When we started thinking about people who could help build the next decade of American Dynamism, and talking to founders, one name kept surfacing. Founders building the hardest things in defense, space, and manufacturing would mention Connor Love, and they would tell us the same thing over and over: he understood their business better than any other investor on their cap table. Not the version that fit neatly into a deck, but the one they were actually building.
That kind of reputation is hard to earn and impossible to fake. It comes from doing the work. Long before a deal, Connor would get on calls with founders every few weeks to stay current, offer perspective, and build a real relationship, and to make sure he was always on top of how a company and its market were evolving. He shows up because the mission is personal to him.
Connor is a West Point graduate and a former active-duty Captain in the U.S. Army. In 2019 he was set to start business school when he chose instead to deploy to Northern Iraq, working alongside the joint military community and our Kurdish partners. He has led soldiers, advised senior commanders, and seen up close what motivated, purpose-driven teams can do under real pressure. He started in venture six years ago with that experience behind him, and it shapes how he sees companies and the people building them. He’s spent the years since becoming one of the sharpest American Dynamism investors of his generation, backing founders in defense, space, manufacturing, and autonomous systems.
What convinced us wasn’t the track record, strong as it is. It was that Connor deeply believes the same thing we do: some of the most important companies of this decade will be the ones serving the national interest, and that serving the country and generating extraordinary returns are not in tension. They reinforce each other. He wants to help build a firm that backs those companies for the long haul, and he’s joining Andreessen Horowitz to do exactly that.
The stakes here are only getting higher. The next decade will be defined by whether America can build fast enough to stay ahead, in defense, in space, in manufacturing, and in the autonomous systems that increasingly tie them all together. We believe American Dynamism is still early, and that many of the companies that will matter most are being started right now, often in areas the rest of the market has been slow to take seriously. Backing them takes conviction and patience, a willingness to stay in through the long and unglamorous middle where real companies are built.
On behalf of the entire American Dynamism team, I’m thrilled to welcome Connor Love as our newest General Partner. He’s written his own note on joining. You can read it on X.
