On February 18, 2024, Ian Laffey posted on X that he and two others he'd just met built a cheap drone at a hackathon that calculated its coordinates simply by using its camera and Google Maps. He and his colleagues, Sacha Levy and Carl Schoeller, were all engineers under the age of 25. The tech had clear potential to combat rampant GPS jamming of drones in Ukraine. Instead of GPS, drone operators there have to use high-tech goggles to guide their drones by sight. But that leads to lots of problems, especially under poor conditions like thick fog or at night. Now, their San Francisco-based company, Theseus, has just raised $4.3 million in seed funding in a round led by First Round Capital, with additional backing from Y Combinator and Lux Capital, it exclusively told TechCrunch. Theseus joins a flock of other drone-related startups. There's Skydio, which focuses on replacing Chinese drones for U.S. law enforcement and was last valued at $2.2 billion in 2023. Shield AI, which builds reconnaissance drones, recently raised at a $5.3 billion valuation. The biggest defense tech player, Anduril, launched its own small drone last year, and is reportedly in talks to raise at a $28 billion valuation....
You knew the conversation would be tricky because you had to tackle someone about their misbehavior. Maybe it was a colleague who claimed your work idea as their own; maybe it was a new friend who said nasty things behind your back; or maybe it was a romantic partner who was unfaithful. The evidence is incontrovertible'so much so that, had the boot been on the other foot, you would be confessing your error and asking for forgiveness. But that's not this person's MO. No, in the face of clear wrongdoing, they denied everything. Instead of showing contrition, they counterattacked, maybe even accusing you of the very behavior they committed. To top it off, they played the victim and cast you as the real offender. The whole interaction left you upset and confused'even questioning your perception. Is it possible that you got the whole thing backwards' Congratulations, you have just been mugged by DARVO, an acronym that stands for 'Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.' DARVO is a technique we may well encounter in our daily life when dealing with sociopathic personalities. This type of person-to-person psychological warfare is designed to deflect any penalty for misbehavior, and turn it instead into an opportunity to gain power over you. For a well-adjusted, mentally healthy person, to be DARVO'd is a bewildering and unsettling experience. But once you understand how the technique works, you'll never have to be its victim again....
Construct Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in startups applying technology to sectors like manufacturing, transportation, and defense, has closed its third fund with $300 million in capital commitments. While many emerging managers are struggling to raise fresh funds, Construct's capital haul underscores institutional investors' interest in backing VCs focused on the growing field of defense tech amid rising geopolitical tensions, along with the Trump administration's push to increase domestic manufacturing. The firm was founded in 2020 by former NEA partner Dayna Grayson and Rachel Holt, who was previously an executive at Uber. Construct has invested in startups like Hadrian, which uses software to manufacture parts for the defense and aerospace industries, and Veho, a company specializing in last-mile e-commerce delivery from distribution centers to customers....
