Evan Loomis has former President George H. W. Bush and his inner circle to thank for pushing him into his least favorite career chapter: investment banking.
"He recommended that I look into investment banking because it was a great generalist and global macro way of seeing what's happening out there. It's also really good to be humbled in life," Loomis said. "And banking is one of those jobs where it's like, you're gonna work harder and 110 to 120 hours a week for two years. And it's a great ass-kick. You think you're the man. You're not."
The Wall Street work had plenty of perks. But you can't keep an entrepreneur in a cube farm for long.
"I felt like my soul was just dying inside," he recalled. "I could not stand wearing a little lanyard that you have to walk around with. I had a Blackberry at the time, which is almost like a tracking beacon like thinking that you can ever hide... I did my two years. And I was done. And I was going to be entrepreneur for the rest of my life."
Loomis also has that early experience working with the Bush team on his presidential library at College Station to thank for planting the seeds for his latest chapter in venture capital investing.
Loomis, who co-founded 3D printing startup Icon, is launching a new VC firm, Overmatch. With this new effort, he's tightly focused on backing startups that could accelerate innovation in the defense and aerospace industry, as well as other critical infrastructure.
Overmatch is still in its early days. But Loomis has been investing as an angel investor and bringing together wealthy individuals to team up on special purpose vehicles, which are essentially pooled funds typically used to make an investment in one company.
He's helped orchestrate five such deals over the past year. Those include participation in funding rounds for Saronic, which is developing autonomous fleets to roam the oceans and help sea-based military operations, and Infleqtion, which is developing quantum-based technologies and has formed several major partnerships, including one with the University of Texas.
Meanwhile, Overmatch is raising a $50 million initial fund. It has already secured commitments for about half of that, Loomis said, and the rest could come together in the course of a few weeks or months. That initial backing has come largely through individuals and family offices, as opposed to institutional funding that's often raised by larger and more established venture outfits.
Loomis said Overmatch plans to invest around $1 million in seed rounds and $2 million to $3 million in series A deals, although there could be exceptions to that.
The new investment firm stems from Loomis' conviction that the U.S. needs to be more aggressive with technology investments and more quickly commercialize emerging innovations to keep up with China, as well as other global players. Meanwhile, he believes many venture firms have been reluctant to dedicate significant funding to critical tech, in part because business software and other verticals have proven so lucrative in the past decade.
He foresees a significant need for more capital to back companies that could give the U.S. and its allies advantages, especially as conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East have emerged.
"The world has become a very different place," he said. "We've had the benefit of having this so called peace dividend, which has kept the world safe, the seas open for trade. And that's an incredible blessing. Now a lot of Americans are wondering — the world feels less safe all of a sudden."
Loomis said there's a risk that America falls behind as countries such as China pour billions into defense-oriented technologies.
"I wonder if the capital markets are ready for some of the dynamism, some of the changes that are afoot across deep tech — these sets of technologies that are very foundational to our economic prosperity, across defense and across space," he said. "We need more smart people aligned with well-connected capital who understands founders that are trying to do hard things in deep tech, defense and space."
Loomis already has significant experience with this, in part, through his work with 3D printing startup Icon, which has worked with the military and NASA on several significant projects that have helped make Icon's work national news.
While Icon initially focused on housing, Loomis said the startup had its eyes on potential projects with the military and NASA from its early days. He said such projects were goal No. 2, behind housing, in the company's original vision.
"We can't build homes fast enough on military bases. We can't house our troops and build barracks fast enough," he said. "And then we even had on the same slide in the pitch deck a rocket going to space."
Icon's journey from its seed round to becoming a unicorn happened pretty quickly, but it also involved Loomis and others at the startup into dozens of discussions with other startup founders and VCs. Many of those chats centered on the need for more likeminded innovators to collaborate and share best practices.
"You have like five years of those conversations and what you realize really quickly is that there are a lot of other founders out there that are working on very hard problems, and they're very inspiring human beings," he said. "And what they need is friendship. They need someone to come alongside them and say, 'Hey, here's what I've done. Here's what I've learned. I'm not sure if it applies, but you may want to try this.'"
