From Air Force officer to space defense CEO: Why Even Rogers left to build weapons for orbit

Equity

TechCrunch

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4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Even Rodgers spent a decade as an Air Force weapons officer watching China and Russia build space weapons while the U.S. had "nothing in our arsenal." So he left the military to solve the problem himself. Now, as co-founder and CEO of True Anomaly, he's building the first exclusively defense-focused space superiority company, developing autonomous spacecraft, sensors, and software designed specifically for military engagements in orbit. With $418 million raised and a growing team, Rogers is racing to field capabilities the Space Force desperately needs. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Rogers to explore the emerging business of space defense and why the U.S. is playing catch-up. Listen to the full episode to hear about: How the space industry has shifted away from a service domain as threats in space evolve, and what other countries are already deploying. The biggest bottleneck slowing down space defense development. How True Anomaly's "Jackal" spacecraft is designed to evolve from surveillance to multi-role missions. Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a paid ad by Fidelity Private Shares.
0:03.2	A messy or missing cap table might not just slow you down.
0:05.8	It could cost you your next fundraising round.
0:08.1	Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups.
0:12.8	I'm Rebecca Boulon, and this is the episode where we bring on industry experts to help us explore a trend in the tech world and dive deep.
0:19.2	Today, we're exploring the business of space defense with the help of Evan Rogers,
0:23.4	co-founder and CEO of True Anomily, a defense-focused aerospace startup developing
0:28.5	spacecraft and software for U.S. national security missions.
0:32.4	Evan joined us last week at Disrupt to Talk Space Stuff, and so we're excited to give him
0:36.4	some extra airtime.
0:41.1	Evan welcome. week at Disrupt to talk space stuff. And so we're excited to give him some extra air time. Evan, welcome to the show. Thanks, Rebecca. It's great to be here. So I'm really excited to talk to you
0:45.7	because, and this might sound stupid, but I'm kind of a big Enders Games, Star Wars fan, and I'm like,
0:53.2	space defense, is this, is it coming to life? Is it real? Very good company. I mean, really, the starting true anomaly is really just a ability for me to get my fantasies of vendors game out of my system, you know? Oh, amazing. Great. I love that. Okay. So when did you start the company and why the name True Anomily?
1:12.0	I started the company in 2022. I was an Air Force. I am an Air Force weapons officer. And as with all stories, there's the true story and then there's the 10% truth story. So I'm going to give you the partially true 10% truth story, which is there are these six classical orbital elements that define
1:32.2	a position of a orbiting body around the orbited body or a spacecraft around the Earth,
1:36.6	for example. And those are well known in my community and well known if you're involved in
1:42.3	sort of any type of orbital mechanics or
1:44.4	astrodynamics work.
1:46.1	The only cool one is true anomaly.
1:49.2	The others are like right ascension of the ascending nodes, semi-major axis, et cetera.
1:52.8	You just can't really brand around that.
1:56.0	So we went with the cool one.
	...

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