Even mid-sprint to a secret flight, the Navy’s tech chief has a pitch for investors

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Justin Fanelli, the Department of Navy’s chief technology officer, has spent the last three and a half years trying to make the U.S. Navy easier to do business with. When we first talked to him last year, he described a shift away from what he called “your granddaddy’s government” — a “spaghetti chart” of entry points for startups — into something closer to a funnel, where companies that show strong results get pulled into the Navy’s technology base as enterprise services.

This week, we caught up with him again on a video call, and this time, he wasn’t just looking again to further streamline the procurement process, he was sprinting, literally, to catch a flight he’d just been ordered onto with no destination shared.

“You have an hour and 15 minutes to get on a plane,” Fanelli said, recounting what he’d just been told, speaking into his phone as...

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