Roughly half of founder/funder meetings from Spring’s Onward FX have moved into active diligence. Data rooms are open, follow-up calls are happening, and the first term sheets are taking shape.

Which brings me to the fall.

The industries that actually move the physical world, the ones that make the energy, build the machines, defend critical infrastructure, and put things into orbit, have historically been treated as too slow, too capital-intensive, too hard. They are hard…but that is exactly the point. The companies solving these problems are working on a different time horizon, against real physics, with stakes that compound for decades. But when they work, they reshape an entire industry.

That is what the next cycle of Onward FX is built around. October 26-27 in Little Rock, focused on four sectors: industrial, energy, aerospace, and defense and dual-use. These are the industries the Heartland has always known how to build. Right here in southern Arkansas, the first commercial lithium production in the Smackover Formation is being formed, pulling national energy investment into a part of the country that has spent generations making real, hard things.

The founders working on this deserve investors who understand what it takes, partners who know that hardware runs on longer clocks, that manufacturing is its own kind of genius, and that the most durable companies are often the ones that demanded the most patience to build. We’re recruiting corporate strategics, CVCs, and the specialized hard tech funds that have spent years learning how to back this work. 👉 If that’s you, please reach out. 

Startup applications open July 13.