Chrissy McGarry of Second Front Systems: Delivering Disruptive Software for National Security

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You want tech and tacos, Tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador cuentan frijoles Founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy and coffee my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos El gordo, the taco standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset la Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside, the Tijuana esti be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the moon SD Tecos with your host, Neil Bloom.

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom and I'm thrilled to have you here. On the Tacos and Tech podcast we interview builders of technologies, of companies, of communities, and we do it weekly. So thanks for tuning in. Every Tuesday, a new interview and on Fridays we talk about what's new in the San Diego tech ecosystem from a news perspective. So make sure you join us there as well too. We also have a tech newsletter that comes out every other week@freshbroodtech.com you can subscribe to listen to it without further ado. Enjoy this episode and welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom and I'm thrilled to be joined with Chrissy McGarry of Second Front Systems. Hey Chrissy, thanks for joining the podcast.

Thanks for having me, Neil.

It's a real pleasure to have you here. I'm excited to get to know what you're working on, but you want to give us a quick overview of what Second Front Systems is?

Yes. Second Front Systems is a national security software company. So basically we're cybersecurity defense tech company. What we do, we accelerate the adoption of cutting edge software for our US government and ally users and warfighters. So we do that through our platform as a service, Game Warden. So Game Warden is basically a trusted third party platform that provides a distribution Network for government secured applications.

Incredible. I'm really excited to get to know more of the story. I know you guys are a public benefit corp. Yeah. And they're an owned. So we're going to get to know a little bit about those unique attributes as well. But let's get to know you a little bit. How did you come into this tech world? Do you start tech in your career?

Originally I did not. So I was in the beverage industry for about four and a half years. So started out with Red Bull and E and J. Gallo Winery. Actually lived out in SoCal for a little bit. I was in LA and when I moved from LA to Chicago, I was still with Gala Wine. But I was on my way to a wine tasting with my brother and one of his buddies. My brother's in the industry as well and his buddy was actually at the time working for Motorola Solutions. So as we were stuck in Chicago traffic, I was just asking him about his job and what he did and what Motorola was all about. Because at the time in 2013, I was like, wait, Motorola? I thought the phones were done. So. So I kind of made a joke to him. He's like, actually there's a whole nother side of the business, hardware business, there's the federal radio side and then the scanners and the hardware that's used on, you know, back and front end organizations. So started chatting with him. He's like, actually there's a couple openings for territory account managers. Like you should give it a shot. So I kind of chuckled. I was for real. I know nothing about technology. So chatted with a couple mentors and one of my mentors near and dear to me, he's pretty candid. He's like, you can't say yes or no to something you don't have. So why don't you give it a shot, get it and then you can make a decision as to whether or not you want to leave the beverage industry and get into tech. So I from there did a little research, went through the interview process and ended up landing a role. I managed Indiana and Kentucky enterprise businesses and think manufacturing type companies. So I had a lot of windshield time. I was on the outskirts in, you know, organizations that were either automotive or silicon producing or shoe manufacturers. So really expanded my horizons. But I always joke, Neil, because I know you're thinking, you know, booze to tech, how does that work? I was thinking the same thing, but in good times and in bad, people are purchasing both. So.

But I mean you had a really set of valuable skills in Sales and account management and people skills like those are translatable to everything. And especially in the tech world, which is always kind of lacking usable skills. It made perfect sense.

It worked, right? I learned how to be. I like to use the analogy of the quarterback, right. So I learned how to gather the resources that were available to me at Motorola and, you know, whether it was a solution engineer, a subject matter expert, a customer success person, maybe it was my boss, you know, whoever. Whoever I felt would be additive and bring value to the conversations and the problems we were trying to help solve for our customers. And so at Motorola, I was poached by someone at Salesforce. And I recall then going back to mentors, right? What do I do? And they said, well, you know, hardware want go test out the software. And I make the joke like, wine is so tangible, right? You see it, you smell it, you taste it. So that was kind of an easier sale out of the gates. Then you get hardware and like, there's some nuance, but you can still touch it and everything. And then software is a whole another ball game. So definitely fortunate to go through that natural trajectory of challenging sales cycles, so to speak. So made my way over to Salesforce. And then as I was wrapping up my time at Salesforce and getting my MBA is when Peter, the CEO of Second Front, reached out to me and asked me what my next step was.

Hmm, that's great. I love that. Yeah, just back a little. Just in terms of East Coast, west coast versus Midwest, was there a difference in your approach of how to close the deal or, you know, working territories?

Oh, yeah. I'm sure when I was in California, a lot of people would say, you're moving too fast, you need to calm down, you need to slow down. Um, it's a little more relaxed. So to my benefit, though, I'm an early riser. I would get, you know, all the grunt work and the grind done earlier in the day. So then the back half of my day was either spending time with retailers and customers, circling back with them, going to lunches, things like that. As I made my way back to the Midwest, the pace increased back to a little bit faster cycle, so to speak. And now, you know, being where I am here, it's neat. I, you know, we work both in the public and private sector, right? We're B2B and B2G, so sell to the government. And those are two different sales cycles as well. So it's fun to now incorporate all key learnings here at Second Front, I'm sure.

So give us A little bit about background on the company itself. How long has it been around and maybe kind of the iteration to its current products.

Absolutely. So it was back in 2015 that the CO founders, Peter Dixon, Mark Butler, and Nate Hughes, all former U.S. marines, came in bootstrapped second front. So as three individuals who served our country, they saw firsthand the damages done by an outdated software system, especially to those in the front lines and defending our country. So they saw it as a critical issue and, you know, chose to serve their country in a unique way beyond uniform, by starting second front. So when it originated, it was a consultative services company, truly. And by the time I joined, which was in 2018, we were white labeling our legacy software. And that software helped to identify, assess, and then access commercial technology. It was in 2020 that we secured seed funding, which was exciting. It was about 6 million. And then we did a seed two and added an additional 2 million. So it was what I know the venture community would say is a mango round, because it's a little bit bigger of a seed round. But it was 18 months ago that we made a pivot toward, you know, what we do today with Game Warden. So it was back in October that we actually subscribed a. Or we actually secured an oversubscribed $32 million a round.

Wow. Yeah, especially in last year, which was a tough funding.

It was a challenging funding environment.

Yeah. So you guys are finding success?

Yeah, we were pretty excited and fortunate to be able to articulate what we were doing, where the market was at and where we were, and how we were setting out to make it happen.

Amazing. So what was your role when you first started versus what you're doing now?

So I started out more or less like a business development rep. So I started utilizing my sales and marketing skills that I had acquired up until that point through my career. And then it just slowly started to evolve into more and took a bit of a turn. So it was about three years ago when our cto, Enrique Odi, and our CRO, Tyler Sweat, joined the organization. And when they joined, that's when the evolution and vision of Game Warden started to erupt. And then from Enrique, so he's kind of, you know, our visionary in that regard, and then Tyler is our ruthless execution of strategy. So with the two of them, it was. It was a dynamic duo that was born from my perspective. And so with that, it was very clear that because of Tyler and Enrique's backgrounds, they had a better understanding of how to address the market and how to continued to gather information about what Problems were going on, how we might be able to solve for them and what that might look like as we continue in partnerships across the ecosystem. So as that started to kind of percolate, I then started to take on more of the responsibilities internally. So teamed up with our president at the time and started owning investor and board relations. All of the human resource responsibilities, the recruiting, hiring, onboarding, all of that fun stuff, laying down the groundwork for standardizing our policies and procedures of how we run and operate as organization, the compliance side of things. So kind of went from VP of Business development into operations and now you all.

Amazing. Wow. Keeping the whole operation running behind the scenes.

Yeah.

Super important. I know from a variety of perspectives. It's just like one, how important it is to allow everyone else to continue, you know, pushing the business forward while you operationalize everything, you know, run the playbook, grow everyone. And you kind of get to invest back into everyone too. Right. Like through that function. And it sounds like you've done that a lot personally through having mentors. What have you taken from learning from mentors in terms of now how to, how to run nearly 100, close to 100 person organization.

We're nearing 100. Yeah. Including our skill bridgers and our interns, which is wild to think about because I was an employee 4. So we have certainly grown. I think some of the major things though, to answer your question from mentors that I've taken is just figuring out how to stay grounded in the needs of the organizations individual stakeholders while simultaneously seeing the larger dynamics at play. Right. So it's this back and forth of honing in, but then being able to pan out regularly and you know, just asking a ton of questions and staying disciplined on ensuring that, you know, I'm really thinking about what, where we are as a business and what the requirements are for progressing things forward and how we might continue doing what we know is working, how we continue thinking through evolution and then what we should probably just stop because it's not serving us either anymore or at all. Right.

And I'm sure grown at a pace now where the company's just changing every quarter or every six months.

Like the yeah joke a month in startup world might as well be a year for some other companies.

Yeah, exactly. And so having at least some baseline of things, you know, how to onboard people into culture, how. Here's how we operate. Super important to, to have someone kind of beating that drum every day when so many new people are joining. So incredible that you've found yourself in that role. Take us Through a little bit of the company's technology. A little bit. And where specifically, you know, we might see it or what, where it's affecting the world today.

Yeah. So commercial tech is disrupting the federal market. Right. So you've got this spend of over $38 billion in technology from the DoD alone. Right. And so when you look at it from that standpoint, and then you see too how it's blocked by compliance layers, whether it's accreditation timelines, labor costs, changing policies. Right. You've got all of these different things. You know, how do you enter that market? It's hard, it takes a ton of time, it's expensive, it's complex. And there's just all these, you know, nuanced barriers that you got to work through. Knowing this and having individuals at our organization, about 50% of our company are veterans, people who have served in some capacity. So truly firsthand experience. So it's neat that they kind of bring that in to the other 50% of the company which has this private sector experience where we think through, okay, how do we create this product that helps to accelerate and streamline the adoption of this commercial tech? And so what came out of all of this was Game Warden. So it's a Secure. It's a DevSecOps platform. Right. And it's accredited multi cloud production environment. So you have these two things combined that then enables rapid and continuous DoD accreditation. So what I mean by that is as long as the application that sits within the Game Warden platform adheres to all of the security requirements that the government has, those applications will inherit the ATO that we already have with the government. So they won't have to go and find their own accreditation on their own, but rather because that they are inside the production environment of Game Warden, they already adhere to it and can be pushed to production at those various production environments that they have contracted and have met the technical requirements for.

Okay, let's break down a little bit of that. What's DevSecOps? Just for the audience.

Just for the audience. Yeah, there's a big. Sorry, before I get into DevSecOps, I know a lot of people. It's like DevOps and DevSecOps, it's all the same thing. Right. So the way we define DevSecOps, so to speak, is what is it? Let's think, how do I best describe this? So it's short for Development, Security and Operations. So I'll start there. Like, what does that actually stand for? So DevSecOps, development, security and Operations, but it's a practice that ensures that you're integrating secure operations throughout the entire software development lifecycle. So right out of the gates, you are constantly thinking about the security requirements at hand, as opposed to waiting to take care of it later and, you know, have to jimmy around with it later. So you're taking it into account throughout the entire life cycle. Hopefully. I explained that well enough.

That's great. Yeah, absolutely. Especially for the customer that you have in mind. Yeah. Everything should be built with security and the end use case, which makes absolute sense in that regard.

And so knowing that and this kind of ties in to Neil, where I think we might be heading is. Okay. Where we are now. We've got this Game Warden platform, knowing that that is a priority and should be a priority. Right. For tech companies, regardless of, you know, entering the government sector. Right. You want to be secure no matter what. We just launched a beta of our next Game Warden product, which is called Game Warden Builder, which is exciting because with Game Warden Builder, it's essentially a developer toolkit. So the commercial software partners can just come in and code to the standards right out of the gates at multiple impact levels. So they're not having already created something and then coming into Game Warden and being like, oh, no, I got to change a couple things because the DoD requires this. Not that, but rather if you build it in Game Warden Builder, you're already adhering to those requirements out of the gates, so it's taking it like another step further for developers.

So in Game Warden, you were really a bit more of like a dashboard that was always showing in at all times. Hey. Both the government and anyone building for government are in compliance and within safety protocols. Now you're giving them an environment to kind of actually even assist and help in the building.

Exactly.

Here's how to make sure you even before you even write a line of code, you're already know you're gonna do it.

You're already doing it. Right. So that when they're ready to push it to production into one of those environments, having to go through that secure pipeline that's required as you get into the Game Warden platform, they're like flying through it even faster because they've already adhered to the requirements.

Amazing. Well, congrats on the new launch.

It's exciting. It's exciting. So we have about three dozen customers in the Game Warden platform, and then we have about a dozen beta users for Game Warden Builder.

That's awesome. So we're headed in that regard. But also some fundamentals about the business of Kind of what you originally set up being a public benefit corporation. I'm curious if you can share, I don't know, like, what does that do? What does that, from a culture, what does that mean and how you kind of live that out day to day. How do you impact the community that you guys are staying benefit?

So there's certain, I don't want to say requirements, but expectations of a public benefit organization. And, you know, ours is, like I had said earlier, serving our country in a unique way, knowing that what we're doing is an effort to enable national security missions to be done thoroughly accelerated and in the, you know, the best interests of our war fighters and, you know, citizens. Right. So the way we try to live that out here at Second Front, I already explained to you, we've got kind of the 50, 50 split of veterans from the public sector and civilians from the private sector. And the true mesh and the goodness that that both bring and how we kind of come together and think through these problem sets, really dissecting them and then figuring out what the solutions or options might be. And some things that we also have in place for the public benefit is we have, we run and utilize the Skillbridge program. Have you heard of that program before?

I have, yeah. But you want to explain it?

Yeah. So Skillbridge is a program for veterans who are departing from active duty and anywhere between three to six months of departure, their commander can more or less give them the authority to go and go be a part and be an intern at a private sector organization. There's a couple of rules, like they can't directly work in a sales role with the government or anything like that, but they can come into an organization and learn a new skill set that they haven't been exposed to or maybe figure out. You know, hey, I've been doing this thing in the army for 20 something years. I've always been interested in this other thing, this company does, that thing. I'm going to go see what it's like. So what's been really cool for us for the last four and a half, I mean, since I've been here, it's almost five years, we have been running this, the Skillbridge program here at Second Front. So at any given moment we have anywhere between, I would say two to three, all the way up to like six skill bridges at a time. So we have a rolling cadence. And the neat thing is a few things. First and foremost, we want them to have a fruitful, challenging and positive experience here at Second Front. So at the very least, they get exposure to who we are, what we're doing and being a part of a smaller tech company. Right. Secondly, sometimes if stars align and there's a billet, they can come into a full time position, which is really exciting for some of them who really do enjoy the projects they were put on or the teams that they were coordinating with to then come on full time with us and take on a role. And then secondly, some it's not for them and it, you know, was a great experience and we're able to then continue to support them through their transition and then on to the next. Maybe we've got a connection at another organization that they're interested in or they need a lot of recommendation of sorts. So we try to, you know, utilize it as community building, networking and truly, you know, support. Right. Since half of our company has gone through that transition period, we know it to be one that is tedious and not so much fun sometimes. So having just an individual that they work with day in and day out who also went through it to maybe help coach through some of those challenges, whether it's with the VA or any of the other things that they need to check the box on before they can officially depart, they've got that support built in.

That's incredible. Kudos to you for kind of living, living what you say you guys do. But also it's smart to have your customer as employees in a sense. Right. Like having the voice of the customer day in, day out is so important to have internally in the company too. So it's both having an impact in multiple areas in that regard.

Yeah, it's really neat. It's really neat what we've built, who's come in and the varying perspectives that have come to the table to help solve for these. I mean, they're complex issues. So it's been fun.

Where do you see on the horizon? Not because we kind of talked a little bit on technology growth, like where is the company headed? In a variety of ways. Right. Like obviously Covid has changed the way that we are working. Right. In that regard. And I know you guys are Detroit based. Where are you excited about over the next year or two in terms of growth for you and the company?

So slight correction, we are actually fully remote company. Everyone is. Yeah. So no, but this is cool and important and unique to us. For sure. Covid didn't have as drastic of an impact from us having been in an office and then needing to go remote. We were already remote prior to Covid happening. So that a little nuance. But Something to be noted. So the way that we are running and operating, because two of the founders were in the D.C. area, Peter, the CEO, is located in Silicon Valley and I'm in Detroit. And so we were already running and operating fully remote to begin with. And we made the decision, you know, during COVID to continue to hire the top talent no matter where they were located, as long as they were, you know, available during the hours of which we were running and operating as a company. And then once the gates started to lift and people were going back to the office, we were thinking, well, why would we limit ourselves to one area for certain talent if this has already been kind of working for us anyway? And there are likely individuals, as I'm sure some, you know, started to percolate through the COVID days, that actually prefer the work from home. And so we just made the conscious decision to stay fully remote. And since then, I think it has benefited us quite well, mainly because we've been able to secure top talent and not have to worry or feel pressurized about where they're located. So as long as they can get to where they need to get to at the certain points of time of which are required for business. So from that regard, it's been neat. There are challenges, but there are things that we have put in place to help foster the remote in office kind of collaboration. So we have. I. Have you heard of Gathertown, Neil?

No, actually.

So it's basically like the Sims is how I describe it. It's a virtual office and it's really fun because people set up their desks and there's like lunch rooms and game rooms and there's like these little go karts you can take through the office. You can, you know, build out certain fun things to do in the office and make yourself available, not available in a meeting, having a conversation, and you can literally walk around the office, which is fun. So we utilize Gather, which has been really great. And we have bi weekly all hands calls. So each department kind of briefs through what the major updates are bi weekly, so that everyone's up to speed and knows what deals are closed or what features are being released, what new marketing materials are out there. So it gives us an opportunity to share and highlight individuals and or projects and successes. And then we have cadre sessions. We call our culture Cadre. So it could be trivia. We've got, I think on the next cadre session, I think we're playing board games and Gather. We'll do happy hours with my team. I do walk and talks so we all have to walk away from our desks, just hop on the phone together and go for a walk. And we've got two rules. You got to go away from your desk, and you can't talk about work. So conversations go everywhere to what's your favorite food, to, you know, if tomorrow you can move somewhere, where would it be? And the goal is just to continue to foster that environment. Quarterly teams are syncing up for various things. So the marketing and growth team, they are seeing each other regularly at events and conferences. The engineering team, maybe there's a certain solution they're solving for. So they'll get together for a couple of days to code in a room. This week I needed a hammer out some corporate strategy stuff with my director of operations, so she's actually in the other room here. She came to Detroit for a few days. And then annually we have what we call a company on site, not off site, because we already work off site. So we'll all get together. So we had one in Miami last year, and we just about a month ago had one in the D.C. area.

Oh, cool. That's great. That's a variety of fun things I'm looking in to gather. Bring it into some teams that I'm part of as well, too. That's fun.

It's fun. It's fun.

So you've worked in a variety of locations, West Coast, Midwest. You've traveled around. You must have seen a taco or two that you've liked. You have a favorite taco spot.

So you're going to laugh because it is a chain. I feel bad that it's a chain. There's no wrong answer, but I used to live in Chicago. And whenever I go back to Chicago, I usually stay at my grandmother's and. And right down the street is a velvet taco. So I always walk by it. And you can easily pop in and get the tacos that you're. You're craving. So I usually hop in. I like the chipotle barbecue pork. That's one of my favorites. And then usually I'll get the sweet chili shrimp. I usually try to do pork shrimp. And then I. I go between the chicken or the steak.

I love it. We do not have velvet taco on the west coast, but I have had it, I think in Austin maybe. Yeah, we're in Texas.

They have like 20 locations. There's a few in Chicago. I think there's a couple in Austin.

Yeah. No, it's great. It's a great one. And I got. I love good, like, unique meat based tacos in that regard as well too.

Yeah.

So I love it. It's a new entry to the Tacos in Tech taco database, which is great. Yes.

Oh, good, good.

So we got our first. Velvet is on the board on leadership.

Velvet is now on the board.

Good. I love it. Well, Chris, this has been great to get to know you and to get to know what you're working on. So congratulations to you and the team. Keep up the amazing work to protect our warfighter. Obviously that's some of the most important work there especially, and we're wishing you all the best. Thank you.

Thank you, Neil.

Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to the Tacos and Tech podcast. You can find all of our episodes on freshbridtech.com as well as on Twitter at Tacos and Tech Pod. Also follow Fresh Brew Tech on all of our social platforms and make sure to share and give a review on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Google Play. Thanks again.

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