MISSION CRITICAL STARTUPS 







[ hardcore engineers wanted ]


ABOUT FDVC

Mark Scianna is the General Partner at Forward Deployed VC, investing in mission-critical sectors and tech.


As an operator, most of his experience was at Palantir, where he was a founding member of their defense team, spending 11 years as a forward deployed engineer. In that role, he deployed extensively with US and allied forces in Afghanistan, Iraq, Horn of Africa, and beyond. When not deployed, he was responsible for development of Forward (basis for an 800M Army contract), Mobile (used by federal law enforcement), and Project Maven (advanced AI). Mark’s team not only developed life saving products, but also built an incredibly valuable business: revenue grew from zero to billions, and the company went public in 2020.


Mark's work at Palantir was featured in CTO Shyam Sankar's "The Primacy of Winning" and Head of Product Adam Judelson's "The unconventional Palantir principles that catalyzed a generation of startups".

As a venture investor, Mark got started in 2010 by participating in Palantir’s Series D round, becoming the only employee to purchase preferred shares. In 2014 he began investing via Y Combinator Demo Days, and in 2018 completed their Startup Investor program. In 2022 Mark launched FDVC Fund I.

Selected as top 50 emerging manager
by Signature Block (Ryan Hoover)

12-year track record, top quartile returns

Selected by renowned LP committee
(100 of 700+ applicants)

PORTFOLIO

Abatable

Carbon Marketplace
(Blue Bear, YC)

Adyton

Mobile Defense Tech
(Khosla, Haystack)

AmpUp

EV Charger Management
(Foothill, Powerhouse)

Anduril

AI-powered Defense
(A16Z, Founders Fund, Lux)

Biobot

Wastewater Epidemiology
(DCVC, MIT, In-Q-Tel)

Cape

Privacy-first Mobile Carrier
(A16Z, Point72, XYZ)

Castelion

Modern Defense Production
(A16Z, First In, Lavrock)

Conductor AI

AI Data Compliance
(Altman, Haystack, Susa)

GBatteries

Ultra-fast Charging
(Initialized, Airbus)

Govly

Government Contracting
(8VC, Insight)

Lyft

Transportation & Delivery
Exit, NASDAQ:LYFT 

Method Security

Autonomous Cyber Defense
(Stealth)

MLtwist

AI Data Pipelines
(Village Global, AIN, Inner Loop)

Oklo

Nuclear Micro-Reactors
(Sam Altman, 8VC)
  Exit, NYSE:OKLO 

Paladin Drones

Drones as First Responder
(Khosla, Paul Buchheit)

Palantir

Data & AI for Operators
 Exit, NYSE:PLTR 

PropelAuth

Auth for B2B
(8-Bit, Crosstimbers, Soma, YC)

Radiant AI

Enterprise AI Governance
(BoxGroup, Definition, Jackson Square)

Stell

Mission Requirements
(Long Journey, Wischoff)

SpaceX

Rockets and Spacecraft
(Founders Fund, Sequoia)

Statuspage.io

Status & Incident Comms
  Exit to Atlassian 

Turion Space

Space Security
(Harvard, Ken Griffin, Immad Akhund, YC)

Windmill

Production Workflow Orchestration
(Gradient, Bessemer)

Zensors

AI for Operations
(In-Q-Tel, CMU)