NYA FOUNDER SPOTLIGHT ‒ FRANCISCO AGUILAR, BOUNCE IMAGING CEO & FOUNDER
Francisco Aguilar, CEO & Founder of Bounce Imaging, is leading the development of advanced tactical imaging technology designed to help military, law enforcement, and first responders gain critical visibility in dangerous environments before putting people at risk. Since joining Bounce Imaging in its early years, Francisco has helped grow the company and secure major customers, including U.S. Special Operations Command. In this interview, Francisco discusses why a clear, customer-validated value proposition is critical when fundraising, how New York Angels’ rigorous diligence challenged the company to strengthen its assumptions, and why investors should look for founders who genuinely believe in their story.
How did you first meet New York Angels?
We were introduced through another angel group, which has a lot of overlapping membership with New York Angels. I also previously knew David Rose, one of the founders of New York Angels, so those were two reasons we knew New York Angels was a big deal.
What were you looking for in investors when you were fundraising, and why did you choose to work with New York Angels?
We like sharp, clever investors who have experience across a lot of fields. We’ve found people to be really value-add when they come from a lot of different places and bring a diverse range of experiences and networks. We’ve gotten a lot of useful introductions that way.
With New York Angels, we had really good, thorough questions, thoughtful pushes, and a good range of experiences. We were looking for people who could work with a later-stage company that has bigger financing needs than a smaller startup, but who also bring a lot to the table in terms of experience and network.
What was the fundraising process like with New York Angels?
We thought the process with NYA was honestly more intensive than some VCs we’ve worked with. They have a very thorough diligence process. They asked for lots of data sets, had a lot of reasonable pushback on what things are and aren’t risky, and understood the risks quite well. It was a very thoughtful process.
They really dug into our financial models and questioned the right things. We went through a very detailed list of each of our pipeline items, including the history, where we had seen delays or challenges, and what the underlying assumptions were. The level of diligence and breadth of experience were very different from other angel groups and much more like a VC-type diligence process.
What have you enjoyed most about working with New York Angels?
People are thoughtful, push hard, obviously have business experience, and understand the risk profile and uncertainty of these things. But within that, they have a knowledge of what the key drivers are. I think we all understood what the key drivers and key risks were.
It’s good to have people who are smart and understand you. We’ve had experiences with other angel groups where you get really off-the-wall questions that aren’t relevant. I thought the discussion with New York Angels was very relevant to the actual business profile.
What advice would you give other founders who are looking to fundraise?
Have a clear story and a clear customer who can validate what you’re doing. Even if you’re still building, validating the need and having a customer explain that it’s a real and pressing need is really important. I also wanted to introduce you to my COO, Mark Fargason, who will have some great perspective on this question.
Mark Fargason: Have a very, very clear value proposition: what the product is, what you provide, and how you’re competitively differentiated from other things within your sector. For us, having a very clear story, validated by customer feedback on why we’re unique and why we’re different, was critical and continues to be critical as we go forward with additional fundraising.
What advice would you give early-stage investors who are looking to invest in companies like yours?
Look for people who really believe their story. You’re not going to find founders who are going to stick with it if they don’t also have a passion for what they’re doing.
We’ve stuck with it because we have people in the user community who have invested in us, and we owe it to them to make this thing work. We stick through it because we’ve got the confidence from the user base.
What has driven Bounce Imaging’s success?
We have a really hard thing to do that is easy to explain: It’s a ball, you throw it, you don’t get shot. It turns out the technology behind it is super hard to do, and so there aren’t others like it. Everyone thinks it’s obvious, but it’s actually super complicated technically. Yet it’s really simple to articulate. I think that has been helpful for us.
What makes the Bounce Imaging team unique?
Mark Fargason: Pretty much all of our executive team are career changers who are aligned on what makes Bounce special and the mission we’re pursuing. All of us are here because we want to make an impact, and we believe in the technology and its life-saving potential.
We know that because our end users tell us. We speak to them regularly, and they tell us exactly what they did on the mission and how this technology saved their life or saved the lives of people in the room when the ball was thrown in. That’s definitely what motivates us and what makes us unique as a team.
Francisco: With a very small team, we’ve done things that are very hard to do. We have people pulled from different corners of the world, but we’re united by this impact goal, a commitment to be good human beings to each other, and a commitment to always be focused on the impact we’re trying to make. That’s the uniting theme that has pulled this very diverse group of people together into something that’s now more than a decade in the works.
Defense tech is attracting significantly more attention today. What should investors understand about the sector?
Defense tech has never been cool in the whole time that we’ve been doing it, and it’s cool right now. It’s a very rewarding market once you’re locked into it because it has a lot of barriers to entry and a very consistent customer. But it also comes with things most investors aren’t used to, like complex bureaucracies and ties to geopolitics.
It takes a lot of stick-to-itiveness and a tolerance for delays, complexities, and bureaucracies. But once you’re in it, it’s a very defensible position because it’s very hard to displace you.
If you get good at defense tech, it’s a big opportunity, but you also have to understand that it’s not like your classic SaaS or consumer play.
