Mason Rice

Mason Rice is a co-founder of Veteran Ventures Capital, where he serves as Managing Director and Chief Technology Strategist, providing the firm's technical due-diligence and national-security domain expertise. He co-founded VVC (founded circa 2017–2019, out of Knoxville, Tennessee) alongside Derren Burrell, the firm's President/Managing Partner, to close the funding gap faced by veteran entrepreneurs and to back dual-use technologies vital to U.S. national security.

Rice brings 22 years of active-duty U.S. Army service to the firm. He began his career as a platoon leader in the Army's first Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) Battalion, and in 2000 was selected to command the 94th Signal Company, 56th Signal Battalion at Fort Buchanan, Puerto Rico. He later served as operations officer and senior engineer for a joint-service tactical satellite communications element within the National Security Agency (NSA), and was assigned to the White House Communications Agency, where he served as the agency's Chief Engineer and as Commander of the Washington Area Communications Command — overseeing 300+ personnel providing communications to the President, Vice President, and senior officials. His final Army assignment was as a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology. He retired from the Army in 2017 and is a member of both the White House Communications Agency Hall of Fame and the U.S. Army ROTC Hall of Fame.

Academically, Rice holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (with honors) from the Florida Institute of Technology, an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Florida, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Tulsa. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP).

In parallel with his investing role, Rice has built a research career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), which he joined in 2017 as Cyber-Physical R&D Manager. He became the first Group Leader for Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems, grew that group into a larger section, and now serves as Director of ORNL's Cyber Resilience and Intelligence Division — overseeing an R&D portfolio spanning AI for national security, cybersecurity for critical systems, machine-augmented intelligence, vulnerability science, and identity science. This dual lab-and-investor vantage point informs VVC's technical evaluation of deep-tech and defense startups.

• Invests in veteran-led / veteran-founded companies building dual-use technologies — products with both national-security and commercial markets — reflecting the firm's core belief that veterans are underfunded despite strong performance.
• Sector concentration in defense, aerospace/space, autonomy and robotics, undersea systems, cybersecurity, ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance), and advanced materials.
• Stage: early-stage through growth-equity; VVC screens 500+ deals a year and invests selectively.
• Value-add beyond capital: deep military-culture fluency, federal government relationships, and government-procurement expertise — helping portfolio companies win non-dilutive government funding (Fund I portfolio attracted $130M+ in non-dilutive government capital).
• Rice specifically contributes technical due diligence and national-security domain assessment as Chief Technology Strategist, evaluating whether a company's technology is both defensible and mission-relevant.