Hira Virdee spent years deep in European space R&D, building ground lasers that pin satellites and debris down to the millimetre. Fun, engaging work that kept him going for a long time, until he decided grants would never build the company he actually wanted.

So he started Foundational as a real venture and went out to raise. The result was £8.2 million, the biggest space-tech pre-seed round in Europe. In this episode he takes you through how he got into the industry, what it took to leave the grant habit behind, and how that round actually came together.

Get in touch with Hira:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/hiravirdee

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:37) What Foundational Actually Does

(03:55) How a PhD on Tumbling Space Debris Became a Business

(08:19) How a Stolen Phone Pulled Him Into Startups

(10:54) Why Scientists Must Sit With the Real Problem First

(16:30) Why He Spoke to 40 Satellite Operators Before Building Anything

(19:04) Why You Should Leave Your Romantic Product Idea at the Door

(24:42) Why Beaming Power to Satellites Failed and Tracking Won

(33:54) How Personal Money and Grants Kept the Company Alive

(36:05) Why He Had to Start a Brand-New Venture Company

(40:45) The Moment He Left Comfortable R&D Behind

(47:30) How He Raised Europe's Biggest Space Pre-Seed

(50:30) Why They Aimed for £1-2M and Closed £8.2M

(58:36) What Foundational Actually Sells

(1:08:53) Should You Get Grants, Customers, or Venture Capital

(1:15:14) The Lesson for Founders Still Stuck in R&D

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You will learn:

- Why years of great R&D still leave you stuck at grant scale

- What VC demands that contracts and grants never teach you

- How he first got into the space industry (and stayed)

- Why talking to customers beats falling in love with your product idea

- Why a brand-new company was the only way out of the R&D loop

- How Europe's biggest space-tech pre-seed actually came together

- Why LOIs are nearly useless

Justin Lane (CEO & Co-Founder of CulturePulse) spent years in the most volatile corners of the world trying to understand one thing: why do entire societies behave the way they do? He had a PhD, a background in cognitive science, and a growing frustration with an AI industry obsessed with language models that could write like humans, but had no idea how humans actually think, decide, or act. So he built something completely different: AI that models the psychology of entire populations, not just their words.

The road there was long: conflict zones used as live testing grounds, predictions that came true, the UN knocking on his door after spotting his work on Twitter, NATO DIANA backing his work, and a first investor ticket secured over what Justin thought was just a coffee meeting and more.

In this episode, Justin delivers a masterclass on what it takes to turn deep research into a real business, how to know when your idea is genuinely ahead of its time versus just wrong, how to sell into institutions that move at geological speed, why European founders chronically leave money on the table when fundraising, and what the transition from academic to CEO actually costs you.

Get in touch with Justin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-justin-lane/

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:48) What CulturePulse Actually Does

(06:47) Why Studying Real Conflict Zones Built the Product

(17:31) Why LLMs Can't Do What Governments Actually Need

(25:13) When to Stop Publishing and Start Building

(37:53) How the Defence Detour Became the Real Business

(39:16) How to Land a Government Customer with Zero Sales Team

(47:46) How to Get Your First Investor Check

(56:03) How to Hire People Who Won't Quit When It Gets Hard

(01:06:45) How Government Procurement Actually Works

(01:16:05) What NATO Diana Is Actually Worth

(01:23:39) Why You Should Raise More Than You Think

(01:40:08) The One Lesson for Every DefenceTech Founder-----------------------------------------------You will learn:- What it looks like to test your technology in active conflict zones- How to know if your idea is genuinely ahead of its time or just wrong- Why academic research moves too slow for the real world, and what to do about it- How to sell a technology that has no existing market- What it actually takes to go from researcher to CEO and what academia never prepares you for- How the UN became a client after finding CulturePulse on Twitter- Why European founders consistently undervalue their companies- How to raise money in Europe when the ecosystem is against risk- Why LLMs cannot model human behaviour and what actually can-----------------------------------------------Follow Martin Majercin on X:https://www.x.com/monsfrostFollow Martin Majercin on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/monsfrost/Follow CulturePulse on LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/company/culturepulse-ai

Viktoriia Yaremchuk (CEO & Co-Founder of Farsight Vision) was handed a problem nobody had solved: Ukrainian frontline units drowning in drone footage with no way to process it, sitting manually watching hour-long videos to spot something useful. She had a PhD, a software background, and friends calling from the front asking for tools that didn't exist. So she built them.

What followed was three years inside one of the most unforgiving product environments on earth - geospatial AI and digital twin technology tested not in a lab, but in GPS-denied warzones where the users can't always tell you what they need because the information is classified, and getting it wrong costs lives. From a first investor cheque of ~$100K with little more than an MVP, to contracts spreading brigade by brigade through word of mouth on Signal, to a team now spread across four countries, many of them with husbands, brothers, and fathers serving on the frontline.

In this episode, Viktoriia delivers a masterclass in building and selling in defencetech, how Farsight Vision actually works, how to sell to a military customer when there's no conventional sales cycle, what it takes to build and lead a team when there's no end date on the mission, and what Europe still doesn't understand about the war being fought on its doorstep.

Get in touch with Viktoriia:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktoriia-yaremchuk-3ba80116

Want to get hired by Farsight Vision

https://farsightvision.hurma.work/public-vacancies

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Chapters:

(00:00) Introduction

(01:45) What Farsight Vision Actually Does

(17:40) How to Find the Right Co-Founder

(27:08) The Personal Turning Point That Started Farsight Vision

(46:44) From Idea to Battlefield: MVP in Months

(53:07) The Biggest Mistake They Made in the First Year

(01:01:00) How to Hire for a Mission-Driven Team Under Extreme Stress

(01:07:04) Raising the First $100K: What Investors Saw Before Victoria Did

(01:16:59) How to Price a Defence Software Product Nobody Has Ever Built Before

(01:32:10) From One Sale to Hundreds: How Word of Mouth Works at the Frontline

(01:43:48) What Is Darkstar and Why It Changed Everything

(01:57:40) Closing a €7M Round: What Actually Got Investors to Say Yes

(02:06:13) The Most Important Lesson for Building DefenceTech

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You will learn:

- How to sell to a military customer with no procurement process, no sales cycle, and classified feedback

- Why your product development methodology breaks the moment it meets a warzone

- How word of mouth on Signal became Farsight Vision's entire go-to-market strategy

- Why founders undersell what they're building — and how the right framing changes everything

- What it actually takes to lead a team when the mission has no end date

- How to get your first defence contract with nothing but an MVP and a problem worth solving

- Why co-creation and ecosystem thinking beats going it alone in defencetech

- What European defence is still getting wrong — and why Ukraine has already figured it out

- How digital twins are changing the doctrine of modern warfare