Government as Second Channel for Enterprise
Ross Fubini, Managing Partner at XYZ Capital, on the defense tech opportunity
The key point is that selling to government is not a defense only move, it is a normal extension of a proven enterprise sales motion for infrastructure and security products. Cisco built a major public sector business by selling networking, collaboration, and security gear into federal, state, and local agencies, and Verkada is following the same pattern with cameras, access control, and visitor management, wrapped in compliance and procurement features that make a commercial product buyable by government.
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Cisco explicitly reports Public Sector as one of its customer markets, alongside Enterprise and Service Provider & Cloud. That is the cleanest evidence behind the analogy. Government is large enough for Cisco to break it out as a core market, not a side project.
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Verkada has built a dedicated government version of its product. Agencies run Verkada Command in AWS GovCloud, can buy through contract vehicles like GSA Schedule and NASA SEWP V, and get features tied to federal compliance, which turns the same core product into something a public buyer can actually procure.
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This is what dual use looks like in practice. The same camera, badge reader, or security dashboard can serve a hospital, a school district, or a federal facility. That matters because enterprise customers smooth revenue earlier, while government can become a much larger account once procurement is cleared.
The likely next step is more enterprise infrastructure companies treating government as a built in second channel from much earlier in life. The winners will look less like pure defense contractors and more like commercial software and hardware vendors that add the compliance, hosting, and contract paths needed to turn an existing product into a standard government purchase.