Andrew Bartholomew served three combat deployments as a Marine—including as an Infantry Assaultman, Joint Fires Observer, and junior Scout Sniper team member—before a gunnery sergeant encouraged him to apply to Columbia, which he did as his only school choice, extending his service for one more tour before starting; he later founded Fulcrum after noticing that few venture investors in defense tech actually had that kind of firsthand military background. At Fulcrum, he focuses on the upstream technologies that support the broader drone and defense ecosystem, often gravitating toward tools that make people more capable rather than replace them, as seen in his comments on real-time spatial intelligence and human-centered AI.