DefTechLink podcasts are practical conversations about how defence markets actually work, starting with the United States and extending to the UK and allied systems. We speak with practitioners, operators, founders, and programme insiders about funding, experimentation, procurement, and why transitions stall or succeed. The focus is lived experience, not hype: what decisions matter, where risk sits, and how defence pathways behave in practice.
DefTechPod
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22 episodes
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Podcast Overview
DefTechLink podcasts are practical conversations about how defence markets actually work, starting with the United States and extending to the UK and allied systems. We speak with practitioners, operators, founders, and programme insiders about funding, experimentation, procurement, and why transitions stall or succeed. The focus is lived experience, not hype: what decisions matter, where risk sits, and how defence pathways behave in practice.
Language
🇺🇲
Publishing Since
2/15/2026
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Recent Episodes
July 10, 2026
From Pitch to Adoption: James Murray on NATO DIANA and Defence Innovation
<p>In this episode of DefTechPod, Erica Dill-Russell is joined by James Murray, Accelerator Manager at Janus, the UK accelerator delivering the NATO DIANA programme in partnership with UK Defence Innovation.</p><p>James brings a wide-ranging background in entrepreneurship, venture capital, university innovation and early-stage company building. Before joining Janus, he worked across entrepreneurship education, autonomous systems, drone companies and university seed funding, including the Oxford Seed Fund. His move into defence has been driven by a desire to use that experience to support founders building technologies that can matter to national security, sovereignty and the NATO alliance.</p><p>The conversation starts with what NATO DIANA is actually designed to do. James explains how the programme supports emerging defence and deep-tech companies from across the NATO alliance, taking them through validation, testing, mentoring, exposure to end users and investor readiness. Janus delivers the UK programme, bringing together business support, science and technology, defence and security expertise, and deep-tech investment experience.</p><p>Erica and James also discuss what founders often misunderstand about defence as a market. Defence is formal, regulated and difficult to navigate, but it is also deeply relationship-driven. Conversations after events, introductions through trusted networks, and informal moments around conferences can matter just as much as the formal programme itself. For companies without a defence background, learning how to build those relationships is part of the work.</p><p>The episode then moves into dual-use technology, and James offers a useful challenge to the way the term is often used. Rather than treating dual-use as a neat technical category, he argues that it is often better understood as a business and market strategy. The real question is not whether a product can be labelled dual-use, but whether the capability is genuinely useful to an end user, whether it has been validated, and whether the company understands how to translate between commercial and defence markets.</p><p>There is also a practical discussion about pitching. James has seen thousands of companies and is clear about what good pitches need: a clear problem, a defined customer or end user, evidence of validation, a realistic view of the market, and a strong call to action. He and Erica discuss where technically strong founders often go wrong, particularly when they get trapped in technical detail, fail to explain the operational problem, or do not show that they have spoken to real users.</p><p>One of the strongest themes in the episode is the need to “get out of the building”. James and Erica both stress that founders cannot build credible defence companies from behind a screen. They need to speak to users, attend industry days, test assumptions, join relevant programmes, listen hard, and use feedback to iterate quickly. For companies coming into defence with no track record, this early learning and relationship-building can be just as important as the technology itself.</p><p>The episode also highlights one of NATO DIANA’s most important advantages: reach across the alliance. James explains how the programme can give companies exposure beyond a single national market, connecting them with different NATO countries, different ways of working, end users, test opportunities and potential routes to adoption. He also talks about the Rapid Adoption Service and why access to a NATO-level programme can significantly change the commercial opportunity for the right company.</p><p>This is a useful episode for founders, SMEs, investors and non-traditional suppliers trying to understand NATO DIANA, dual-use company building, defence pitching, end-user validation and how to move from an interesting technology to something defence users can actually adopt.</p><p></p>
July 3, 2026
From Cool to Credible: Tim Stringer on Gravity, Jet Suits and Defence Adoption
<p>In this episode of DefTechPod, Erica Dill-Russell is joined by Tim Stringer, VP Defence at Gravity Industries, the UK company behind the Gravity Jet Suit.</p><p>Founded by Richard Browning in 2017, Gravity Industries began as something many people saw as extraordinary, futuristic and almost impossible to categorise. Since then, the company has taken the Jet Suit from spectacle to serious capability, demonstrating it with users including the Royal Marines, NATO mountain warfare units, the US Navy’s Joint Prototyping and Experimentation Maritime Programme, and the NATO Maritime Interdiction Operational Training Centre.</p><p>Tim brings a valuable perspective to the conversation. Before joining Gravity, he served in the Royal Air Force and later moved through defence technology companies including Improbable and Skyfarer. That background gives him first-hand experience of both sides of the defence innovation problem: users who need better tools, faster, and companies trying to bring genuinely novel technology into a procurement system that does not always know where to place it.</p><p>The conversation looks at what it takes to move a hardware-first, visually spectacular capability from “that looks cool” to “how would we actually use this?” Tim explains how Gravity has had to manage both the benefit and burden of the Jet Suit’s extraordinary public profile. The same thing that attracts attention can also make people dismiss it as a gimmick, so credibility has to be built through serious operational demonstrations, direct user engagement and practical use-case development.</p><p>Erica and Tim discuss the importance of the “show me” factor in defence. For novel technology, especially hardware, a pitch deck is rarely enough. Users need to see the capability in realistic conditions, understand what it can and cannot do, and begin to imagine how it could be incorporated into their own concepts of operation. For Gravity, that has meant demonstrating rapid mobility across difficult terrain, maritime boarding scenarios, mountain environments and other situations where moving a person quickly, safely and unpredictably may offer operational value.</p><p>The episode also explores what dual-use really means when it is more than a label. Gravity has a strong commercial events and entertainment business, while also developing serious defence and security use cases. Tim explains how the two sides of the business support each other without becoming confused, and how the same underlying technology can serve very different customers when the use case is properly understood.</p><p>For non-traditional suppliers, there are useful lessons throughout. Tim talks about why companies need curiosity, humility and empathy when engaging operational users, why they should avoid assuming they already understand the problem, and why hiring veterans or service leavers can help translate technology into language defence users recognise. Erica also highlights the importance of helping veterans turn deep subject-matter expertise into commercial value.</p><p>The episode closes with a practical discussion on how companies move from interest to procurement. Tim points to the importance of finding the right user, building a credible champion, understanding funding and contracting routes, and knowing when to be tenacious and when to let the system work through its process.</p><p>This is a useful listen for defence innovators, dual-use companies, hardware founders, veterans moving into industry, and anyone trying to understand how genuinely novel technology can earn credibility inside defence.</p><p></p>
June 26, 2026
Fast, Lean and Fundable: Mads Jensen on AI Founders and Seed Investment
<p>In this episode of DefTechPod, Erica Dill-Russell is joined by Mads Jensen, Managing Partner at SuperSeed, for a practical conversation about AI, seed investment, technical founders and what it takes to build a credible company in a very noisy market.</p><p>Mads is a former entrepreneur, technologist and investor who has spent two decades building and scaling technology businesses. At SuperSeed, he backs ambitious technical founders across the UK and Europe, with a particular focus on AI, enterprise technology and what he describes as “physical AI”: the next generation of AI systems that can help software understand, navigate and transform the real world.</p><p>The conversation looks at what investors are really listening for when founders pitch AI companies. Mads explains why buzzwords are not enough, why “me too” AI companies are hard to fund, and why the strongest founders usually have a clear view of how the world is changing, a deep understanding of the customer problem, and enough technical capability to build something genuinely differentiated.</p><p>Erica and Mads also discuss the changing shape of early-stage company building. With tools like Claude Code and other AI-enabled development systems, small teams can now build faster, iterate more quickly and get much further before raising significant capital. For Mads, that changes investor expectations. Founders should be able to show evidence of customer engagement, real learning and momentum before asking for large amounts of money.</p><p>The episode also covers founder risk, pitch quality, customer discovery, internationalisation and the difference between raising capital to scale and raising capital simply to buy time. Mads is clear that early-stage founders should stay lean for as long as possible, learn quickly, test their assumptions with customers and only raise serious capital once they have a stronger signal that they are onto something.</p><p>For the defence and dual-use audience, the conversation turns to where AI investment is heading next. Mads discusses why SuperSeed is interested in technologies that transform real-world sectors such as manufacturing, logistics, construction, energy and agriculture, and why many of these areas naturally overlap with defence and security applications. He also gives his view on dual-use companies, the extra requirements that appear when defence becomes part of the customer base, and why companies need to understand the difference between selling to industry and selling directly to government.</p><p>The episode closes with a wider discussion about sovereignty, European supply chains and the scale of the AI transformation still ahead. Mads argues that we are still in the early stages of AI’s impact, and that by 2030 many sectors may look very different from how they do today.</p><p>This is a useful listen for technical founders, AI companies, defence and dual-use start-ups, investors, and anyone trying to understand what credible AI company-building looks like beyond the buzzwords.</p><p></p>
22 total episodes available
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This podcast updates daily.
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This podcast is available on 4 platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more. You can also use the RSS feed directly.
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Yes, this podcast regularly features guests.
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