About Us.

Wyman Howard is a transformational leader with extensive combat mission experience and a proven 32-year record of unparalleled change leadership, creativity and risk mitigation for outcomes of strategic consequence to the security of the United States of America. Now in the private sector, Wyman extends this same critical impact across industries and sectors, as a public board director; senior advisor to late and early-stage companies; and a private equity and venture consultant. He is a fourth generation Naval Officer and a 1990 graduate of the United States Naval Academy where he was a member of the Navy crew team. A native of Virginia, he is an Alexandria City High School alumnus.

Wyman is a thought leader in sustainability; disruptive technologies; leadership and human capital assessment; performance; retention; inclusivity; and diversity — with relationships and linkages to global business and foreign government military and intelligence service liaison partners. He is deeply experienced and briefed in geo-political risk and opportunities across disruptive technologies, including multi-domain autonomous systems; electronic warfare; cyber threats and risk mitigations; and commercial, civil, and military and intelligence space sector applications.

A retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral (Upper Half) with over 32 years in the SEAL Teams and joint special operations, Wyman commanded at all levels of Special Operations, including service as Commander Naval Special Warfare Command, Special Operations Command Central, and the nation’s premier special operations unit, Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He has distinctive leadership and policy experience at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of joint, intelligence, interagency and foreign partner operations.

He led multiple Special Operations Joint Task Forces during extensive combat missions and was among the first to deploy into Afghanistan following the tragic attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. The combat contributions of the teams he commanded, and with whom he served, were recognized with five Presidential Unit Citations, a Navy Unit Commendation and four Joint Meritorious Unit Awards.

Wyman’s joint, interagency and policy staff experience includes service as the second Director of Operations for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Deputy Director for Global Operations, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Director for Counterterrorism Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

From 1987 to 2002, Derek Porter served in increasingly responsible positions within law enforcement. His career spanned surveillance and investigative roles in a Scottish police force, management of the Specialist Crimes Unit within the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) and leadership of departments within the European Union Intelligence Agency (Europol).

In June of 2002, Derek left government service and began employment as a Regional Security Advisor with BP, responsible for Western Europe. That was followed by responsibility for North Africa, Middle East and South Asia, a role which focused upon managing country entry strategy to high risk environments.

In March 2008 Derek was appointed Global Director of Security for Crisis Management, with responsibility for providing the company with resilience to the next crisis in whatever form it takes.

This was followed in January 2011 with an appointment to Senior Vice President Intelligence Security and Crisis Management. His appointment coincided with the Arab Spring and all that came after, including the tragic attack on the In Amenas facility in Algeria.

Since 2011, Derek has continued to evolve the organization to enable the company’s strategy, and has been at the heart of every major global crisis response from country evacuations and terrorist attacks through to the consequences of covid and conflict. He has created a geopolitical risk and business intelligence capability to support the strategic decision making of the company. Derek has advisory roles linked to HM Government and private sector start and scale ups.

John Kingsbury is a leader at the intersection of technology and national security. He has worked in a variety of technology operating and investing roles, including at PillPack (now Amazon Pharmacy) and Mithril Capital. John is currently the CEO of Peak Performance, a software company serving public safety agencies and businesses.

John started his career as a Navy SEAL officer, serving 15 years on active duty at SEAL Team ONE and Naval Special Warfare Development Group. His assignments include command of various joint task forces in combat and strategic technical programs.

John is a graduate of the US Naval Academy and the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Maryland.

Alex Moore focuses on incubating companies through 8VC’s Build Program, Defense, building talent networks and fundamental operational support for the portfolio. Alex also focuses on enterprise and seed-stage investments. Prior to joining 8VC Alex was a startup operator for 12 years. Alex was the first employee and Director of Operations at Palantir Technologies, building the team from one room to 350 people and $100mm in sales. Alex co-founded Backplane, a social media analytics company, and NodePrime, a cloud automation company which was acquired in 2016 by Ericsson.

Following his operator career, Alex invested in over 50 seed-stage companies. Alex sits on the boards of Palantir, Epirus, Premise Data, Nylas, Standard Metrics, Anduin Transactions, FieldGuide, Chaos Industries, and Saronic. Alex graduated from Stanford University in 2005 with a BA in Economics.