While everyone else chases the next consumer app, Ryan Else is funding the stuff that actually gets built. His fund, Roadster Capital, backs pre-seed and seed stage founders modernizing the American industrial base across defense, manufacturing, logistics, and applied AI. He didn't arrive at deep tech from a finance seat. He came from nearly two decades inside the industries he now funds, spanning enterprise security, industrial markets, and frontier tech.

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That operator background is the whole thesis. "Old line industries really need to find ways to wrap software around hardware," Ryan says. They've been overlooked for the better part of two decades while capital chased SaaS. Now applied AI, robotics, and modern computing are letting critical machines hit "100% uptime in ways they never had before," and giving operators real time visibility across the entire supply chain. As Ryan puts it, "There's no better time than right now to improve greater American industrial base."

Ryan has built before, so the obvious question is why start a fund instead of a company. His answer is about leverage. The opportunity, he says, is "to lean into years of operational and investing experience, lean into past investments I've made that have become multi-billion dollar unicorns and a couple that have not done so great, and bring those positive wins and experiences to the front lines." He wants to work alongside "incredibly smart, engineer-driven founders" solving hard problems, then "give them the needed capital they need right now when nobody else believes."

Roadster Capital is a pre-seed and seed stage fund based in Portland, Oregon, backing deep technology companies modernizing the American industrial base through automation, security, sustainability, advanced computing, and applied AI. The discipline is deliberate. Roadster invests "before institutional consensus is there," partnering with founders "at those points and moments of true technical risk and operational inflection where they need really patient capital."

LPs often measure a new manager against the largest funds. Ryan doesn't flinch at the comparison, because he's already in business with that tier. "A few of those funds," he says, "they're co-investors with Roadster Capital in past investments that we've made. So we have connections at the table where the big deals are taking place."

The second edge is speed. Running the fund solo, Ryan doesn't have to present to a room of partners every Monday morning and bang on the table to get his way. That means he can "get to yes faster than others and get in." Underneath the pace is a framework: Roadster prioritizes technical defensibility, capital pathway clarity, and measurable industrial performance. "We believe that narrative follows execution," Ryan says. "It's not the reverse."

Ask Ryan for a favorite deal and he picks two, because both point at the thesis. The first is X-Lite, a company focused on extreme ultraviolet lithography and free electron lasers to speed up processing speeds on semiconductors, work Ryan calls "critical to U.S. national security around chips." X-Lite recently received a $150 million commitment from the U.S. Department of Commerce, and is out raising a Series C. The second is Union Technologies, part of Roadster's first close, working on AI, automation, and manufacturing technologies "critical to US national defense" with dual-use applications reaching into the semiconductor industry.

Those are the mature signals. At the earliest stage, Ryan reads people. He looks for founders with engineering backgrounds tied to the industry they're attacking, but he's just as interested in an outsider with "a complete disruptor's mindset," someone not "held back by generations of thought and processes." His pitch to those founders is simple. Get you the money you need, give you insights when you ask for them, "and then stay out of your way."

Ryan is blunt about what he's selling, and it isn't capital. "Everybody has money," he says. "You've got these funds with billions of dollars that are over allocated and they're not really doing anything other than creating optionality and throwing darts at a board." Roadster is building fund over fund on returns, not AUM. He's "focused on financial returns first and foremost," and the early marks back him up. One portfolio company just secured a lead for its Series A, an oversubscribed round with a $2 million-plus lead, which Ryan says is "going to be a two and a half X markup for us right away."

His math for LPs is disciplined. If that pattern repeats across a portfolio of 20 or even 30 companies, Roadster has "a really high probability of returning the fund two or three x or greater." One prior investment already became a multi-billion dollar unicorn, and another is on track. His companies, he notes, "aren't getting stuck at seed stage. They're moving."

Roadster's foundation was built with Decile Group. Ryan was "the very first start fund to close and have a first close at Decile Group," introduced to the ecosystem in cohort three. He credits the Start Fund, Decile Hub's back office, and the AI tools built with the team from the beginning. "Without Decile and the recent launch of the Start Fund, our fund wouldn't be where we're at today."

For LPs, Roadster Capital is a returns-first, transparency-first bet on the modernization of American industry, led by a two-decade operator who is already co-investing beside the largest funds and already carrying real markups. For founders building at the point of technical risk in defense, manufacturing, logistics, and applied AI, Ryan offers conviction capital before institutional consensus, a network of co-investors and operator-founders, and a promise to move fast and then get out of the way.

Learn more about the fund and request access on Decile Access: https://decileaccess.com/funds/roadster-capital

Roadster Capital is a pre-seed and seed stage venture fund based in Portland, Oregon, backing deep technology founders modernizing the American industrial base across defense, manufacturing, logistics, automation, security, sustainability, advanced computing, and applied AI. Founded by Ryan Else, a nearly two-decade operator across enterprise security, industrial markets, and frontier tech, the fund invests before institutional consensus, prioritizing technical defensibility, capital pathway clarity, and measurable industrial performance. Roadster built its foundation with Decile Group as the first Start Fund to reach a first close.

Watch The Full Episode Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pi6UiwmL-28