Financing Determines Defense Startup Strategy
Scott Sanders, chief growth officer at Forterra, on the defense tech startup playbook
This line is really about financing risk, not product strategy. SpaceX and Palantir could spend years building, lobbying, litigating, and waiting through slow procurement because they had founders with deep personal resources and investors willing to tolerate a long period before meaningful revenue. Forterra is framing its own path as different, a company that had to get to real contracts much faster, which pushes it toward a product that can be shipped, demonstrated, and sold across multiple programs and markets early.
-
In Sanders' telling, Palantir and SpaceX were the pathbreakers that forced the government to treat commercial products as viable procurement options. That opened the door for Anduril, which then got early paid traction within months and a $12.5M defense contract about a year after founding, much faster than the earlier generation.
-
The practical difference is cash burn. A founder with patient capital can afford five to seven years of prototypes, pilots, and legal or procurement fights. A company without that cushion has to prove a customer will pay now, usually by showing working hardware in the field instead of asking the government to fund years of custom development.
-
That is why Forterra ends up in a hybrid lane. It sells one autonomy stack across defense and commercial vehicles, works through partners like Oshkosh and Kalmar, and uses the same core kit on many vehicle types. The goal is to spread R&D cost across more buyers instead of betting the company on one giant defense program.
Going forward, the winners in defense autonomy are likely to split into two camps. A small number of heavily capitalized firms will absorb long procurement cycles and build broad franchises, while others will survive by turning one repeatable product into revenue quickly across defense and commercial channels. Forterra is clearly pursuing the second path.