How do you raise $20M for a deep-tech company pre-product?

You raised, effectively, a 3 million-ish pre-seed and then a total like 11 million in the early days pre-product. How did you outbuild this relationship? So, what was your strategy for securing that capital? The most difficult thing is getting the first term sheet. I do think it gets slightly easier once you get the first break because people, social animals, tend to follow the first. >> How did you get in front of these people? Like, how did you navigate the actual initial conversations with those investors? Everyone here told me the 20 reasons you would fail. We went from zero to about 55 million in revenue in 18 or so months. We haven't raised any venture traditional funding. If you were trying to raise money for a business like that, everyone told you this is like a scam. The reality of Everyone, welcome back to the show. We got Max Buckit on with us today. Max, I just want to go straight into your story of being early at CoinShares, one of the first employees there, and taking it from zero to 50 million, and then taking it public without raising any venture. It's a very quite an anomaly of a story that we have here on the podcast. I'd love just to have you take us back to that experience and just walk us through what you learned. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's also super uncommon for doing it in Europe. I think that's probably the the rarest of them all. I mean, hats off to the CEO and founder back then, a guy named Ryan Radloff, who was a Division I American football player from Duke, who had come over to London to set up a business, which was a very um unusual type at the time cuz this is probably 2018-2019, and we met through a friend, and Ryan was one of the best operators I'd ever met. He'd had two other successful companies before. Um and also just brought this incredible energy, and I think it uh didn't necessarily go down well with all kind of British types and European types, but the energy, I think, is is really uh what made us successful. So, as you rightly said, in kind of um 18 months, we made this kind of absolutely insane um trajectory. So, we haven't raised any venture funding, per se. Um we were backed by a kind of PE type group, but we haven't raised any venture traditional funding. Um we have merged with another company. It was It was quite interesting structurally how it all panned out, but essentially, we had this company out in Sweden called XBT Provider, which was this kind of micro acquisition that we'd made. And what that enabled us to do was build the first regulated derivatives for Bitcoin back then. So, it wasn't ETF. What it was, it was an ETN. It was an exchange-traded note. It was a synthetic derivative. And we listed this thing, and it it just kind of popped overnight. We went from zero to about 55 million in revenue in 18 or so months. So, it was it was pretty rapid trajectory. Um built the team from a couple of us to, I think, at the peak of 200-250 people. Um and then that went, obviously, public. Um I I think it was about 1.2 billion market cap at the time. Um I think the most interesting thing for me and the the thing that necessitated me leaving and starting Valereum is CoinShares had offices at that point in New York, London, Stockholm, Paris, and Jersey. And one of the biggest issues we had was around data exfiltration. So, 35,000 Swedish customers, none of the Swedish data could go to the UK, none of the British data could go to France, etc. So, I started Valereum as a kind of digital infra company to solve that problem, really. Um so, yeah, exited out that business when I was 24 to go and start Valereum, which is what I'm doing now. So, that you're you're young getting started there. Like, that's an amazing experience, and I guess you What were some of the things that you took away from that, you know, kind of prior to making that leap of faith? Yeah. I was young. I mean, I think at that point, it felt like I'd aged in dog years, I would say. Um I definitely didn't feel as useful as I probably should have done. Um I I think just the grind. Like, I mean, everything seems um It's funny to say, you know, it always looks like a Ferrari on the outside and a Vauxhall on on the inside. It was just you know, the repeated drive and grind. I mean, we A- again, it's it's very much like, for me, it was the fusion of American culture and and, you know, frankly, ethic. Um I think we just outworked everyone. I mean, we were in the office for just until ungodly hours pretty much every day. Um and we were Yeah, I was probably wearing seven or eight hats every day. It was just There was no There was no kind of cheat sheet. I just felt like you know, I think we outworked each other, but there was also just the timing piece, right? There was this interest for where we are Sorry, for where we were at the time, there was that really interesting amalgamation of being like right on the cusp of If you were trying to raise money for a business like that, everyone told you Bitcoin was a scam or whatever, and it was like It was like, I don't know, 700 bucks a coin at this time, and everyone was like, "Oh, it's going to zero and all this stuff." At the same time as there was um really no kind of official or regulated way to buy this stuff if you didn't really know how to do it yourself. Um and all the kind of stuff that comes along with that, like cold storage and all those pieces. Um so, I think it was a really unique moment in history, but combined with you know, um hard work kind of being talent in that in that sense, we were just kind of there for the grind as well. And just creating that culture in the UK, you know, bringing that US kind of work ethic into to the UK and being able to source and find and retain talent to be able to do what you got to do is you know, an impressive feat, and we'll talk a little bit about, you know, kind of recruiting talent in Europe later, but um you started Valereum, and you For the audience to simplify it, it's effectively Palantir, but for the UK and UK governments to purchase directly from as opposed to a US-based company. But can you talk about kind of the the evolution of when you made the decision that this is the product that, you know, the European UK markets needed, and why you were the guy to to outbuild and raise capital for behind it? Yeah, it's Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, there's obviously a lot of kind of component parts there, but I think for me, I had never uh had experience with the for instance, the defense space. And so, for when for instance, when I started Valereum, it was very much like solving this problem for businesses like CoinShares that I knew would also have this issue. So, it was very much enterprise-focused. How do we build like kind of resilient segmented infra um that you can spin up in any environment, spin it up in any nation-state to ring-fence in essentially compartmentalize where data sits. That was really the thesis, and I'd been going for uh probably 2-3 years, and we had raised a bit of capital. So, our seed round at the time had been about 11 million dollars, co-led by two uh British funds, one called IQ Capital, one called Molten. Um but something quite interesting uh happened in '23, where I essentially met my now business partner, Josh. Uh back back to kind of the American work ethic culture. So, Josh had been in a unit of the US Army called the Rangers, and then went into some more kind of extreme SMUs after that. And then Josh had spent 12 years at Palantir Technologies. So, um a mixture between kind of government and international government. And I think the kind of um duality of the two of us worked really well. Obviously, I was I was based here, Josh is based in Wyoming in the US of all places, but he brought in the kind of um I I guess, frankly, brought in the kind of ethic and culture I was used to from working with Ryan in my first business. Um and there's um and I I'd really missed that, I think. And frankly, we hadn't even meant to go to defense space when Josh joined. Despite his background, I don't think he really wanted to do it, just knowing how long the sales cycles were, knowing how kind of um tricky they were to get going. Um but just as we were getting to the tail end of Acro, which is our platform, being fairly production-ready after a few years of development, the first significant use case were actually emanating from the US government. So, it was much more of a pull than a push in that sales process. We actually had never meant to go into this space, but once we had kind of been pulled in that direction, you know, you just go where the immediate product market fit is. So, so that kind of necessitated us to to go there. So, what was the timeline a little bit? You know, a lot of founders that come out of this show, they're, you know, raising their first round, maybe, you know, second you know, first institutional round. Uh and you raised, effectively, like 3 million-ish pre-seed and then a total like 11 million in the early days kind of pre-product. Um How did you outbuild this relationship? So, what was your strategy for securing that capital? Yeah, I mean, look, we were lucky to have, I think, the first funds to um It's It's I always the most difficult thing is getting the first term sheet, right? By By By no By no means um is that an easy feat. I do think it gets slightly easier once you get the first break because people, you know, uh are social animals and Capital, which is fairly large deep tech fund out of Cambridge, and very very much supported by the University of Cambridge kind of endowment. So, they're they're from that kind of pedigree. Um and Archie was a partner there. Um He really backed us very, very early on. And then, yeah, you're right, we then topped it up 11 months later because of the kind of um frankly, the velocity of like engineering that we were getting done. And And the problem was becoming fairly self-explanatory in the sense of when I started, it was almost quite contrary, and I think I remember someone telling me in 2020 when I started that it was this data sovereignty idea was ridiculous because you'd have one server in America, one server in Europe, and one server in Asia. For me, that's that felt kind of ludicrous at the time. And for me, it came back to this kind of macro thesis that I'd had of like, "Hey, I've lived through Brexit, right?" So, we've had you know, we've had the kind of this idea of physical sovereignty in the country. Obviously, the fight for Ukraine is ongoing. Hong Kong, frankly, was seized what, like, 20 years earlier than we anticipated from the UK. And And frankly, you've got now the fight for the impending fight for Taiwan. So, for me, that quite um like obvious uh physical piece of physical sovereignty. Uh excuse me, there's a cat tail coming in. Um I think the I I the cat agrees to this. It knows exactly what it's doing. Yeah, exactly. I'm so pretty. Yeah, exactly. Sorry about that. Um it's when it's when the cat really agrees with what I'm saying. She comes up on the table. Um so but the point is is that um this kind of rush towards physical sovereignty for me, I thought the natural end state would be digital sovereignty off the back of that. So that was the kind of contrarian take we had taken. And then yeah, we raised this kind of 11 million in funding. I think what what was interesting is obviously we talked it up to 20 and the reason was we were growing quite quickly and we were thinking either we're going to go and what raise a price around now or frankly we're going to go and raise more of a what I'd say like a strategic round. So at the end of last year we decided to take some strategic defense funding from a couple of American investors. So one was called Scout based in Austin, Texas. And then the other one was based in uh between SF and Nashville could be Artist who are predominantly a biotech firm but they'd done like the series D of Palantir. They'd done the seed round of Second Front. So they were quite well known in the national security pet space in the US. And then the third investor was a angel investor actually called Gocool who's been extremely helpful to us in our kind of like product engineering um hiring. So you know, it was definitely in the three phases that we raised that funding um but it was as we were hitting specific inflection points. So I want to take a step back. There's two pieces I want to unpack a little bit. So one is how did you get in front of these people? Like how did how did you was it you know, just navigating a bunch of conversations talk to 200 people or did you just talk to like five? Like how did you navigate the actual initial conversations with those investors? Yeah, it's a it's a good question. I think when I look back um it was through uh so we we made I made it a point of always having like really uh really good angel investors. Um so whenever I was doing a round, I would also I would also frankly be looking at who are going to be the best strategic angel investors to have around this round. And then that would always help get in front of the right investors for the next round. Um and then also early in the you know, even before the pre-seed we'd done a very very small family and friends round but I I put a couple of really good technologists that I knew and trusted who'd had their own business exit. So I'd had a friend who had had quite a large exit to Facebook when he was in his early 20s who then facilitated a couple of introductions to the right VCs. And I think frankly just because I'd had quite an interesting experience with the first business it it did gave me it gave me a little bit of an edge getting into the kind of right conversations with the right folks because you know, when I look back at it now and I see folks you know, raising those first rounds, it's such like a shark infested water type thing. You know, you see all these brokers who you know, seem to promise the world. Um and I think it's it can be really confusing just where you start. I think for me it was it's about like finding you know, the right investor who invests in the right part of the market for where you are. And not just from a stage perspective but also from an industry vertical perspective. Um so for us with IQ it was very much they were deep tech. They invested in the right stage in the market for where we were at. And then as we grew, it was just much easier. I mean a lot of folks kind of started to know who we who we were and then when we started doing stuff with um pieces of the US government, they started referring us to investors cuz they were like, oh hey, by the way, have you heard of this investor in X? Um they invest in a lot of the companies we work with. So actually also quite cost and the driven was for me was interesting. It was something I hadn't anticipated. So that's something that you know, doesn't come up often but you know, when you're working with such large organizations, governments, uh enterprise, there's often these types of relationships or experience they've had exposure to especially in defense tech because up until recently it's been completely overlooked. Yeah, really until the war of Ukraine uh in Ukraine like defense tech was on you know, the back burner and and you kind of started before. You know, you kind of took that gamble and that that before really defense tech to uh blew up. So uh in that world those types of you know, relationships are a lot stronger. Uh it's good to see an example of that. Absolutely. And I think actually you know, I I I expected Ukraine to be the catalyst for that. Um it actually for me in my experience it kind of wasn't in the sense of like we even started getting interest from some you know, government institutions in say 2023 but in some investors were saying to us, oh no, you definitely shouldn't take this cuz it's military defense. At the time that the war was going on in Ukraine, it was actually for me not until the kind of geopolitical tension with the new administration literally towards the tail end of 2024 um with the new kind of Trump administration that it would that for me was the big catalyst. That was the first time cuz it was the threat of Trump coming out of NATO. It was all the stuff. I think for kind of Europe writ large it was the first like real oh moment. This is you know, we need to change. We need to stand on our own two feet here. So yeah, there've definitely been a couple of real catalyst moments. No, that's a good example. And so the other point I want to go back to was what are your milestones that you're presenting to investors especially in a this is interesting cuz in deep tech you know, it's not always as clear as like revenue and SAS metrics turn, you know, that kind of stuff. It it can often be very different. So what were some of the kind of key milestones or metrics that you were presenting to investors to kind of get them excited about your momentum? Yeah, I think you're making um I think building a business like this it's almost making the argument that it's going to be really category defining cuz you're right. You're not you're not going to present a bunch of like KPIs around you know, churn one month to next. You're trying to prove that this is going to be critical infrastructure not just for banks and airlines but for national security communities which is obviously really really difficult to do. Um I think the way you do that is um again, it's all kind of customer driven. So early folks that we were working with even before the product was was um fully you know, fully baked yet. They had so much belief in it that when our VCs did reference calls with those kind of folks, they were like, we would totally use this. We still think it needs to have X, Y and Z on top or you know, it needs to have this kind of iteration on top. But they the if the customer was going to bet into kind of this kind of critical infrastructure then it was kind of um it made sense for for the VCs to invest as well. So from my perspective um it was very much customer driven and you're right even if like there's always a longer tail with these types of deals with revenue um but it was just I think investors having the confidence that this matters. Um and it mattered for the same reasons that we thought that the customer thought. So I think it's the alignment of values on that piece. Um that's a good way good way to look at it. And then when it comes to you know, kind of dual use, you know, government and private and in particular case enterprise um what's it like catering to those two different customers and you know, how does it change the product prioritization and your road map? Yeah, I think the to be a real dual use company that the dream is to have essentially a platform uh a techno a technological platform that is essentially the same because what you don't want to run is kind of bifurcated code bases where you essentially have two or three fundamental products especially this at this point. So what we do is we build this kind of infrastructure platform called Acra whereby essentially you can have enterprise integrations for your enterprise customers and then you have maybe integrations slightly deeper in the stack for NASA customers but essentially it should be very much the same. You know, the same product. The issue normally is when you then come to the sales process and the go-to-market process because they are very different GTM streams. You find for defensive customers whether it's in the kind of military space or the IC space, they are a little bit more bespoke in the sense of you'll have 90% of the product and then that integration piece you might not even know what that is but you need to kind of give over and then they they're going to want to take it the last kind of 100 yards whereas the enterprise piece should be very much repeatable and scalable. So you don't really want to be building anything on top of that. I think for me it's really back to having the right folks around you. So obviously I mentioned Josh my COO but we brought in the chairman called Nick who's been amazing and Nick was the co-founder of business called Darktrace in the UK. Um Darktrace was probably the most successful cyber security company and he was originally the co-founder chief revenue officer um signed their very first customer um then when they got to about 500 million ARR, he became the COO until they got to almost a billion ARR and obviously they they had a fairly large exit. They were public before. But Nick's knowledge of repeatable and scalable go-to-market motions has really helped us in the enterprise space. So I like to kind of build the teams to have strong assets both in defense and making sure we know how to deploy that but then also making it um as I said scalable and repeatable in the enterprise is really really important to me. So you bring up a couple good points. You talked about Nick, talked about Josh. When it comes to talent, but just for a quick stat, how big is the team now? Uh about 30 at the moment. Okay. So 30 people but you raised 20 million. So it's like when it comes to talent, it looks like you're going after you know, quality not quantity. Uh Yeah. What what do you look for? Like what's your strategy? How do you not just find these people but how do you make them leave where they're currently at and come behind you know, a young founder in a you know, new category and all this kind of ambiguity that might exist? How do you recruit them? Yeah, I think it's similar to the conversation the way we had about the venture raising piece, right? Which is people need to believe that um this is going to be category defining because um I think the days of getting top talent to come to like the software widget factory is kind of over, right? It's especially in the age of AI, you know, people can essentially vibe code or no code their own applications. I think when you're trying to convince, you know, the top talent in the world to join, it has to be for something category defining. And look, we don't compete with folks like Palantir, but we have a similar business model in the sense of we are very dual purpose and Palantir was the first to do that really, really well. But it's been defining not just in the kind of um product space, but working on really significant challenges. And for me, that's been the way that we've frankly we we've been able to hire folks that would tend to join potentially much more mature companies than ours and we've been able to attract people away from extremely highly paid gigs in other places. And that's because it's not for for us just that we are solving an enterprise problem, but we're solving especially when it comes to national security, problems that genuinely are defining for the kind of geopolitical age that we live in. And it comes back to like is this person going to wake up and feel energized to build the company that we're trying to build? And it's the same for me. It's like I wake up so infused by what we're doing just because it really, really matters especially this crazy world that we live in today. So I think it really comes back to the mission and whether you're building a company that's actually really going to be defining in 10 years. Real quick, if you're a founder doing over 5 million in revenue and want to know what the best $100 million plus founders are doing to fuel their growth, then make sure to subscribe to our $100 million exits newsletter. Get the playbooks that are proven on how to fund, grow, and sell your business. I'll even give you a curated list of investors that want to invest in your business. It's totally free. All you have to do is click that link down below, subscribe, do it now. I promise it's worth it. You won't regret it. You got nothing to lose. Go ahead, subscribe now. Back to the show. I imagine there's haters on the other side that say, you know, category defining like we don't need this category and or you're not how are you going to be the guy? Like when you get that kind of rebuttal, one it's usually a clear sign they're probably not a fit, but um how do you typically handle those objections to building a category defining company? I guess I've been fortunate I guess I'm fortunate in the sense that I don't have to really speak to those people. Um you know, normally if I'm speaking to them, there's a reason that I'm on the phone to them. Um and I think you know, we have this funny uh situation in the UK where it's really hard to start a company in the sense of like and I I'll give this I often give this one story of when I was starting a company in the UK, everyone here told me the 20 reasons it would fail, whereas all my friends in the States were like what can we do that would help you get to the next stage? It's just a really, really different different attitude. But then in the UK, you kind of get to this place where like you have enough momentum that people then really want to get behind you and almost double down even more. So I think we're at this stage of like I think we're probably one of if if not the only like really fast growing dual purpose company to come out of the UK. And yeah, and for me, that comes down to like there's a big arbitrage of like raising capital in the US and the experience and knowledge set in the US and then deploying it in Europe. I think for me, that's still a real really big arbitrage. And I think for that reason like normally when I'm speaking to folks we're mature enough that they can really see the direction of travel. And then frankly like coming back to the CoinShares story, I think the fact that I've seen what good looks like is really helpful. The fact that obviously Josh spent 12 years at Palantir, the fact that our chairman co-founded a multi-billion dollar company, I think it's really helpful that the key exact team have already seen what good looks like. I think that gives people a lot of confidence when they walk through the door as well. Um cuz honestly they they say that failure is uh really good learning experience and absolutely it is, but I think also seeing what good looks like is incredibly important in the early days. Well, that it choose the definite choose the the latter. Yeah, me too. Me too. >> times stories. You know, failure definitely, you know, hardens people and you know, you're sure peripherals on, but uh you know, especially at early age kind of seeing what a winning company, you know, takes could be massively transformational. Um So you you kind of bring up this UK US arbitrage. You've already touched on it a little bit. It's it's quite the anomaly for someone like yourself to build in the UK, choose to build in the UK and even, you know, the CoinShares story to build in the UK. Um I guess kind of talk us a little bit about your your perception of the UK uh call the venture landscape. What's kind of your take on the market right now? Um well, we're jokingly say how long do you have, but I I know we're pressed for time. I mean look, this is a really big thorny question right now. I think it's kind of almost challenging the psyche of the country itself um because we're really battling for kind of identity identity especially when it comes to growth cuz the prime minister has said, you know, he wants uh the UK's first trillion dollar company to be built here, but that necessitates a a lot of questions. I mean for me, I look at the fact that um you know, we had we've we've essentially had two really defining companies outside of fintech cuz we've had some really cool fintech companies that were also uh um there was a unique moment in time where open banking law slightly changed etc. But outside of the fintech space, we've had Stripe that no one really knows was originally the founders were originally from from this side of the pond. And then we had ARM which obviously left a while ago. So those were two really incredible companies. I think there are some real challenges here and a lot of it is attitude and a lot of it is cultural. Um I think there is great talent here. The problem is and this is not my quote. I I read this the other day or potentially was in another podcast, but someone said one of the issues is for every tier one founder you have, you essentially have to have five or six tier one operators to surround them. If you then multiply that, we don't we just don't have enough talent here. We definitely have the right sorts of folks, but for the scale of the amount of really big companies that we want to build in the UK, it just doesn't exist, right? It's why we're hiring so much in the US right now. So we do have a presence in the US and folks like Goku, one of our new investors is very much helping us hire in SF, in Austin and also in New York. Um so I think you know, I don't want to kind of get into this too much cuz I know we can be here all day talking about it, but in terms of like where we go to attract the best talent, I think it's it's a mixture of it being the best place to live and we talked about this a little bit Jason before. I mean London was an incredible city. I think it was probably the best city in the world maybe like 10, 15 years ago. I think we have lost a little bit of where we wanted to be now. I think that's fixable, but I think it's it does really take into account when you're trying to attract people from other great cities like New York, do people actually want to live in London, right? I think that's point one. I think point two, making it an attractive place to build and that's that comes down to things like taxation, but it also comes down to things like, you know, cultural attitudes and how do we perceive success? Um and also the UK is a funny place, right? I mean I can say this as a Brit. We are we are quite a funny island just because like we have so much history wrapped up in how we look at success. I said to someone the other day that I kind of look at the UK as still being feudalism wrapped in capitalism. Um it just because we still, you know, have an eye hang and and you know, sometimes that slightly battles new entrepreneurs. It's you know, some of my friends coming from the US who I think are some of the best entrepreneurs in the world, they can't really get their head around how kind of that that piece of England works. So there are there are multiple facets to kind of solving this problem, but I think for me, if I was looking at it, the first two would be how do we make it kind of a frankly tax efficient place for the best talent in the world to actually want to come here and it makes sense for them to, you know, leave Palm Beach or leave Austin or leave some of the tax efficient places in the US to go, but also how do we make London again the best city in the world to work and live in. So I think those would be the two pieces to fix. Yeah, yeah, I got to agree with you on that one. It sounds like the current administration here in the UK wants wants talent to leave. He wants the wealthiest the builders to leave with the recent tax laws they're making and it's it's unfortunate cuz I think London has an absolute amazing, you know, culture to offer or talent, but when talent is paid less and cost of living is equal or just as high to you like New York, um you know, it just makes it so difficult to you know, her you know, talent to come in here and thrive. So I'm hoping there's some there's some shifts here in London cuz I see all the potential, but for where it's at right now, it's it's slightly concerning on where the ship is. Like I'm even considering do I stay or do I go given the economic incentives here. Yeah, absolutely. And it's it's a great shame and I know the current administration really does want to well, purports to want to see growth and and everything. It's just like I I I fear the community here is not really seeing the kind of like um you know, them them kind of turning words into into, you know, actual pragmatism. So yeah, this is obviously there's a lot of there's a lot of facets to dig into on the UK. I mean from my perspective specifically though, I mean I meant made conscious decision to stay here. I mean I've obviously I was born and raised here and lived here all my life, but I spent most of last year on a plane. Um but really now doubling down to build. I mean you are really, you know, obviously it's it's a risk in the sense of, you know, would it be easier to to to move to Palm Beach maybe or or Austin or somewhere um from a build perspective, but frankly if we want to build a British equivalent to US type softwares, we we are also doubling down and we are um you know, we've got a bunch of friends in the in the current government as well. So I know there's a huge appetite for change. I think it will just take some time to for folks to really actually hone in on what's going to make the biggest reward here. I hope it goes through and you know things turn around. It's it's it's got all the potential in the world to be one of the best places to build. They just adding kind of feudalism and capitalism comment is is very accurate to my experience here. It's fascinating coming in as an American and having some of these conversations like why why do you think this way? But your first comment earlier of just like your Brits said 20 ways you're going to go you know you're going to fail and your your Americans like yeah let's go there's 20 ways you can win. That's exactly the that's the exact definition I give off to everyone when I speak to entrepreneurs overseas about the difference. Yeah I I I think that's the summary I tend to use. I think the last point I'll make is just the I I've filmed a friend here I have this kind of thesis that there's this happy middle road in the UK whereby at the beginning everyone's like it's definitely going to fail and then once it once it looks like it's a self-fulfilling prophecy you get a lot of like buying and folks are really excited. And that's when you're in this band. But I also believe we have kind of tall poppy syndrome here where also we want to cut down the most successful companies. Whereas in the US it's like oh my god you know Nvidia you know whoever that that you know we want to double down and support our most most successful companies. Whereas here it's like now you're getting a bit too big. You know so so there's this happy like middle of the road piece and then it actually it bursts again. So like that's just that's just another recent observation in the UK. Yeah it's fascinating yeah you know you look at the like top 50 uh companies by market cap in the UK and you have AstraZeneca like 170 billion and I number 50 is you know Informa like 10 billion. Like it's such a dramatically smaller uh market cap than than the US which is Yeah. Yeah. And that it's a lot of that kind of top out yeah they want to they want to pull you down with them. They want you to be equal and at the same level and not surpassing and keeping the thing the way the way it is or way it was. So it's a fascinating culture but I want to take a step back here. We um you you've raised this money but in a way you've kind of been operating in in stealth mode. Um define what stealth meant to you as a strategy and why you chose to do that. Yeah I mean I think for us cuz we were building essentially a digital infrastructure company um the kind of complexity and sophistication of what we were building was tricky. And if I'm being honest it was probably two orders of magnitude more difficult to build than I had anticipated when I left GCHQ. So I kind of thought I'll you know I'll go and start this thing in 12 months we'll have um you know bashed it all together and be releasing. It took us a few years to build and then frankly probably another year to get into production. Um and I and then essentially we were building a couple of use cases on top of that. So one of them was around kind of secure comms in the early days was one of the first components of the iron infrastructure. Um we had a couple of others like the secure transfer of our lambs that also lived on Accra the the the platform. So as we built out this kind of robust infra and had more kind of components of the application that sitting on top it became a lot easier to talk about. But I think in the early days obviously we got a little press a little bit of press this because we you know it was quite a lot of money in the UK to have raised when we had raised that money. But I just didn't really want to talk about it because we were so heads down on building um that until we were really comfortable too which was earlier this year and frankly the kind of customer piece was so you know robust on the use cases that people were looking at we just tried to keep our heads down as much as possible cuz there's so much noise in the space as well as we know right? Um and we knew what we wanted to achieve so until we were super comfortable from a from product perspective we didn't really want to put our head too far above the parapet. So I guess in answer to your question that's really what it meant to us. Got it. Yeah cuz I you know you just some people yeah don't want competitors or whatever it might be but and then also for you you you technically closed around in beginning of the year but didn't really announce it and I guess that kind of ties into the strategy as well just not trying to focus on making a splash until the product's in the in the place that you needed it to be. Yeah absolutely. I mean we're such a product first company that it's just a piece of like I don't think it was even um I don't think we even made a point of like not announcing it for a couple of months. We were just so deep in the delivery space. Um you know and even now I mean we have like our first hardware product coming out now which is really interesting which is basically you take Accra you run it on a couple of GPUs that sit in a Pelican case in a bomb proof Pelican case and it allows you to deploy it into a hostile terrain and make essentially a segregated private network for the operators there that also you know the data connects will trade essentially out of this box that's literally a Pelican case. So that for instance that we're building which is our first hardware piece we haven't really talked about it we just got so much feedback from customers that they needed this to run on hardware components that they could deploy into the field that we just you know ran after it really quickly. And it wasn't so much of the change of course it was just we already have this platform. This was just a different deployment mechanism it was just a mechanism of deploying it on physical hardware that was going to be transportable. So all those kind of things we're just so deep in like product velocity that all the kind of external facing pieces seemed like a little bit of an afterthought. That's a pretty interesting way to look at it. And then you also kind of mentioned you know before we hopped on the call like now let's ask this question what's kind of next for you guys? You raised this you know good chunk of money kind of early you know for what would be typical of a 20 million dollar raise for a UK company. You know what's on the horizon for you guys? What do you see over the next couple years to kind of you know grow to your valuation scale and continue to to grow this market? Yeah I do foresee there'll be a quite a lot of consolidation and I think what I respected so much about um you you know you look at folks like Anduril in the US which I know Anduril obviously only does company not they're not as much dual purpose and they build really focus on building hardware. But I think what they did really well is obviously raise a bunch of capital and then deploy it by hoovering up lots of smaller companies and really consolidate themselves very quickly as the market leader. I think in Europe as we know as we talked about a little bit Jason before we jumped on the call it becomes a little bit harder here obviously because we're not one country right? If we look at Europe very large you've got so many member states and I think they'll have their own version. I mean you know you you see in Germany obviously Helsing of German answer to to Anduril. But then you get a bunch of other Helsings popping up in France or wherever or Switzerland. And so for us when we look at specifically what we do in this dual purpose um obviously we're scaling up to be very much obviously we're scaling up to be very much the UK's market leader as soon as humanly possible and then I think we will also look at the more inorganic growth of acquiring more companies especially on the continent as we look to scale kind of throughout Europe and in the US. Obviously Josh kind of runs our US component and that's doing really well but obviously becoming the de facto market leader in the UK is my main focus and then also expanding in Europe and we may look at doing that through acquisitions as well. Yeah it is becoming more and more of a topic I have with founders every day whether it's kind of selling to be a part you know being the consolidated getting consolidated into a bigger entity or being the consolidator or like the the platform that goes out and makes the acquisitions. Um there's just been so much capital that's been dispersed into these smaller companies that you know they're they're good businesses in a lot of cases or have great product they just never they're never going to materialize into a a big outcome. And so consolidation kind of creates a a win-win for for all parties involved and I just think it's going to be a natural progression across many sectors and industries and including yours. Absolutely. Yeah and there's some great technology out there. I think one of the I think one of the dangers especially in this uh subsector is um you are seeing a bit of lack of commercialization especially in the defense space cuz the the reality of this is like um raising money is great but the reality is it doesn't really mean anything unless you get on contracts and you start really shipping into production grade customer environments. And so you're seeing a real chasm of that of like you know really interesting sellers building good technology but haven't quite managed to commercialize it. And those are the you know if we can look to buy more and more companies that have great technologies that we can then also there's a way that we can bolt these technologies into Accra and it makes our platform even more robust for when we're going you know when we're expanding contracts with our customers then it it just kind of makes sense from that arbitrage piece. No it it really does. I think there's there's going to be more and more of these types of debates and discussions happening at the board level of companies across UK and US trying to think about the strategy and and what can be done. So I find it absolutely fascinating. It's great to see another example. Um I mean especially in the UK I think there's there's not as much attention on the strategy focusing across Europe. Um so as we come to to wrap here I just want to kind of put out there like what would be your advice to founders that are seeking to build a category defining company. Like what what are the attributes that you would tell founders or the advice you would tell founders to kind of focus on when it comes to actually building a category defining company or product? Um I think the first one is like not being afraid to be a bit contrarian. You know I think the reality is if going after something like this if you have a strong thesis um probably not many people will agree with you cuz if they did it would have already been built. Um so if you and I'm sure a lot of founders are like that who listen to this is you know you do have a strong thesis and and more often than not will be contrarian. I think finding the right investors and partners early on who share a similar world view um, is obviously extremely important. And then the other thing I would say is obviously, you know, the grind is, you know, the most important thing and that's something that everyone will go through. But one thing I would say about from investment, particularly, is I do always think the first round is the hardest. Um, not just not from a perspective of like, you don't have to do stuff in the in future. It's just it's just a lot easier. I mean, we don't really, um, we we get so much inbound from investors, etc. I mean, I don't really do any difficult because we're you know, obviously we just focus on product. But those first few investors that believe in you are obviously the the hardest to get just because, you know, you're, um, you know, you're you're really trying to build your thesis in the early days. But obviously that that does get a little bit easier in time. Um, and then I think the last piece I'd make I'd say is just like really focusing on product and customer is the most important thing. I mean, decreasing reliance on VC funding is always going to be the, uh, uh, you know, you know, the saving grace. And obviously we did that at Konchiers and that was quite a unique journey. I think we're, uh, we're going to strike a more of a balance with that at Valerian. So, I think that would be the last facet. Now, it's great advice and I appreciate that. And if, um, you know, any founders want to reach out to you or learn more about Valerian, what would be the the best way for them to get in contact? Um, so you I'm pretty active on LinkedIn. Um, in in the process of starting an X account and then obviously I I do I do try and respond to emails where I can, which is just max@valerian.com. So, um, either of those if they're founders that that, um, looking for help. And then, uh, imagine if talent is interested, uh, >> Absolutely. Well, then definitely use max@valerian.com. Yeah, exactly. Perfect. Uh, Max, it's been an absolute pleasure to have you on the call. I'd love to have you on for for more, but I know we got to wrap at the top of the hour here, but it's been great having you on the show and yeah, look forward to getting this out to our audience. Good stuff. Thanks, Jason. Thanks for having me. If you were inspired by today's episode, then go ahead watch this next episode. Promise it's worth it. And if you really enjoyed this last episode and you want to connect with the guest I had on today, make sure to leave a comment down below telling me why you would like an intro to this guest and I'll make it happen.