Ep. 83 - Nominal, ft. CEO and Co-founder Cameron McCord

🎙️ Cameron McCord, CEO & Co-Founder of Nominal Test and evaluation is the gate between a cool idea stuck in RDT&E and a system that actually reaches the warfighter. It's also one of the slowest, most expensive bottlenecks in defense: three years on a range, millions of dollars per sortie. Cameron McCord built Nominal to attack exactly that gate, and in this conversation he breaks down how a small Phase I SBIR at the Air Force Test Pilot School became a sole-source $53M IDIQ across the entire Air Force Test Center. About Cameron: Cameron is the CEO and co-founder of Nominal, a software and data platform for hardware testing operations. A former submarine officer, he held operating roles at Anduril and Saildrone and incubated Nominal at Lux Capital. Nominal works across the Air Force, Navy, MIT, and DARPA, and is one of the most talked-about companies in the reindustrialization wave. Inside this Episode: ⚡ Why Cameron wants to turn technical readiness into a precise number (TRL 8.45 → 8.72) so leaders can finally decide when "good enough" is good enough 🗣️ The "death by yes" problem and why a brutally honest customer beats an enthusiastic one 🚀 Why every time he talked himself into slowing down, he regretted it, and why that rule still has limits 🤝 The recruiting flywheel where Nominal runs ads for its own customers, and why that works Timestamps: 02:52 — How Cameron picked the testing problem, and the path from submarines to Anduril to Lux 05:26 — Incubating at Lux 07:48 — Mission, operations, or capital: which matters most 09:33 — Slowing down is a mistake 13:56 — The gate to operational deployment 14:57 — Phase I SBIR at the Air Force Test Pilot School 18:18 — Winning a Sole-source $53M IDIQ across the Air Force Test Center 20:34 — Sensing Momentum 23:19 — Expanding into the Navy 26:25 — The "death by yes" problem 31:00 — Quantifying TRL 39:06 — Competition-based acquisition: T-REX, Drone Dominance, and "digitizing the design reference mission" 41:17 — Why Nominal recruits for its own customers 43:11 — DARPA's CYPHER FORGE and the future of AI-driven testing 46:17 — Join the Nomineers! 🔗 Interested in joining the Nomineers? [email protected] About Nominal: nominal.io For more Crossing the Valley: valleycrossers.com #defensetech #Reindustrialization #StartupJourney #TestAndEvaluation #NationalSecurity #VentureCapital #HardTech #Founders #DefenseInnovation #CrossingTheValley