Nick LaRovere is the co-founder and CEO of Pryzm, a startup building an AI-powered operating system for defense business development and procurement.

00:00 - Intro

01:19 - AI coding, “vibe coding,” and hiring engineers

04:27 - What Pryzm does and the future of defense procurement

10:35 - AI, CRMs, and the changing defense sales process

18:00 - Raising from Andreessen Horowitz and building Pryzm

24:36 - Scaling manufacturing in defense tech

27:12 - “Every company becomes a defense company”

32:28 - Startup culture, engineers, and product building

35:01 - “Startups are war”

40:13 - Palantir culture, Alex Karp, and defense tech talent

48:11 - How defense procurement is changing

59:49 - Anthropic, AI companies, and defense partnerships

01:02:18 - Closing thoughts

In this episode, Nick and Steve talk about why selling into government is still so relationship-driven, how defense companies can use better data to find the right opportunities, and why the traditional CRM stack falls short for companies selling to the Department of Defense.

They also get into AI-assisted coding, the challenge of evaluating engineers in the age of “vibe coding,” how startups should think about product management, and why defense tech may still be underinvested despite all the recent hype.

The conversation covers Pryzm’s work with both defense companies and government customers, the future of acquisition reform, and how the changing battlefield is forcing the procurement system to move faster.

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Pryzm (Website)⁠⁠

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