Productize autonomy for scale
Scott Sanders, chief growth officer at Forterra, on the defense tech startup playbook
The strategic point is that defense startups only become venture scale when they stop selling labor and start selling the same autonomy stack again and again. Forterra is trying to turn ground autonomy into a reusable kit, sold at a firm fixed annual price across defense and commercial vehicles, so each new deployment adds revenue without adding matching engineering hours. That is how a defense company starts to look more like software than a contractor.
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In the old model, the government pays for custom R&D, audits every input, and contractors earn a capped margin on people and materials. That scales through headcount, not product leverage, which is why traditional primes stay lower margin and slower moving.
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Forterra reorganized around one core autonomy product after winding down 17 legacy contracts. The same hardware and software base can be mounted on a military truck, a missile launcher, or a yard tractor, which lets component costs fall with volume and keeps engineering focused on one code base.
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Anduril is the closest proof point for this playbook. It started with a product that customers could buy quickly, then reused the same software base across towers, counter drone systems, and other programs. That kind of product reuse is what creates recurring revenue and much better gross margins than project work.
The next wave of defense winners will look less like bespoke contractors and more like product companies with one core system spread across many programs and adjacent commercial markets. The companies that compound fastest will be the ones that can ship a working product now, price it like a commercial item, and keep reusing the same platform as demand expands.