Our Story
Built by the teams, for the teams.
Two SEALs, one platoon
Jake Newbold grew up in rural eastern Ohio, raised by a single mother, the middle of three brothers, with no money set aside for college. The military ran in the family, and his older brother led the way into the Navy and into the SEAL teams. Jake enlisted in high school, trained for one thing, and made it into BUD/S Class 219 in 1998. He served with East Coast SEAL teams, deployed to Iraq, and became a BUD/S instructor. That is where he met Daniel.
Daniel Peterson grew up in a small town in northern Louisiana, hunting and fishing, playing ball, the kind of place where you recognized everybody. Football took him to college. Then he blew out his knee, and days later 9/11 changed everything. After losing a family friend in Iraq, he and his brother joined the Navy together and went through the pipeline, where their instructor happened to be Jake Newbold. Daniel made it through, checked into SEAL Team Eight, and not long after, he and Jake deployed together to Afghanistan, Jake as platoon chief, Daniel as a team lead.
As Daniel puts it, they have been running and gunning together ever since.
The Turn
In 2011, after the Extortion 17 tragedy, Jake and a group of teammates founded the SEAL Legacy Foundation to take care of the families left behind. That work took Jake to Texas, where he met business leaders and donors and, eventually, started looking hard at the firearms industry.
What he found was a gap. There was no true all-in-one platform built specifically for firearm retailers and ranges. The systems out there were fragmented, outdated, and not built around the compliance that defines this industry. And the whole industry was under constant political and financial pressure, the kind that gets a business de-platformed for selling lawful products.
Around that time, Jake left a banking career at JP Morgan Chase to develop and lead Trident 1. He brought Daniel out to SHOT Show, and once Daniel saw the response from the industry and the people they would be serving, he was in. It reminded him, in his words, of being around teammates again. People with shared values and a shared purpose.
What We Are Building
The People Behind It
We take this responsibility seriously. The team is built largely from military veterans and law enforcement professionals, because that background teaches you how to solve problems, communicate, and execute under pressure. We pair that with top-tier development talent, because the firearms industry deserves the best software, not an afterthought. We want customers to know they are working with people who genuinely care about helping them succeed.
