The Power of Advisors: Why the Best Education Isn’t in a Classroom

From Peta Ellis, General Manager, Beaten Zone Venture Partners

There are categories of knowledge that no university course can teach you, not because the subject is too complex, but because the content hasn’t been written yet. The people who hold that knowledge are the ones living it every day, informing institutions, shaping policy, and operating at the frontier of what’s coming next. Being on the investor side of the equation, backing new technologies and the businesses built around them, means getting in front of those people isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s a professional obligation.

That belief was reinforced recently when our team at Beaten Zone Venture Partners sat down for three hours with Charlie McGillis.

Growing up, my favourite film was Top Gun, and I’ll admit there’s something that doesn’t escape me about the fact that the most knowledgeable person I’ve encountered in the Space domain shares both names of the actress Kelly McGillis’s and her Top Gun character’s name/call sign ‘Charlie.’ ( image referenced above) Except this Charlie is a retired Colonel from the Air Force, and Top Gun’s Charlie was a civilian contractor and instructor for the Navy Fighter Weapons School. Charlie McGilllis is the real deal, and what she knows from her experiences in the Defence and commercial space sector makes any movie look like a gentle introduction.

As an Air Force veteran, Space domain expert, and current board member of one of our portfolio companies Zendir, Charlie has lived the full evolution of space from Cold War strategic asset to today’s congested, contested, and increasingly commercial operating environment. The perspective she shared during our LA strategy session is not yet captured in reports, courses, or conference panels; it is being shaped in real time, and she is one of a relatively small group of practitioners directly influencing how governments and institutions respond.

Here are some things that I, as a “new-to-space and its commercial opportunities” person took away.

Space is far more vulnerable than the public narrative suggests. Space is significantly more vulnerable than most public narratives suggest. Four countries, the United States, Russia, China, and India, have demonstrated kinetic anti-satellite capabilities, physically destroying satellites in orbit. Beyond kinetic attacks, space systems are exposed to electromagnetic interference, cyber intrusions, laser “blinding” of optical satellites, and attacks on ground infrastructure that supports space operations.

Low Earth orbit satellites typically circle the planet about 16 times per day, meaning a single satellite passes over many regions and users in a 24‑hour period. As a result, a single tactical action in space can have global strategic effects in minutes, affecting communications, navigation, financial transactions, and military operations, while the protection, governance, and response systems built to manage these risks are still catching up to the threat environment.

The gaps in the market are significant and largely unsolved.

Space Command’s integrated priority list includes:

• command and control systems
• rapid deployment capability when assets are destroyed
• meaningful on-orbit space domain awareness
• satellite manoeuvrability and refuelling
• edge computing capable of delivering data within seven minutes.

These are present, urgent problems, not future ones.

On the investment side, Charlie was direct. The three areas worth serious attention are on-orbit capabilities rather than ground-based Missile Defense, edge computing for satellites, and space data centres, an area that has only emerged in the last few months but is already addressing genuine power and proximity constraints. On propulsion, her advice was clear: the space is overcrowded with minimal differentiation, and unless a technology is truly groundbreaking, capital is better deployed elsewhere.

What I found most valuable was her clarity on the nature of the customer. Companies attempting to sell point solutions to US Space Force are misreading the market entirely. Space Force buys capabilities that solve operational problems, from teams that understand the mission rather than just the technology.

The US market is actively rewarding non-traditional companies with commercial capability and operational speed, and founders who don’t understand that dynamic will spend years pursuing the wrong opportunities. We talk about this often with founders entering the US Defence market, but having it explained in such a way from Charlie, really hit home.

The actual face of founders, once they realise this opportunity.

Perhaps the most instructive moment of the afternoon was when the conversation turned to grey zone operations where countries quietly manoeuvre satellites to harass others without any kinetic or officially hostile action. When asked how you defend against it, Charlie’s answer was immediate: “You build resilience. You build redundancy. You understand capability and intent, so you know who’s manoeuvring before they do it.” That is a strategy answer, not a technology answer, and it reflects the kind of thinking that comes only from years of operating at the highest levels within these systems.

The broader takeaway for me is that staying current in defense and deep technology does not look like traditional professional development. The knowledge we need as investors is being created in real time by a small group of practitioners who are actively shaping what comes next. Our job is to find those people, invest in those relationships, and show up in person when the opportunity arises. The return on that investment? Is clearer judgment, better advice to founders, and fewer untested assumptions. This compounds in ways that are hard to measure but impossible to ignore.

The best advisors aren’t available on a webinar. They’re available to the people who make the effort to be in the room. …But don’t let this put you off attending any of our future webinars, like BreachPoint this Friday 🙂 …But you get the point.

To bring it full circle with the Top Gun theme. Kellie McGillis, who played Charlie in Top Gun, was born in Newport Beach.

That is the same place we had dinner with Charlie and the Beaten Zone team, inside the historic McFadden Building at the base of the Newport Pier. The building dates back to the early 1900s. It began as a bunkhouse for the Dory fishermen who launched their boats straight off the sand. Those same fishermen founded the Dory Fishing Fleet and later the Dory Fish Market in 1891.They cut out the middlemen and sold direct to the public. Enterprise in its raw form.

Imagine telling those fishermen that 126 years later, people would still be eating their local fish. Only now, in the same town, teams are sitting at dinner discussing autonomy, Defense, and doing business in space.

That is legacy. Enterprise compounds.

Peta Ellis is General Manager of Beaten Zone Venture Partners. To get in touch or send something her way, reach out via LinkedIn or pitch@beatenzone.vc

IMAGE CREDIT: https://www.americanrhetoric.com/ Kellie McGills ‘ Charlie in TopGun