A career building difficult technologies into enduring companies and strategic assets.

The pattern across David’s work is consistent: identify a hard technical problem, build a small operating company around it, move the technology through funded programs and manufactured product, and either exit to a larger industry buyer or stand the company up as durable operating capability.

ACT MicroDevices → Haleos → Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials (2002). Founded in 1996 as ACT MicroDevices, re-incorporated as Haleos, and acquired by Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials in 2002 (now part of Dow Chemical following the 2009 Dow/Rohm and Haas merger). The Haleos IP became the seed of the PolyStrata platform that followed.

Nuvotronics → Cubic Corporation (2019). Founded in 2008 through a management buyout of the Rohm and Haas Microfabrication business in Blacksburg, VA. Built PolyStrata® 3D-microfabricated millimeter-wave components for U.S. defense and aerospace customers. Thirteen-year build through DARPA Phase I–III programs, manufactured hardware, and customer adoption. Acquired by Cubic Corporation in 2019.

NuvoNexus · MNEOS Systems · Helicon Defense · MacroVation · Phase Shift Ventures (current). Operating today as a portfolio. NuvoNexus is the strategic platform. MNEOS Systems is being built as a long-lived computational-engineering institution running on DOS (David Operating System). Helicon Defense is being developed as an allied defense-technology transition platform. MacroVation is a defense-materials and applied-R&D operating company with active federally funded programs across USMC, NAVSEA, and ONR, and also provides physical mission environments for MNEOS. Phase Shift Ventures is an advisory relationship. Phoenix Asset Recovery operates as a supporting portfolio capability.

• Capital staging. Determining how much capital a hardware or materials program actually needs at each stage, and refusing to over-fund uncertainty.
• Recruiting and team formation. Building small technical teams that can operate under government-program discipline and manufacturing timelines.
• Government-funded development. Winning, executing, and reporting across DARPA, SBIR, STTR, and Phase III transition programs.
• Manufacturing investment. Moving a research-scale process into qualified, low-rate production and defense supply chains.
• Strategic-buyer alignment. Understanding what a strategic acquirer actually values in a deep-tech target, and structuring the company accordingly.
• Intellectual-property development. Building and defending patent portfolios that map to real customer problems, not vanity metrics.
• Customer concentration. Managing the reality that deep-tech customer bases are narrow, technical, and long-cycle.
• Timing and exit decisions. Recognizing when a company is worth more inside a strategic acquirer than as a stand-alone.
• Post-investment operating support. Providing the customer translation, manufacturing readiness, and government-program experience that portfolio companies often lack.

Across three decades of building and operating, the work has concentrated in a coherent technical zone where chemistry, physics, electromagnetics, and manufacturing meet:

• RF and microwave electronics. Millimeter-wave structures, antennas, filters, packaging, and 3D-microfabricated transmission lines. The PolyStrata® platform at Nuvotronics was the most public expression of this.
• MEMS and microfabrication. Lithography-based microfabrication, sealed structures, additive microscale processes, and precision metal microstructures.
• Materials science and composites. Defense-relevant materials, composite tooling, controlled material systems, and process chemistry. This is MacroVation’s current operating zone.
• Advanced manufacturing. Process scale-up, manufacturability constraints, trusted supply chains, technical data packages, and low-rate production engineering — the discipline that turns a prototype into a fieldable product.
• Defense electronics and systems integration. Counter-UAS payloads, RF sensing, electronic warfare components, and the systems context that determines whether a component matters.
• Hard-technology commercialization and capital allocation. IP structure, program acquisition, prime relationships, customer translation, transaction structuring, and exit pathways.

Most deep-tech companies fail somewhere between funded R&D and fieldable product. Not because the technology is wrong. Because the operating discipline that connects invention to acquisition, manufacturing, and sustainment is the harder part.

The principles that govern how David builds and operates:

• Match technology to a specific operational problem. Generic capability is not a product. Mission-relevant capability is.
• Build with manufacturing in mind from the first prototype. A capability that cannot be sourced, built, and supported is a demonstration, not a product.
• Treat program execution as a technical discipline. Schedule, performance against milestones, customer relationships, and contract discipline matter as much as physics.
• Stage capital against evidence. Increase commitment as technical, legal, commercial, and manufacturing risks are reduced.
• Stay close to the work long enough to make the transition happen. Most failures occur in the years after R&D funding ends and before customer adoption begins. That is where operating presence is required.

NuvoNexus, LLC is the strategic platform across the current operating portfolio. It exists to connect technical diligence, capital allocation, company formation, transaction structuring, operating support, and long-term portfolio development. Cocoa Beach, FL, with operating sites in Fairlawn, VA.

MNEOS Systems is being built as a long-lived computational-engineering institution under NuvoNexus. It brings together human scientific and engineering judgment, artificial intelligence, computational physics, simulation, materials, advanced manufacturing, robotics, sensing, experimental evidence, institutional memory, and governed execution into one integrated engineering environment. Full institutional mission and opportunities forthcoming at MNEOS.ai. Initial operating center: Fairlawn, Virginia.

DOS (David Operating System) is the governed computational substrate beneath MNEOS — a working system in continuous evolution, adding computational power and refinements as the institution grows. DOS preserves memory, evidence, structured reasoning, technical intent, authority, and execution history across complex engineering work.

Helicon Defense is being developed under NuvoNexus as a U.S. and allied transition platform for selected Ukrainian and allied defense technologies. It also serves as one of the mission environments in which MNEOS capabilities may be applied to real allied-defense problems. It is a separate operating company, not part of MacroVation.

MacroVation, LLC is the defense-materials and applied-R&D operating company — the platform’s active program-execution surface. Multiple federally funded programs across USMC, NAVSEA, and ONR. The work spans non-lethal stand-off immobilization systems, additive composite tooling, warfighter recovery materials, and related defense-materials problems. MacroVation also provides physical laboratory, materials, manufacturing, and testing environments in which MNEOS capabilities may be applied.

Phase Shift Ventures. Advisory role focused on deep-tech company formation and technical diligence on the Florida Space Coast and adjacent technology corridors.

Phoenix Asset Recovery. Supporting portfolio capability that identifies and redeploys specialized laboratory, manufacturing, and process equipment.

Operating across two locations: Cocoa Beach, FL on the Space Coast, and Fairlawn, VA in the Southwest Virginia defense-industrial corridor near the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Virginia Tech, and the regional manufacturing ecosystem. The dual base reflects the work: Florida for capital, advisory, and Space Coast technology relationships; Virginia for physical engineering, materials processing, prototype manufacturing, and proximity to the defense industrial base.

For institutional, strategic, and platform conversations, contact David through the direct portfolio channel.