Defense Unicorns, Inc.
Defense Unicorns specializes in platform technologies that enable rapid and reliable delivery of capabilities across a wide range of mission and technology areas. We support open architecture platforms for secure mission systems that provide optionality for the end user, promote scalability, and allow for continuous identification and integration of new products and services while avoiding vendor lock. Our open approach creates partnership opportunities across the software ecosystem. Our people are innovators, software engineers, and veterans with decades of experience delivering technology programs across DoD and the broader federal market. Let's drive change together. Get in touch at hello@defenseunicorns.comwww.defenseunicorns.com
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Search complete. 9 mentions across 2 episodes found for "Defense Unicorns, Inc.".
Sep 15, 2026
Phil RobbSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Right.
Phil RobbSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And so so talk a little bit about what that culture looks like at Defense Unicorns and what what learnings has the organization had over that time?
Austen BryanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Yeah, I would say anybody with that opinion has never written software before is my guess.
Austen BryanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
Going back to our comment about managers and who should become them, right? And sometimes you're forced into it.
Austen BryanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I do a lot of final round interviews in my position since I'm on the senior side of their company.
Austen BryanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
At the point that I do it, I have zero interest in what the person knows or where they've been.
Austen BryanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
I want to know why they want to work at Defense Unicorns.
Austen BryanSOUNDBITE_SPEAKER
And if they know nothing about us or our mission and don't bring it up, don't have any passion for it, then I have zero interest in them coming here.
Tucker HamiltonHOST
If you've ever waited 20 seconds for a government computer to open a single email, you already understand the problem my next guest built a billion-dollar company to solve.
Tucker HamiltonHOST
Rob Slaughter is a former Air Force officer, PhD in engineering physics, and the co-founder and CEO of Defense Unicorns, a company built on a simple but radical idea: software should be a strategic deterrent, not a bureaucratic afterthought.
Tucker HamiltonHOST
So in 2021, Rob and his co-founders set out to fix how the Department of Defense, now Department of War, builds, delivers, and updates mission software.
Tucker HamiltonHOST
Now trusted across the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Space Force to adopt software tools and software effectively, this guy looked at the slowest-moving bureaucracy on the planet and decided to out-innovate it from the inside.
Rob SlaughterGUEST
And, and we looked at the problem.
Rob SlaughterGUEST
We said, "Hey, look, there's really cool and interesting tech challenges here," and thought you could maybe one day build a company around it.
Rob SlaughterGUEST
So about five years ago, we started Defense Unicorns to really obsess on that problem, and we still got a long way to go as a company, but you know, I think we've come quite a long ways in, in making, uh, the Department of War kind of a digital and software-first organization.
Tucker HamiltonHOST
So when you were in the Air Force, you were actually, like, a physicist.