Last week saw the very first Defence Tech Meetup event, graciously hosted by Startplatz Düsseldorf.

Although it all came together on short notice, it turned out quite alright; People interested in making a difference by getting involved in defence technologies did indeed show up, great speakers could be convinced to share from their knowledge and experiences and take questions from the people attending the meetup, and everybody participating said it must continue – and so it will!

HEADS UP: Join the Defence Tech Meetup #2 on June 25th 1830 location (this time also in DUS) TBA.

See you there!

The Defence Tech Meetup was created for people like you and me, people who are concerned by the geopolitical developments and are looking to get involved to help protect democracy and European values – our future – by helping to build the new generation of “Made-in-Europe” defence technologies.

The Defence Tech Meetup group is available to the public for anybody to join, it’s by no means an exclusive or secret group – but what gets shared at the actual meetups is by default not public, because we want to make sure people feel they can speak and share freely. This is also why members of the Defence Tech Meetup are only visible to other members (and why you won’t find any pictures of the members participating shared in public).

However, as this was the first meetup of its kind, I thought I’d make an exception to give people still on the fence or curious about joining a better understanding of what a typical meetup event looks like.

But the next time, you’ll have to be there in person.

On Wednesday May 14th at 1830 hours CET at Startplatz Düsseldorf, we met up for the very first time.

After a short intro about the meetup’s how and why, the participants introduced themselves and shared their motivation for joining, what they wanted out of the meetup and what they felt they could contribute with in the group.

It was then time for our first invited speaker was Stavros Messinis on video call from Athens, Greece who shared his learnings from founding a defence tech startup and selling it to Delian (nee Lambda Automata) within the course of around two years.

Some of his key insights that stuck with me were:

• Don’t go “all in” on touting being a defence startup at the get go, start as a “little” dual-purpose project “amongst friends”, don’t create unnecessary attention and scrutiny day one, move fast and don’t break too many things, aka don’t take stupid risks to life and property, think one step at a time
• You’ll have to partner with a prime* at some point if you want to be able to sell what you are building and make an impact
• Implicitly, to proceed, either you have to raise the money for getting the certifications, licenses, etc or join forces with a prime or neo-prime** who has already cleared all these hurdles, already have license to operate
• You’ll have to be present at the industry trade shows where the people in uniform and government officials – the people who buy – are (it may cost you, but it is worth it – it’s how to play the game)
• There may be significant difference between how you have been thinking about using your product and how the buyer is actually going to use it (aka is it going on the shelves in storage somewhere, mothballed for years until they are needed in a conflict, only to be brought out and be tested once a year) which may have huge implications on what you need to consider (aka components to whole product life expectancies, corrosion, updates, etc) so you need to talk to the end users in uniform, the boots on the ground
• Book recommendations to better understand the industry: “Skunkworks” and “The Kill Chain”

*The term Prime is often used to refer to a handful of large companies (incumbents) that hold contracts for major Department of Defence (DoD) systems and programs. Technically, the term “prime” means anyone who has a direct contractual relationship (in this context with a DoD government entity). **The term Neo-Prime refer in this context to the new wave of defence companies, often still privately held and venture backed, that aims to either disrupt or complement the incumbent primes with new technology, rethinking defence (that have already successfully formed a direct contractual relationship with DoD).

The second speaker for the evening was Lars Mesenbrink from Orrick, one the leading law firms in the world when it comes to technology and innovation.

Lars’ talk was a primer on how to stay out of legal problems in Germany when building defence tech and he was happy to also give us permission to share his slides and graciously spent a lot of time after his talk to answer our many questions.

Some of the key takeaways for me was “know your investor” and “know if you classify as a weapon or dual-use (and dual-use has to be real and credible, not made up by you)”. Furthermore:

• You as a founder / c-level are liable if it turns out that the money is coming from a nation state, entity, or person on the blacklist
• Check with the Deutsche Bundesbank if the investor is OK or not
• Theoretically you also need permission (must at least notify authorities at this threshold) for anything over 10% of foreign (non-German) ownership, but in practicality (and in the eyes of the law) there is no actual threshold and it could kick in with 1%, depending who you are selling equity to (aka are they on a list?), better to ask authorities up front as the investment (transfer of ownership) will not be legally binding (invalid) until ownership officially cleared/permitted
• It doesn’t matter if your company is registered in say the UK, if you or one of the other central (aka founders or C-level) people are registered as living in Germany because there is precedence for applying the same German rules to your company if you/they do

Download the slides as a PDF ⬇️ (also available as a slideshow at the bottom of this page)

We then voted if it was worth continuing with the meetup (it was a resounding YES), and took speaker wishes and topic requests for feature meetups.

The following was noted as of interest for future meetups from the participants:

• Investors in European Defence (speakers & overview)
• More information on other relevant events and groups
• Industry reps like Rheinmetall (speakers, what do they do, what do they think about defence startups)
• The status of (offensive & defensive) Cyber Security (speaker / overview)
• Information about needs from allies at conflict frontlines

Now taking wishes and requests does not guarantee it can and will happen already at the next meetup, but we’re going to make an effort to touch on the topics – if feasible and with enough people interested.

Don’t forget to join the Meetup group and attend the next Defence Tech Meetup event in person on June 25th 1830 hrs CET, at a location in DUS yet to be announced – so save the date now.

Lars’ presentation as an image gallery: