The hardest problems in national security are increasingly solved by small teams with deep technical benches—autonomy at sea, machine-readable terrain, non-toxic propulsion, sensing at the physical limit. Midcoast backs those teams at the earliest and least legible stage: when the science is real, the market is still forming, and the first government customer is still a stranger.
Three decades across the U.S. Intelligence Community and InQTel. We know how dual-use budgets actually move — SBIR, APFIT, OTAs, program offices — and who to call inside them.
Repeat founders. We work the parts that don’t make the deck: first technical hires, first pricing, the first ten deployments.
Through our network of funds and joint ventures, we build companies as readily as we fund them — and wire them into labs, primes, and investors who know atoms take longer than bits.
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Midcoast is founded, owned, and operated by Kevin Compher—an entrepreneur, investor, engineer, and scientist with thirty years across national security, autonomy, advanced computing, and space.
Previously VP of Technology at In-Q-Tel, senior roles at the SEC and in the U.S. Intelligence Community, and co-founder of Foundation and OpenSpatial. Managing Director and co-founder of First Light Works, and Chief Investment Officer at Ateklo. Mentor at the Creative Destruction Lab, the Foresight Institute, the Batchery, and the Roux. Penn; Georgetown Law.
We are founders and operators ourselves, and we are most useful early — pre-seed, pre-revenue, pre-obvious. If that is where you are, write to us directly. No warm intro required.
kevin@midcoast.vc