Case Study: Rune Technologies
About Dave Tuttle
Dave Tuttle’s career reads like preparation for exactly one mission: building defense logistics software that actually works at the tactical edge. After commissioning as an Army officer and deploying to Afghanistan, he transitioned to aerospace and defense investment banking on Wall Street, where he learned to decode J-books and understand the intricacies of defense budgeting and color of money. A second stint on active duty at Fort Bragg leading software teams within the JSOC enterprise showed him the power of great engineering paired with operational problems. This led him to Anduril, where he spent several years building their command and control hardware business and developing relationships with world-class engineers. Today, he continues serving in the National Guard while co-founding and leading Rune Technologies. His philosophy: every experience, from selling beverages to analyzing balance sheets to leading special operations software teams, compounds into a unique toolkit for navigating the defense market.
About Rune Technologies
Rune Technologies builds software platforms for military logistics and sustainment operations. Their approach challenges decades of conventional wisdom. While legacy defense contractors have tried to push enterprise cloud software down to tactical units, Rune flipped the architecture entirely. Their platform starts at the tactical edge and works upward, recognizing that military logistics is inherently a bottom-up warfighting function. The company focuses on the Army and Marine Corps initially, tackling what Dave calls “the gnarliest problem”—how to sustain a 90,000-soldier force in near-peer conflict. Beyond simple dashboards and data visualization, Rune emphasizes automated course of action recommendations and machine-paced decision-making that enables logisticians to operate at the speed required in contested environments. The company raised a seed round led by Caffeinated Capital, achieved product-market fit in nine months (half their projected timeline), and recently closed a Series A led by Human Capital. Their recent announcements include a Marine Corps pilot contract through the Warfighting Lab, an Army CRADA focused on logistics data standards, and investment from In-Q-Tel.
Key Takeaways
1. Architecture Follows Doctrine, Not Convenience
Rune’s fundamental insight was recognizing that military logistics doesn’t work like commercial supply chains or enterprise IT systems. Dave explains: “We flipped that script completely and said we need to build a software platform that works from a tactical level up. That is where your data flow needs to come from.” Traditional approaches tried to take enterprise software built for cloud environments and adapt it for tactical use. Dave calls this strategy “fundamentally flawed.” Sustainment as a warfighting function is inherently bottom-up. The demand signals must come from the force consuming and expending resources, not from strategic planners guessing requirements. The architecture must match how the military actually operates.
2. Spin Three Plates at Once
Dave articulated his framework for defense tech sales: “You really have to spin three plates simultaneously.” Those plates are acquisition offices (who control the money), requirements generators (who define the need), and operational units (who will actually use the product). Most companies focus on one and get stuck. Focus on acquisition? They’ll ask about operational champions. Focus on operations? They’ll ask about program office buy-in. Focus on requirements? They’ll ask about user validation. The reality is there’s no proper sequence, only parallel execution. Rune approached this by hiring growth directors with deep logistics doctrine knowledge and technical aptitude, aligning them by service, and maintaining constant engagement across all three communities.
3. How to Select Which Service To Target
Rune chose to focus on Army and Marine Corps logistics first, a decision driven by multiple factors working in concert. First, they identified it as “the gnarliest problem to solve” - sustaining large forces in peer conflict. Solving the hardest version of the problem would make adjacent services easier. Second, there was sufficient overlap in how these services approach logistics that product development could serve both without complete divergence. Third, Dave’s personal background and network were strongest there, providing critical early access. But perhaps most importantly, they validated that both services had published doctrine and senior leader statements emphasizing modernization in this area—proof that the need was recognized and resourced.
4. You Can Compress Product-Market Fit with Ruthless Focus
Rune’s seed round was predicated on achieving product-market fit in 18 months. They did it in nine by focusing ruthlessly on a specific validation question: Are we building something that fills a recognized gap? Dave explains: “We have proven that there is a need for what we build. Warfighters have agreed this is a gap. Senior leaders in the services and the sustainment community have agreed this is a gap.” They didn’t try to boil the ocean or build every feature for every constituency. They proved the core thesis, then moved to Series A focused on scale. They kept their success metric super clear: operational units using the software in real environments. This prevented them from getting distracted by vanity metrics or premature scaling.
5. Diversify Sales Channels
Dave pushes back on the idea that defense startups should focus exclusively on one sales channel. Direct government contracts should be the priority because they move fastest and give you the most control, but partnerships and subcontracting relationships serve critical strategic purposes. “These are all different levers you need to pull depending on the situation and the customer,” he explains. A one-year-old company won’t win a multi-billion dollar prime contract, but they can bring critical capabilities to a larger team competing for that contract. Hardware partnerships can enable vertical expansion or downstream opportunities. The key is being realistic about what each channel provides and honest about what announcements actually mean—not confusing ceiling values on IDIQs with actual revenue. Rune uses direct sales as their primary motion but maintains strategic partnerships to access programs they couldn’t win alone and to position for future growth as the company matures.
For more Rune: https://www.runetech.co/
For more Crossing the Valley: www.valleycrossers.com
Follow Dave: LinkedIn
