Each week on Buzzworthy Businesses, our host Chris Budihas talks to business leaders around Jacksonville who are doing great things in the community. Today, Chris talks with Bernard Mendez of Buzzworthy Businesses with Bernard Mendez of Valorous.ai.
Short company description:
Founded by former U.S. Special Forces and Military Intelligence leaders with a focus on mission-critical software development and bulletproof cybersecurity solutions.
We’re a full suite cybersecurity MSSP that offers hardware design, prototyping, and cryptographic engineering, backend and frontend software development, and advanced AI and Machine Learning solutions.
By combining these disciplines, we’re able to provide a holistic start-to-finish security strategy, ensuring that every stage and vector of attack is considered from the start of a project or client requirement.
How do you define success?: Doing good by helping other people, finding your tribe and helping them succeed.
How did you get started in your field or work?: I left 3rd Special Forces Group from Fort Bragg and moved to Seattle to work for Amazon as a PM. There I learned a ton about AI and then I left to found several AI based tech startups.
What’s one thing we should know that makes your company unique?: Our team is mostly former military and we built a very cohesive and deep teaming framework from our time together. We work with other companies of various levels including large primes and other startups to build the right teams around products, research grants, government contracts and other types of funding vehicles to ensure our military has the best equipment and software possible for the future of warfare.
What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome in your business?: The risk, insecurity and vast workload required to make it happen. Many people, myself included underestimated the amount of effort required.