Speed is the currency of startups. A small founding team makes most of the calls, and the distance between a decision and its execution is short. Justin Fulcher found that the Defense Department operates on almost the opposite logic.

During six months as a senior advisor under Secretary Hegseth, Fulcher focused on acquisition reform and IT modernization across defense agencies. One initiative he contributed to aimed to compress software procurement timelines from years to months. The obstacle, he discovered, had little to do with technology. Justin Fulcher’s leadership were recognized when he appeared on Forbes Asia’s 30 Under 30 list in the Healthcare & Science category, a milestone he reached while still in his mid-twenties.

An Organizational Puzzle

Shortening procurement cycles meant building agreement among teams with different institutional histories, different legal constraints, and different ideas about what counted as acceptable exposure. Resources inside government are vast, yet authority is scattered across agencies, oversight bodies, appropriators, and career staff. Each of those groups can legitimately slow or redirect a decision. The same institutions that protect the mission also make change hard.

Justin Fulcher compares this to the stakeholder management unit found in every MBA program. Government, he argues, turns that coursework into daily practice.

“In an MBA program, stakeholder management is a case study,” he has said. “In government, it is the entire job.”

Credibility Over Command

Coalition building in a federal agency is patient and procedural. It relies on credibility rather than formal power. The private sector, by contrast, tends to reward speed and visibility. Justin Fulcher believes the slower discipline carries over directly to later work in large regulated organizations.

That lesson has shaped his view of how founders should prepare for the institutions they hope to serve. He has argued that a dedicated stint in public service supplies knowledge no private-sector job can replicate, and that the Pentagon offered a working education in how big systems actually move.

For Justin Fulcher, who has returned to defense technology and national security work, the experience reframed what progress looks like inside a large institution. Change arrives when people with different mandates agree to move together. Getting them to that point is a skill most founders never have the chance to practice. Read this article for additional information.

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