴‍☠️

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Listen to this episode and others here: https://t.co/ts2lvQTl8V

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

"When I started digging in to publicly available information, I realized we don't have that many. Period. We can't make that many to replenish if we were to go exhaust of significant piece of the stock. And they're all super expensive. Three things that are completely antithetic to how SpaceX solves problems. So that's what initially got me very frustrated..."

Was very excited to sit down with @_chandlerl , founder and CEO of @_galadyne to discuss the American missile crisis.

Sometimes founders are compelled to start businesses because of a single stat line or chart, and this one had Chandler ready to jump in:

"If we were to enter a broad scale combat situation today, it's estimated that we have three to eight days, single digit days worth of critical munitions."

But what makes it worse is the cost and time it would take to replenish. This is the motivation being Chandler and Galadyne: How can we make more missiles, at scale, for less money. A problem that requires first-principles thinking across the entire stack.

We also dive in to:

- His time and learnings at Space X and Saronic

- The way he thinks about scale and priority within the business

- Other defense-related companies and technologies he's excited about

- Fundraising and company building advice for early-stage hard tech founders.

- And so much more!

Watch the full episode right here on X 🏴‍☠️

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Watch this episode and more on our website: https://t.co/qp5G1XnrfZ

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

"If you need to make a decision that is based on data that is less than two years old, or you wanna bring a technology into orbit that is less than two years old, you can't do it and it's not really a thing that you think about. Now, if that lead time was, six weeks, eight weeks, 12 weeks...That's a massive difference in what you would think about taking to space."

We were happy to host Brian Taylor, founder and CEO of Lux Aeterna, on our latest episode of Pirates Only. Brian spent 15 years in aerospace, including building the first Starlink satellites at SpaceX

Watch the full episode here on X!

🧵👇

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

@DecisionTree_gg

[VolundMfg @VolundMfg]

Our CEO sat down to talk scale manufacturing with @BlackFlagVC Give it a listen.

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Listen to the full episode here: https://t.co/XHD2ONRBfg

Definitely a must listen for any hard tech founders 🏴‍☠️

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Other things we cover include:

- Eric's background in mass-scale consumer goods (for companies like Vans, Oakley and Fox Racing and Beats by Dre) to being early at Anduril

- The founding story of Volund and why the time is now for US defense manufacturing

- High-level overview of the current state of the U.S. defense industrial base

- Testing infrastructure gaps and where founders go to blow things up (legally, of course)

- Tips and tricks for hard tech founders, both in scaling product but also fundraising

And so much more!

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

One thing we spoke about was how important it is for hard tech founders to think about scale from day one. It can't just be about making the most beautiful or technically advanced product out the gate.

We see so many startups that go this route, only to realize they can't produce a handful of products at their final design, let along at the scale needed to meet market demand.

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

"I've watched a number of companies build what a lot of people call technical debt. When you want to be actually producing this at scale, like shipping the things in the boxes with UPS labels. How do you actually do that and have plans to do that early on I think is massively important."

We sat down with Eric Hostetler, co-founder and CEO of @VolundMfg on this week's episode of Pirates Only.

Link to full episode below!

🧵👇

[Rob Gabbert @gabbertrob]

@gbtechnologia FF & a16z obviously but https://t.co/HZasPF3uJ2 is one that is probably less known

[Mat 🏴‍☠️ @matvogels]

I'm excited to share our latest Fun Raising episode with @kenanhsaleh (Investor at @a16z and @speedrun) to talk about the fundraising process.

Kenan and team see thousands (upon thousands) of pitches every year, and his feedback on how to stand out is worth the listen alone.

Watch the full episode here on X!

[Zane Hengsperger @zanehengsperger]

We are hosting an industrial hackathon at @noxmetals!

We are inviting software and hardware builders to apply to compete for a $5,000 prize.

Write code and build hardware that gives insight to what the heck the machine is doing. And, how it can be optimized.

Build a $250 sensor system for our Spartan wet saw cutting some sweet sweet 6061.

Kickoff Monday 12pm ET. Demo day June 15 in Detroit.

Link below.

@SchramIAm @640oxford @dugsong

[NOX METALS @noxmetals]

More than 500 founders nominated over 1,500 companies to this year's Black Flag 100 list.

We're excited to share that Nox Metals received enough nominations to make the final list.

@BlackFlagVC

[CravingHumanity @LeetOffice]

Late night founders inspirational music right here! Been listening to this on loop for hours!

[Uptool @uptool_ai]

Honored to be selected for @BlackFlagVC most innovative hard tech startups by @HarpoonVentures!

Learn more here: https://t.co/c3uKC3sjRi

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

CCing @DissidentClint

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

We've gotten incredible feedback on our launch video 🏴‍☠️ With lots of folks asking if there is a full version of the song. There is! Enjoy.

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

Full video for those that missed it: https://t.co/xmyBcZ1ftC

[Black Flag @BlackFlagVC]

500+ founders. 1,500+ nominations. 100 companies.

The Black Flag 100 is back 🏴‍☠️

No VC votes. No fund picks. Just pirates chasing storms over certainty.

The 2026 list 🧵🏴‍☠️