Program · Rio Bravo Lab

Curriculum

What we teach

Both tracks teach from the same curriculum, but not the same modules. Track A runs the full sequence across the cohort year. Track B takes the parts a student can act on, and adds ground a founding team has usually already crossed.

Technology roadmapping. Quantitative, not narrative: the honest distance between a result on a lab bench and a system that gets fielded, scored against technology and manufacturing readiness levels and turned into the specific sequence of demonstrations that closes the gap. Most technical founders have never seen their own work mapped this way.
Requirements translation. Capability gaps, program offices, and prime supply chains are a written record if you know how to read it. We teach founders to find the buyer who is actually funded to solve their problem, and to understand what that buyer needs to hear before they can act.
Transition capital. The first non-dilutive dollar — ours — before you incorporate, and when to form the entity. An SBIR Phase II is a beginning, not an outcome. After it, the money has names and rules: Air Force follow-on awards that only pay if you bring matching funds (STRATFI, TACFI), and agreements written outside standard procurement (OTAs). Buying production is a different step again — a sole-source Phase III contract, APFIT, which buys the first units, or DPA Title III, which pays for the line that makes them.
Security and export posture. Controlled unclassified information, NIST 800-171 and your SPRS score, CMMC now that the acquisition rule is live, ITAR registration and EAR classification, and the deemed-export exposure you inherit the day you leave.
Product design and development. The distance between a working demonstrator and a product a customer can buy: concept generation, product architecture, prototyping strategy, and design for manufacturing. Taught from Ulrich, Eppinger, and Yang — the standard text on the subject, used in Eppinger's own course at MIT Sloan.
Manufacturing readiness. The path from a validated prototype to repeatable production, built in New Mexico — process, qualification, and the supply chain relationships that make a first article possible in this state rather than somewhere else.
Leaving the lab. For technologists still inside an institution: separation mechanisms and return rights, conflict-of-interest management, what a license actually obligates you to, and the personal financial arithmetic of the decision. The money is not the unlock. The map is.

Modules are sourced the way the mission problems are — from practitioners at the laboratories and across New Mexico's support ecosystem, aimed at the gaps they name. The curriculum is set before each cohort year.

The curriculum teaches frameworks, not legal advice. Anything specific to your employment, your license, or your export posture goes to your own counsel and your institution's ethics office, and we will tell you when you have reached that line.

Track A

Dual-Use Founder Program

A yearly, non-dilutive cohort of 10–12 dual-use (defense and civilian) founding teams from across New Mexico. Teams will be paired with DoD and Intelligence Community operators and taught the transition curriculum above.

Track A exists to remove the three things that stop technical founders in this state: no first money that doesn't cost ownership, no line of sight to the people who actually hold the mission problem, and no map of the distance between a working prototype and a funded program. Cohort teams get all three.

Who this is built for

The person this is built for is specific: a technologist — at Los Alamos, Sandia, AFRL, or a New Mexico university — who has been quietly convinced that their work should be a company, and has no way to find out. A tech transfer office's mandate ends at a license. An incubator's begins once there is a company to house. A manufacturing institute's begins once there is a product to make. Between the license and the production line sits a founder who has to decide to exist, and nobody's mandate covers that person. Track A is that mandate.

At a glance

Cohort size10–12 dual-use founding teams
CadenceAnnual
CurriculumSeven transition modules across the cohort year
AwardNeeds-based pool, up to $10K cash per team
TravelFrom the same pool, up to $2.5K per team
Tax treatmentAwards are taxable income to the recipient; we issue a 1099 where required
EquityZero. No ownership, no options, no side letters.
MentorsDoD and IC operators (bench in formation)
Demo dayNew Mexico, at the close of the cohort year
ShowcaseThree teams travel to Cambridge, MA, through the QLab network
Showcase awardsAdditional non-dilutive awards to the three selected teams (funding in progress)
InvestorsDemo Day is open to any investor at no charge
GeographyVentures HQ and hire in New Mexico

Non-dilutive on purpose

A nonprofit that takes equity is competing with the founders it serves. Rio Bravo Lab takes none. The return is measured in companies headquartered in New Mexico, not in a cap table.

Operators, not just advisors

Teams will be paired with people who have carried the requirement: DoD and IC operators who can tell a founder in one conversation whether the thing they're building matters.

Demo Day

They present here. Three go to Cambridge.

Demo Day is held in New Mexico at the close of the cohort year, and it is open to any investor at no charge, sponsor or not. Teams that build here present here — in front of the state whose research infrastructure their work came out of, and the institutions that will decide whether the next one gets built.

The three are selected at Demo Day by an independent panel, and the showcase runs on the QLab network at the Harvard Belfer Center, where Rio Bravo Lab's founder went through the program. Some of the capital and the networks are there, and a New Mexico company should not have to be founded somewhere else to reach them.

Track B

Graduate Certificate in Defense Innovation

A 12-credit graduate certificate where engineering and business students and working professionals build alpha prototypes against real problems sourced directly from the defense community.

Curriculum designed with MIT MIX, offered through engineering and business programs at each host campus: two of the host's own courses pair with two new courses built on Rio Bravo Lab curriculum. Courses pair students with practitioners from the defense community who bring live mission needs into the classroom. Students leave with a working prototype, a validated problem, and (for some) the beginning of a company. The certificate is offered non-exclusively, so more than one New Mexico university can host it. New Mexico State University offers it first, with a memorandum of understanding in development — the first course is targeted for Fall 2027, the second for Spring 2028. The University of New Mexico is the intended second host.

At a glance

Format12-credit graduate certificate
StructureTwo of the host's courses plus two built on Rio Bravo Lab curriculum
StudentsEngineering and business, plus working professionals
ModelDesigned with MIT MIX
ProblemsSourced from the defense community
DeliverableAlpha prototype against a real mission need
First campusNew Mexico State University, Fall 2027 (MOU in development)
Next campusUniversity of New Mexico, intended second host
Path forwardStrong teams recruited into Track A

How the tracks are designed to compound

The flywheel

Each track makes the other one work. A certificate without a cohort produces prototypes that die at the semester line. A cohort without a certificate spends every year hunting for teams.

Identify Track B surfaces technical students already working on real mission problems

Build Track A funds the committed teams, pairs them with operators who have carried the requirement, and teaches them the transition curriculum

Return Alumni ventures come back as mentors, employers, and problem sponsors

The third step is design intent. Rio Bravo Lab has no alumni yet — the first cohort has not been selected.

Scope

What we don't do

New Mexico has a dense entrepreneurial support ecosystem, and we are not a replacement for any part of it. When a team needs something on this list, we route them — by name.

SBIR and STTR proposal support → NM FAST at Arrowhead Center, New Mexico State University. It is the state's dedicated SBIR and STTR assistance program and we will not build a competing service.
Space-focused acceleration and Air Force customer access → the Hyperspace Challenge, run by CNM Ingenuity with AFRL and the U.S. Space Force. It recruits nationally around space missions; we work only with teams that will headquarter and hire in New Mexico.
Incubation space and business fundamentals → Santa Fe Business Incubator in the north, Arrowhead Center in the south, Lobo Rainforest and Q Station in Albuquerque.
Prototyping and fabrication → CNM's FUSE Makerspace and the Center for High Technology Materials at UNM.
Technical problem-solving with lab scientists → the New Mexico Small Business Assistance program, which puts Los Alamos and Sandia expertise on a New Mexico small business's technical problem at no cost to the business.
Customer discovery methodology → Aggie I-Corps at Arrowhead Center and the national I-Corps network.
Licensing and intellectual property → the Feynman Center at Los Alamos, Sandia's technology transfer and licensing office, UNM Rainforest Innovations, and Arrowhead Center.
Manufacturing process and quality systems → New Mexico MEP.
Capital. We do not invest, hold equity, or take fees of any kind.

What we build is the layer none of them covers: the path from a defense-relevant technology to a company that gets it fielded. If you are already in one of these programs, you do not need to leave it to work with us.

Eligibility

Who this is for

Track A applicants

Technologists still inside an institution. Staff and researchers at Los Alamos, Sandia, AFRL, or a New Mexico university with something you believe should be a company — including if you have not incorporated, not licensed anything, and not told anyone. This is the founder the program works hardest to reach.
Founding teams building dual-use technology with a credible national security application, at any stage from pre-incorporation through early revenue.
Based in New Mexico, or willing to headquarter and hire here. Incorporate wherever you need to — a Delaware C-corp is expected for most venture-backed teams and is not a barrier.
At least one technical founder full-time, or committed to full-time at incorporation.
Veterans and students welcome. No clearance is required to apply.

Separation rules are not the same at every institution. Lab employees, Air Force civil servants, and university staff each fall under a different regime, and the first thing we do is point you to the right one.

Track B students

Graduate and advanced undergraduate engineering students. Any discipline whose work could touch a mission problem.
Business students and working professionals interested in defense and dual-use markets. Teams are cross-disciplinary by design.
No prior defense experience. Clearances are not a prerequisite, and neither is a company, a license, or a patent.
Willingness to build something real in a semester. The deliverable is an alpha prototype against a problem a defense-community practitioner named.

Track B is not a prerequisite for Track A. Most students will finish with a prototype and a validated problem; the teams that want to keep going are the ones Track A is built to take next.

Applications are not open yet. Rio Bravo Lab is in formation, and the first Track A cohort and the first Track B certificate courses are still being scheduled. Tell us you're interested and we'll reach out directly when dates are set.

If you're at a lab or a university and not sure whether what you have is a company, that is exactly the conversation we want. You do not need a pitch, a deck, or a decision — a paragraph is enough.

Two tracks. One curriculum.