The book
The Four Gates of Defence Funding
The full methodology: 18 steps in six themes, five deep chapters, two reconstructed company trajectories, and the cohort analysis that revised the framework's own claims. Built on the same deal data you can explore in the live investor graph.
The hook, from the data: one award: 50.7% graduate to Series A+ vs 75% for sequenced multi-award companies. The difference is not winning calls, it is wiring them into a timetable. The book is the wiring diagram.
It builds on the step-based tradition of entrepreneurship education pioneered at MIT, restructured for a market where the buyer is a procurement system.
Free
The framework
The four gates, the 18 steps at summary depth, the discipline rule, and one dataset per gate. Generous enough to be shared and cited.
Read it on the gates pagesFree sample chapter
Step 11: Map the Budget Cycle
The methodology's heart, in full: the three government clocks, the prime lane, and the rule that schedules every raise within 90 days of a proof-point. The chapter nobody tells first-time defence founders.
Read the full chapterWhat is inside
Part I and II · The framework and the themes
- I The Path, who buys, through what door
- II The Position, why you, durably
- III The Timetable, when, on whose calendar
- IV The Money, what it costs, what it returns
- V The Proof, what convinces the system
- VI The Plan, the whole, scheduled
The five deep chapters
- Step 3: The Triple Personawho buys: the operator, the program officer, the political sponsor
- Step 9: The Sovereign Corewhy you: the moat your buyer-nation cannot afford to let die
- Step 11: Map the Budget Cyclewhen: three government clocks plus the prime lane. The free sample chapter
- Step 14: Cost of Contract Acquisitionhow much: the arithmetic behind the sector's 2.7x round sizes
- Step 16: The Minimum Viable Procurable Productwhat: the product an operator wants and a contracting officer can legally buy
Part III · The evidence
Kraken Technology
The textbook run: DASA contract to $1B Series B in about 31 months, every proof preceding its capital, sovereigns and primes on one cap table.
Stark Defence
The compressed run: gates overlapping in about 22 months, a EUR 1B valuation recorded in the same cycle as a EUR 536M procurement anchor.
Both reconstructed from the tracked deal data, coverage limits stated. The interactive case studies