Eyck/Bliss/Dustin

Attendees: Dustin J Ross, Bliss Perry, Eyck Date: March 9, 2026 Type: Partner Session

Summary

China Travel & Security Clearance Discussion

• Anonymous considering month in China working for Hong Kong-based PE firm
  • Speaks Chinese, has 10 years China experience
  • Concerned about impact on future security clearance
• Advisor’s guidance on clearance process
  • Not necessarily disqualifying but requires careful documentation
  • Key risk factors: financial leverage, personal relationships, ego/fame motivations
  • Critical: never lie on SF86 form (perjury risk)
  • Avoid taking money from PRC entities or using WeChat for business
• Current environment increasingly risky
  • MSS recruitment becoming more brazen on campuses
  • Advisor’s personal experience: detained at Beijing airport despite precautions
  • Recommendation: consult clearance experts before travel

Digital Twin Concept Validation

• Proposed product: Digital twin of semiconductor supply chain
  • Map complete topology of firms, transactions, capacities, ownership
  • Enable simulations and predictive analytics on supply chain disruptions
• Advisor feedback on data acquisition challenges
  • Most critical data is proprietary (Applied Materials tier-3 suppliers unknown)
  • Packaging/testing companies largely private Malaysian firms
  • Need value exchange model: “you give us your data, we give you ours”
• Competitive landscape
  • Wirescreen (Dave Barboza) - Chinese corporate records/due diligence
  • Exeger - employs ex-House Select Committee staff
  • Multiple companies doing open source intelligence on Chinese entities

Market Opportunity Assessment

• Compliance as initial wedge strategy
  • Applied Materials paid $250M fine, Cadence nine-digit penalties
  • Automated export control/restricted entity verification as entry point
  • Cold start problem: need initial value proposition to acquire proprietary data
• Alternative focus areas with simpler supply chains
  • Drone supply chain (Skydio battery cutoff case study)
  • Critical minerals dependencies
  • Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs)
  • Defense applications more tractable than full semiconductor mapping

Strategic Recommendations

• Defense tech as optimal initial market
  • Anduril better target than Lockheed (simpler, modular systems)
  • Clean supply chain as competitive differentiator for contracts
  • Smaller component count makes mapping feasible
• Business model considerations
  • Selling to established defense primes (Palantir, Anduril) vs crossing valley of death
  • Revenue growth story (offensive capability) vs cost reduction (defensive)
  • Government regulatory play requires betting on timing of rule changes
• Next steps: Continue conversation post-spring break, potential GSB speaking engagement

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Co-founder Signal Debrief

Sourced from Signal chat, 2026-03-09

Post-meeting reactions:

Bliss: “Yeah he’s very insightful. Seems like a very interdisciplinary thinker across academics, policy, and some business as well.”

Dustin’s strategic synthesis from this meeting — a key reframe of their core weakness: “We designed a business model without any unique customer insight. That’s always been our weakness. This strategy allows our weakness to become a strength… We’re gonna build this digital twin by undercutting the market on compliance and then monetizing otherwise.”

New customer discovery discipline adopted after this meeting: “In these conversations we should now be relentlessly pushing towards ‘who might be interested in this problem’ like we did today” — which surfaced a new lead on transshipment/demand from new defense primes.

Shyam Sankar framing (shared by Bliss the same week): “Our view is that all the economic value accrues to chips and ontology… If you decompose a complex process like insurance underwriting into discrete steps, the models become much more reliable. It’s a way of getting the stochastic genie into a straitjacket.” — founders saw this as validating their ontology-first approach.

Follow-up: Eyck meeting proposed for second week after spring break; dinner with Eyck and Emily (TA) also discussed.