# Founder10x - From Data Sovereignty to Battlefield Defence - Max Buchan, Co-founder & CEO, Valarian

An episode of [VC10X - Investing, Venture Capital, Asset Management, Family Office, Wealth Management](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1632806986), 12 Aug 2025, 47 min.

Audio: https://anchor.fm/s/a453ddd4/podcast/play/106777467/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2025-7-12%2F405547955-44100-2-d854f3030fd5c.mp3

Max Buchan is the Co-founder & CEO of Valarian, a dual-purpose defense tech company that emerged from stealth with a $20M seed funding round. ⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com Valarian website - https://www.valarian.com/ Max Buchan LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxbuchan 🎙️ Hosted by Prashant Choubey Follow Prashant on X - https://x.com/ChoubeySahab Follow Prashant on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/choubeysahab Key Topics: - Technology: Secure enclaves ("Acro") deployed from public cloud to battlefield hardware in Pelican cases - Defense Pivot: Approached by US government; co-founder Josh brings 12 years at Palantir + 18 years in US special operations - Dual-Use Market: Same platform serves airlines/banks, enterprises and Department of Defense - Funding: Backed by early Palantir investors, Scout Ventures, MD1, and Gokul Rajaram (Coinbase/Pinterest board) Key Insights: - European nations increasingly need digital sovereignty solutions independent from American software - Mission-driven hiring can compete with higher-paying tech giants - Dual-use technology requires different go-to-market strategies for enterprise vs. government - Building critical infrastructure creates natural competitive moats Timestamps: (00:00) Introduction (03:07) Max's background at CoinShares and founding of Valarian (05:59) Explanation of Valarian's core technology and dual-purpose approach (08:31) Cybersecurity and digital infrastructure focus (10:29) Building trust and credibility with government and enterprise clients (14:14) Go-to-market strategies for enterprise and government sectors (17:47) Challenges of selling to government clients (21:00) Fundraising approach and investor selection (24:41) Capital allocation strategy (26:28) Hiring strategy and attracting top talent (29:23) Finding high-quality talent from smaller companies (31:24) Building a moat and defensibility for the company (33:32) Product market fit considerations (35:30) Key metrics for tracking company performance (38:30) Organizational structure for managing enterprise and government segments (40:49) Learning and seeking advice as a first-time founder (43:03) Managing mental health and maintaining relationships (44:49) Most pivotal decision in Valarian's journey (46:12) Closing remarks and ways to follow Max For sponsorship or guest appearance requests, write to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com Subscribe to VC10X on Youtube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts.

## Transcript

[0:00] And we were approached by an area of the US government and
[0:04] you know, frankly, we didn't go to them.
[0:05] They just asked if we could scale this kind of enclave and
[0:08] take tight technology to suit a very specific user requirement.
[0:13] Never in in a million years did I think we'd be deploying that
[0:16] to physical infra in a Pelican case that's going to be deployed
[0:19] into a battlefield. Valerian's one of the obviously
[0:22] the highest growth dual purpose companies in in Europe and
[0:25] turning the UK. So we had some kind of early
[0:27] Palantir investors back us, which was amazing.
[0:30] I don't just want to take a bunch of random dollars from
[0:32] from a round of people. I'm trying to find the best
[0:34] investors that can be the most helpful.
[0:36] And so in that round, obviously scouts, the very defense focused
[0:40] fund in Austin, TX. So that was very much a linchpin
[0:44] into that market. Wasn't loads of different funds.
[0:46] It was only two funds that led it.
[0:48] And then we had Gokul come on board as an Angel as well, who's
[0:50] really helped us in the hiring process.
[0:53] I'm a very, very firm believer that there are these kind of
[0:56] three responsibilities that we face, right?
[0:58] It's the setting a vision, hiring people way better than
[1:02] you that are really, really smart that can execute on the
[1:05] vision. And then frankly, just making
[1:06] sure you don't run out of money. Hey everyone, this is Prashanth
[1:11] and I'll be host of the VC Tennex podcast.
[1:13] And today we have Max Pachan with us.
[1:16] Max is the Co founder and CEO of Valerian, dual purpose defence
[1:21] tech company that just emerged from stealth with a $20 million
[1:24] funding ground. What started as a solution for
[1:27] Data Solar A&T has evolved into something much bigger.
[1:31] Max never imagined that the secure Enclave technology he'd
[1:34] built would end up deployed in Pelican cases on battlefields,
[1:38] protecting critical infrastructure for both Fortune
[1:40] 500 companies and defence departments.
[1:43] In today's episode, Max shares how his previous company went
[1:46] from zero to 55 million in revenue in just 18 to 24 months,
[1:51] the challenges of building technology that serves both
[1:54] enterprises and the Department of Defence, and why he believes
[1:58] we are at a really interesting moment in history for building
[2:00] Defence first companies in Europe.
[2:03] So without wasting any time, let's dive straight in.
[2:05] This episode is sponsored by my own podcasting agency called
[2:09] Podcast 10X, where I help venture capitalist, asset
[2:12] managers, allocators and family offices and starting their own
[2:15] podcast and building a strong brand.
[2:18] Podcast NX is designed in a way to work well with the busy
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[2:34] It's the only form of marketing where you can showcase your
[2:37] strong network. In other words, access to
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[3:00] I'll make sure to add the link in the description below.
[3:03] Enjoy this episode. Hey Max, so good to have you on
[3:05] the VC10X podcast. How are you doing?
[3:07] Yeah, great. Thanks mate.
[3:08] Thanks for having me today on a very hot London day.
[3:12] Yeah, it's a pleasure having you on and I wish you all the best
[3:15] for facing the heat. There.
[3:18] Yeah. So to start things off, let's
[3:21] talk about how Valerian has just emerged from stealth and that is
[3:25] making significant raise in your round of $20 million also
[3:29] disclosed. So can you give us a brief
[3:31] background about your personal journey, especially your
[3:34] experiences with Coin Share and how that ultimately led to Co
[3:38] founding of Valerian and what is it all about?
[3:42] Yeah, totally. So I had a really interesting
[3:44] experience when I came out of university here in London.
[3:47] So I joined the very early team of a start up back then called
[3:51] Coin Shares and we hadn't really raised any VC capital as it as
[3:55] it were. But we launched the first
[3:58] product to market which was an exchange traded derivative out
[4:01] in Stockholm. And that kind of business just
[4:03] really rocketed. I think it was in about 1824
[4:06] months we went from zero to about 55 million in revenue.
[4:10] The team grew very significantly.
[4:11] So it was from a handful of people to yeah, I think a couple
[4:14] of 100 at its peak. But I think for me, what the
[4:17] really interesting thing was tracking was we'd opened up
[4:22] quite a few entities. So we had offices in New York,
[4:24] London, Stockholm, Paris and Jersey, that being the old
[4:27] jersey, not the new one. And there are a lot of different
[4:30] kind of a lot of different regulatory authorities we were
[4:34] adhering to whether it's the SEC in the US, the, the, the FCA in
[4:37] London, etcetera. And one of the issues that I was
[4:40] looking at I'm really interested in was around data exfiltration.
[4:44] So to give you an example, we had, you know, 10s of thousands
[4:47] of customers in Sweden alone, none of Swedish shader should
[4:50] exfiltrate to to the UK, et cetera, another British shader
[4:53] to to France. So I ended up leaving when I was
[4:56] 24 to start Valerian as a digital infrastructure company.
[4:59] And the idea was how do you try and basically compartmentalize,
[5:04] compute silo data, all that kind of stuff so that you can you can
[5:09] securely store and make data sovereign to the nation that it
[5:13] was produced in. So that was the idea.
[5:15] It was quite a contrarian view at the time.
[5:18] This was probably mid 2020 when I was trying to set this up.
[5:22] But you know, for me from a macro kind of political
[5:25] viewpoint, you know, I'd lived through Brexit in the UK and
[5:29] this kind of race toward physical insulting, right.
[5:31] Hong Kong had been obviously a seized 20 years before.
[5:35] We anticipated it was going to be obviously we've we've got
[5:38] this war raging on still for for Ukraine after after a few years
[5:42] and then of course, the question mark over Taiwan.
[5:44] So for me, like the kind of trend towards like physical
[5:48] sovereignty necessitated a, a trend towards digital
[5:52] sovereignty as well. So for me, that's really where
[5:54] the idea for the business game and then it was all about, you
[5:57] know, building the right team to execute on that.
[5:59] Absolutely. Yeah, that's quite interesting.
[6:02] And Valerian is described as a dual purpose defence tech
[6:05] company, right? For our listeners, can you
[6:07] briefly explain the core problem that Valerian is solving for
[6:10] both enterprises and governments, particularly around
[6:13] data control and communication in high trust environments?
[6:17] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so fundamentally what we
[6:20] do is we build secure enclaves that can be deployed in an
[6:23] environment whether that's public clouds or a piece of
[6:25] hardware. I mean it goes pretty much from
[6:27] one extreme to the other. And then within those enclaves
[6:30] or you can even think of them in a non-technical way, it's
[6:32] basically secure bubbles. Then you can run applications
[6:35] within those bubbles. And on that day there are
[6:37] exfiltrates into other areas, either other areas of the cloud
[6:42] or even frankly different nation states, which is where we come
[6:45] back to. I think for me, going into
[6:49] defence base has been really interesting because it wasn't
[6:50] something that we necessarily like sought to do.
[6:54] I often tell the story, which is quite amusing, which is that my
[6:57] Co founder Josh, who we'd met a couple of years in and he really
[7:00] came in a couple of years later, but still really founded the
[7:03] Brown with me. He'd spent 12 years in a
[7:06] business called Palantir, but he'd also served 18 years in
[7:09] total in kind of U.S. special operations.
[7:13] And I don't think, you know, Josh has spent so much time in
[7:16] the government space, in the defence space.
[7:17] I don't think he really wanted to build a defence company again
[7:19] or, or Joe Papa's company again. But the reality was this kind of
[7:22] enclave technology that we was, you know, high level read to
[7:26] segregate information and secure data in specific ways.
[7:29] There obviously are a lot of military use cases for that.
[7:33] And we were approached by an area of the US government and,
[7:37] you know, frankly, we didn't go to them.
[7:38] They just asked if we could scale this kind of enclave type
[7:41] technology to suit a very specific user requirement.
[7:46] So for us, it was never really that we went, we went to do it.
[7:49] We were kind of pulled into that space.
[7:51] But for me now servicing kind of the national security community
[7:54] has been fascinating. But to go back to your, your
[7:57] question, really the, the premise really of dual purpose
[8:00] here and or dual use technologies, How do you build
[8:03] something that has applicability to both sides of the fence,
[8:07] right? So this this enclave technology
[8:10] we've built that we call Accra, you know, we can ship this to
[8:13] airlines, banks, pharmaceutical companies to, you know,
[8:16] compartmentalize their compute or, or, or store data in
[8:19] specific ways. But we can also sell the very
[8:21] same platform to the Department of Defense, right?
[8:24] Obviously there are slightly different integration points in
[8:28] times of how that that's used, but that's essentially the
[8:30] thesis. Absolutely.
[8:32] That's quite interesting. So is it also can be called like
[8:36] a cybersecurity company which which can help maybe in a
[8:39] scenario 5 cyber warfare or cyber defence in a way of
[8:43] countries as well? Is that a good way to put it?
[8:45] Yeah, absolutely. I, I, I used to think we were
[8:47] very much in the cyberspace, right.
[8:49] And I think that's where definitions get a bit tricky.
[8:51] I think being in cyber generally people think specific things.
[8:54] They think about either endpoint security or firewalls or
[8:56] something like that. For us, what I realized is
[8:59] really what we are building at Valerian was digital
[9:01] infrastructure, right? It was how do you build a a
[9:04] foundational kind of deployable infra that you can deploy in any
[9:08] environment, whether that's in frankly on the battlefield,
[9:12] whether it's in the public cloud, whatever in order to
[9:14] really securely compartmentalize data.
[9:17] So that was the piece that that I realized had taken us a bit of
[9:20] out of the cyberspace. And we definitely very much do
[9:23] touch the cybersecurity arena. But this is much more
[9:25] infrastructural, like we're looking out kind of 5-10 years
[9:28] and how do we build the critical infrastructural technologies
[9:31] that's going to safeguard the data both on an enterprise
[9:35] level, but also the kind of governmental institutions that
[9:38] kind of protect our Western democratic freedom.
[9:41] So that that was really our kind of North Star.
[9:44] Got it. Interesting and operating in a
[9:47] very sensitive field, you know, working with governments, you
[9:50] know, in defence departments. One thing that is absolutely
[9:54] table stake is that you have to build that credibility and build
[9:57] that trust with the stakeholders to make them believe that, OK,
[10:00] there's a product that we can actually trust and deploy in
[10:03] those sensitive environments and see if it works, right.
[10:06] So how do you build that trust, especially in the early journey
[10:09] which you're in right now and which you were in even earlier
[10:13] to that maybe let's say a few months prior when you were
[10:17] starting out, right? How did you initially validate
[10:19] the idea and get some early traction?
[10:22] How did you convince these stakeholders that your solution
[10:26] is worthy of being deployed in such environments?
[10:29] Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think this is the
[10:31] piece that I would say that like you know the beginning we very
[10:35] much didn't target government etcetera.
[10:38] I mean it's it's renowned to be very, very long sale cycles,
[10:41] very niche, very bespoke type things.
[10:45] And when I get asked now about selling into government, for
[10:49] instance, I, I like my answers tend to be the same, which is
[10:52] that it's the same really as it's whatever kind of technology
[10:56] we are building. The, if the need is strong
[10:59] enough, there will always be a path right to procurement,
[11:02] right? And that could be in a bank, but
[11:04] it also could be in a, in a, in a defensive institution.
[11:07] I mean, if the if for instance, like Ukraine's a great example,
[11:10] I mean the the speed of procurement that kicked off
[11:13] right after the Russian invasion in in some ways, we hadn't
[11:17] really seen anything like that. But it's one that, you know, for
[11:20] instance, and I'm not talking about us here, but I'm talking
[11:22] about, you know, for instance, like drones or counter drone
[11:25] technology, how quickly that was procured in in into Ukraine.
[11:28] That would be an example of when the need is strong enough.
[11:32] Now to kind of bring this back to to Valerian, As I mentioned,
[11:35] we started it really is a solo enterprise company.
[11:39] So we are building this kind of like enclave technology to ring
[11:42] fence data for airlines or, or banks or whatever.
[11:45] Now what did help I think was the type of investor in the
[11:49] caliber investor that we had and the examples I would use on the
[11:53] UK front. And there's a, you know, there's
[11:55] a fund that I really, really rate in the UK, which is called
[11:59] MD One. And it's run by a friend of mine
[12:01] who was in the British Special Forces in the SBS and then end
[12:06] up running a, a national security focus fund in, in the
[12:09] UK and Europe. Now, he's obviously been
[12:12] immensely, immensely helpful to the journey.
[12:14] It's actually How I Met my Co founder Josh, because Josh had
[12:16] been in the US special forces. Now that's been super
[12:19] interesting and, and folks like him.
[12:21] And then we also have an amazing Angel investor who served on the
[12:24] strategic defence review of the Ministry of Defence in the UK.
[12:27] And she was, you know, she's been a really fascinating figure
[12:31] in the, in that kind of whole space.
[12:33] But then the other piece I would really quickly mention is you're
[12:36] right, we recently did a round and that was Co led by a fund
[12:39] called Scout in Austin, TX. And Scout's got a really, really
[12:43] great reputation in the US for being defence focused.
[12:46] And for us, given the fact that we are a British company, but we
[12:49] are actually deploying in the USA lot of the time, for me,
[12:53] getting that kind of legitimacy of working with phenomenal
[12:56] ambassadors in that space was really, really important.
[12:59] And Scout's been incredibly helpful for us.
[13:02] And I think the last piece that I would mention, because there
[13:04] is a really, there's a kind of fascinating duality between like
[13:08] raising capital in the US but then deploying it in Europe.
[13:13] And I think for me, it's like an interesting arbitrage, which is
[13:15] like, you have this knowledge base and you have this, you
[13:18] know, total of capital in the US.
[13:21] But I for me right now with the geopolitical climate as it is,
[13:24] which is frankly the US spending, spending less on NATO,
[13:28] committing less to NATO and everything.
[13:30] And frankly, for the first time in a really long time, European
[13:34] nations having to massively stand on their own 2 feet, but
[13:37] also not procure as much American software.
[13:39] I think it's a really interesting time in, in history
[13:42] to be building the kind of a defence first company here,
[13:46] obviously still with private capital from the US, but also
[13:49] from a government standpoint working with European
[13:51] institutions. So for me, it's kind of a, it's
[13:53] a, it's an amalgamation of a lot of different factors at the
[13:56] moment. Yeah, they're very interesting.
[13:58] And talking about the go to market aspect, I would believe
[14:02] that would be different for the enterprise clients versus the
[14:06] government clients. So give us an insight into what
[14:09] that looks like on both these sides, and how do these two
[14:12] pathways inform each other, if at all?
[14:16] Yeah, absolutely. I mean this is something we are
[14:18] very much in flight with right now.
[14:20] I mean the the thing of being a growing company is you are
[14:23] learning these everyday, but that is very much one of the
[14:27] learnings which is they are quite different streams, right.
[14:29] You're you're kind of defensive. Federal business is a really
[14:33] different type of company to to the enterprise business.
[14:37] They might share the same technology, but the the motion,
[14:40] the go to market motion is different.
[14:42] I mean, I would say one thing I didn't mention actually is we
[14:44] appointed the chairman last year who is one of the most
[14:47] phenomenal go to market people I've met in my life.
[14:49] So he Co founded a business called Dark Trace, which is was
[14:53] probably the most successful British sub security company in
[14:56] history. And Nick was originally the Co
[15:00] founder chief revenue officer. Now when Dark Trace I think got
[15:02] to 500 millionaire, he moved to be the Chief Operating Officer.
[15:06] Obviously they went public and then they got bought last year
[15:10] by a big PE shop. But I think for me, I have been
[15:14] able to lean on Nick a lot for the more enterprise specific go
[15:17] to market motion because the repeatability and scalability is
[15:21] so important. And for me Dark Trace really was
[15:24] my inspiration even before I knew Nick, frankly, it was
[15:26] always because they had gone from zero to 10,000 customers,
[15:29] about a billion in revenue. I mean it was a really weighty
[15:32] British company. We don't have a lot of them in
[15:34] the UK, frankly. And so that was the really,
[15:36] really like the the poster chart for that.
[15:40] Whereas on the defensive side, it's such a closed community.
[15:44] It's it's very much like get as close as possible to the end
[15:48] user, right? And the end users are very
[15:51] frankly in very different climates to the end user in the
[15:53] back, you know, make sure that you're providing value, but then
[15:57] also, you know, build legitimization for yourself in
[16:01] certain circles, because it's so unbelievably interconnected, the
[16:05] whole NASAC world that building trust is, is the single most
[16:10] important thing. And that's, and especially when
[16:12] people are like really trying to help you, making sure the
[16:15] technology really does does, does catch up to, to, you know,
[16:19] all the things you're wanting to do.
[16:21] And I think the last point I'd make is on this side, because
[16:24] we're growing so quickly, we also take inspiration from
[16:27] companies that we really respect.
[16:28] Like so if you take a company like Andoril for instance, that
[16:31] I'm, I'm sure you're very well familiar with it in the US
[16:35] Andoril has so many fascinating strategic capabilities, but they
[16:38] haven't necessarily built them all.
[16:39] And now some of them, they've been many acquisitions, they've
[16:42] raised a lot of capital and then deploying that by not just, you
[16:44] know, organic growth, but inorganic growth.
[16:47] And that's obviously something we're, we're looking at with
[16:49] Valerian because we're growing so fast that there are, there's
[16:52] an, for me, there's this interesting moment in time
[16:54] around kind of like compiling together strategic capabilities
[16:58] and how do we bring in other types of technologies both onto
[17:01] our Accra platform, all that stuff.
[17:04] So I'm hoping with with that kind of velocity, we will be
[17:07] able to service both sides of both sides of the the coin
[17:11] pretty easily. Absolutely.
[17:13] And on the government side specifically how how complex is
[17:19] it versus the enterprise side in order of magnitude of multiples
[17:24] maybe And what are the specific challenges on the selling to
[17:29] government side of things that are, you know, specific to
[17:34] government selling that are not there in enterprise setting can
[17:37] be enforcing delays, you know managing people that are not
[17:41] very responsive, but they are the stakeholders you have to
[17:44] deal with them, right. So how do you manage all that?
[17:48] Yeah, it's an interesting one. I think from a like to take this
[17:50] more from a product perspective first, I think what I've noticed
[17:54] is that you know the foundationally, obviously you
[17:58] have to have something really, really important.
[17:59] But I have noticed not just through us, but some peers in
[18:03] the space, you can almost have something 90% ready.
[18:07] You almost don't want to have the fully formed product in a
[18:10] lot of cases just because some of it is so much more bespoke
[18:13] like I had. There is there are so many
[18:16] situations where you might have something that covers 90% of the
[18:19] user need in the defence of space.
[18:21] But, but given the fact that either you're going to be
[18:23] working with classified information or you're going to
[18:25] be working with a bunch of end users that are so different to
[18:29] in the enterprise space, there's going to need to be some bespoke
[18:33] integration. But the good thing about that is
[18:35] often times when you do start winning those early contracts.
[18:38] And obviously in the US, the the VOD has got a fantastic program
[18:42] called the Cyberstream, which goes through phase one, phase
[18:44] two and phase three, which is very much for this, which is
[18:46] almost the subsidizing of building out that remaining 10%
[18:50] because that remaining 10% might be, might be a bit bespoke.
[18:54] I think that compared to the enterprise where you do need to
[18:57] get the product obviously completely production ready and
[19:00] then it needs to be just kind of rinse and repeat of which how
[19:03] many banks can you go to, how many pharma companies, how many
[19:05] airlines, whatever, if you're in the enterprise space.
[19:07] So I think that's been I would say from a product perspective,
[19:11] that's been my observation about about where you can get to the
[19:14] challenge with dual purpose is obviously making sure the kind
[19:17] of underlying platform itself is applicable to to both pieces.
[19:21] And I'll give you an example about this for with us with
[19:24] which is something just really fascinating.
[19:27] We've never been in the hardware business like that's not been
[19:30] our thing. However, we had one customer in
[19:34] the defensive space saying, hey, this Acra Enclave platform, can
[19:38] you run this on, you know, basically a miniature server,
[19:41] put it in a Pelican case. We so that we can go into the
[19:45] battlefields, throw the Pelican case on the ground and then
[19:47] essentially create a segregated private network that's localized
[19:51] to all the front line people. Now, obviously I can't say who
[19:54] those people are or or where they would be, but you can kind
[19:56] of imagine the types of situations.
[19:58] And that would be an example of what what I was saying about,
[20:01] you know, we can get a 90% of the way there.
[20:02] We have this acro platform that was super had a lot of utility.
[20:06] Never in in a million years did I think we'd be deploying that
[20:08] into. Physical infra in a Pelican case
[20:11] that's going to be deployed into a battlefield.
[20:13] So that was, that's the example of, you know, you can get it 90%
[20:16] of the way there and then you just have to be really
[20:17] cognizant. You need to listen to the end
[20:19] user requirement, especially in the defence arena.
[20:22] Absolutely, Yeah, quite interesting.
[20:24] And talking about fundraising with your recent round close,
[20:28] right, notably with investors that have also backed some
[20:32] really successful companies in the space like Palantir.
[20:35] What's what was your approach to fundraising?
[20:38] We did a Steam list of investors that you have been able to
[20:40] onboard. Were they right on your target
[20:43] list that these are the people I want to have on my cap table,
[20:47] right? And did you reach out to them
[20:50] the first thing that you wanted or was there a process to
[20:53] getting to them? If yes, then what was that
[20:55] process? So give us an insight into your
[20:57] fundraising thinking and how did you approach it?
[21:02] Look, it's a really great question.
[21:03] My experience with this is it does get a tiny bit easier as
[21:06] you go along, right? Just because you know, you're
[21:08] not knocking on a lot of cold doors anymore.
[21:10] A lot of folks have heard through the Grapevine that
[21:12] you're up to. And we've got one fascinating
[21:15] engine investor who's been unbelievably helpful to me, even
[21:17] though he's only just come on board called Gokul, who, who you
[21:21] might know is on the board of Coinbase and on the board of
[21:23] Pinterest and stuff. And, you know, whenever I have
[21:25] an issue issue or a problem I'm working through, I'll ping
[21:29] Google and it'll come back within kind of 5 minutes.
[21:30] But I, I had gotten a cold e-mail from Google and he's a
[21:33] phenomenal guy. And you know, he just said, Hey,
[21:35] I've heard about what you guys are doing.
[21:37] Really, really cool. So I mean, that was awesome.
[21:39] And, and obviously that is after a bunch of hard work of knocking
[21:42] on doors and, and having conversations, but I would say
[21:45] it is a little bit of a, a flywheel that starts.
[21:48] I think for me, rather than specific investors in this
[21:51] round, it was much more of like, how can we get the folks that
[21:56] would help the most get to the next stage where we're going to
[22:00] right. And so like, I think Valerian is
[22:02] one of the obviously the highest growth dual purpose companies in
[22:05] in Europe and certainly the UK. I realized that given the given
[22:09] the kind of level of my expectations of where the
[22:11] company's going to get to, we needed to start taking American
[22:14] capital as soon as physically possible, right?
[22:16] And so you're absolutely right. We had some kind of early
[22:19] Palantir investors back us, which was amazing.
[22:22] Obviously scouts, the very defence focused fund in Austin,
[22:25] TX. So that was very much a, a
[22:27] linchpin into that market. And so it was much more about
[22:30] like strategically thinking, I don't just want to take a bunch
[22:33] of random dollars from, from a random people.
[22:35] I'm, I'm trying to find the best investors that can be the most
[22:37] helpful. And so in that round, it was
[22:39] only a, it was a, you know, it was, it wasn't loads of
[22:43] different funds. It was only two funds that led
[22:45] it. And then we had Gokul come on
[22:46] board as an Angel as well, who's really helped us in the hiring
[22:49] process. Because I think that would, that
[22:50] would be the last thing is, I'm a very, very firm believer that
[22:53] there are these kind of three responsibilities that we face,
[22:56] right? It's the setting of vision,
[23:01] hiring people way better than you that are really, really
[23:03] smart that can execute on the vision.
[23:05] And then frankly just making sure you don't run out of money.
[23:07] And, and those are the things. But for where we are right now
[23:11] in this space, the war for talent is really, really
[23:14] important, right? And so for me, getting exposure
[23:16] both to West and East Coast engineers has been really
[23:21] important. We have a small engineering shop
[23:23] as well in Amsterdam. There are a lot of great
[23:25] engineers in in the Netherlands now because obviously Uber and
[23:28] Databrex opened up big offices there.
[23:30] So yeah, going where the talent is as well.
[23:32] And I think for me, raising that capital was so important for the
[23:37] hiring journey. So, yeah, I mean, I would say, I
[23:40] would say it's on the capital racing side to any kind of of
[23:43] your founders listening to this. It's obviously a lot harder
[23:46] during the early days when you're trying to build the
[23:48] momentum. But I think for me just being
[23:50] really product focus and end user focus, making sure you have
[23:53] enough momentum. And then I feel like the
[23:55] fundraising almost kind of is a flywheel that keeps going and
[23:58] and most of the time investors are approaching you at the end
[24:01] of the day than the other way round just because once you once
[24:03] you create that momentum, obviously in the early days, it
[24:05] is a lot harder and it's just a bit more manual to create the
[24:08] flywheel. Absolutely, completely agree
[24:11] there. And yes, Gokul Rajaraman is an
[24:14] incredible investor and his portfolio looks amazing.
[24:18] A lot of winners, unicorns in there.
[24:20] So and, and if you could help us get him on the podcast, that
[24:23] would be amazing. But yeah, just nudging you on
[24:26] that. Besides, after the fundraise,
[24:29] how did you think about allocating the capital?
[24:32] How did you segregate the fundraise that OK, we have
[24:34] raised this much, this much we're going to allocate to
[24:36] hiring, this much to product development and this much to
[24:39] something else. Give us an insignity to that.
[24:42] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, for us really
[24:44] everything's about engineering. The we, we've kind of have, we
[24:49] have never really had a pipeline problem.
[24:51] I mean the, the issue for us that we're trying to solve is
[24:53] such a momentous 1. Pretty much everyone we've
[24:57] spoken to, whether it's enterprise or Trendsome, has
[24:59] some kind of use case within that remit.
[25:02] The issue is making sure we can deliver right always, because we
[25:06] have a fundamental platform. But when you're trying to
[25:07] deliver a pace and make sure things are production ready with
[25:10] a fairly lean team, everything is about engineering, right?
[25:14] And that's why we've we've, you know, focused on a couple of
[25:16] really great eyes out of places like Palantir who have done a
[25:19] really good job at listening to customer requirements and
[25:23] building on top of that. That being said, we don't want
[25:26] to go super into the bespoke build.
[25:29] Panter did that really well, obviously with the with their
[25:32] kind of forward deployed engineer model, which can really
[25:35] work well. But just given the pace that
[25:37] we're on, the scalability demands for us, it's about just
[25:40] the repeatability of of use cases, etcetera.
[25:43] So I would say really spending that money for me, it's, it's
[25:46] all about engineering because you know, we have this
[25:49] incredible pipeline contracts, which are, you know, they tend
[25:53] to be fairly big, especially when you're, when you're working
[25:56] with these large defensive institutions.
[25:58] It's just the question of delivery.
[25:59] And so that's really what Josh, my COO and I focus on everyday
[26:02] is just bringing in the best engineers in the world.
[26:05] You know, we're super proud of our engineering team already,
[26:08] but adding to that is our main, main focus.
[26:12] Absolutely. You mentioned about hiring and
[26:14] building a team, right? And how Gokul is also helping
[26:17] you build that. Can you share some of those
[26:19] learnings that you've gotten from him and also from your own
[26:22] work? How do you think about hiding?
[26:25] What are the key insights that can also be helpful to other
[26:27] founders listening? Yeah, I mean, look, it's as all
[26:31] the other founders listening will know.
[26:33] So it's a real war for talent and and for us, like one of the
[26:35] use cases, for instance, of the enclave technology is, is
[26:38] securing AI models, right. It's compartmentalizing, you
[26:43] know, normal information from like classified information in
[26:46] terms of what's going to be ingested to an LLN.
[26:47] And these are like really, obviously really strict
[26:50] requirements, especially when you're talking about the
[26:51] national security community and, and starting to run these LLNS.
[26:55] What that, you know, necessitates is a, you know, war
[26:59] for talent over some of the hottest companies in the world
[27:02] right now. Now, I'm not saying like it's,
[27:03] you know, we're going neck on neck with open AI.
[27:05] We've all seen the ridiculous pay packages coming out there.
[27:08] But it's very much true that we are still competing with much
[27:12] larger companies in the space who are doing interesting
[27:16] things. And we are, we're the best one
[27:18] in the world, a really early stage company.
[27:19] Now, the way in which I think we win and we have been winning is
[27:24] very much the same reason I love what I do, right is like some of
[27:27] the stuff we're working on, especially in the Nazi
[27:30] community. It's really important in terms
[27:33] of like, as I mentioned earlier, like Western democratic
[27:35] freedoms, protecting sovereignty, all the stuff that
[27:38] really matters. So when I wake up in the
[27:40] morning, it's just really cool and really exciting that I get
[27:44] to go and work on some problems that I really believe matter for
[27:48] the world, not just for our technological supremacy, but
[27:51] also for a kind of like, you know, the citizens rights in
[27:55] the, you know, in our in our, in our Western nation.
[27:57] So I think for me, that same narrative a lot of the time is
[28:02] what some of the top engineers in the world want to come and
[28:04] do, right? It's the same with Palantir in
[28:05] the early days, maybe not so much now, because obviously it's
[28:08] a publicly traded company. It's a Fortune 500 company.
[28:11] But Josh was telling me, you know, when he joined Palantir in
[28:13] 2011, it's so mission driven, right?
[28:16] It's not, you know, people are rarely, rarely there for for for
[28:19] the salary. It's really about what are
[28:21] people creating? Why is this important?
[28:23] And I think for me, it's the same at Valerian.
[28:25] It's the that similar thing to early days Palantir, which is
[28:28] what we're building really, really matters to the world and
[28:32] you know, and to national sovereignty and, and to national
[28:34] security. You know, that's we might not be
[28:37] able to compete necessarily on, on the, on the salary gain, but
[28:40] but that is something really important.
[28:41] And of course, then we, you know, incentivize a lot with
[28:43] equity itself so that everyone, you know, can encompass the
[28:47] upside that we're going through right now.
[28:49] Absolutely. That's completely their end
[28:52] talking about high quality talent that can be anywhere.
[28:55] It's not necessary that you have to support someone from a big
[28:58] firm. They can be working at another
[29:00] startup and it might just really be good there.
[29:03] How how do you find that those kind of people that are at those
[29:08] unrecognized companies but are really high quality and then we
[29:13] are out these through them and try to get them on board
[29:16] obviously at more reasonable packages then you'd have to pay
[29:19] to someone who is already has a great CV.
[29:23] Absolutely. And it, and this might be a bit
[29:25] contrarian, but I mean, I actually sometimes find it's
[29:28] inversely correlated in the sense that like, you know, when
[29:31] you're hiring people from quote UN quote, big companies who are
[29:34] used to having large teams of large budgets, some of these
[29:37] technical folks haven't even written a line of code in eight
[29:39] years, right. Those, you know, we, we just
[29:41] really steering away from, from, from that.
[29:45] And so you're really indexing towards, from a cultural fit
[29:49] toward like, you know, velocity of product builds, proximity to
[29:55] the problem and proximity to the code.
[29:58] Because we don't want a bunch of engineering managers who frankly
[30:01] just want to sit there and hire a team of 50 people and, and
[30:04] maybe someday we'll get something out.
[30:06] And, and look, that's that's not always the case.
[30:08] I mean, and frankly, you know, not to talk about Palantir too
[30:11] much, but they have done a great job in terms of they also build
[30:14] really small teams within the company that can execute on
[30:17] specific things and are really good at that as well.
[30:20] You know, there are a bunch of companies doing it really well.
[30:22] So it's not all companies, but you do see some really large
[30:24] scale tech companies, you know, and there's definitely been a
[30:27] washout of middle management obviously in the last three to
[30:29] four years. But that is obviously something,
[30:32] something we track against. But you're absolutely right.
[30:34] I mean, you can hire from really small start-ups as well that
[30:38] someone just has the skill set that they need.
[30:40] I mean, in terms of engineering, I mean, that just comes down to
[30:44] kind of skill set, right and knowledge base.
[30:46] It doesn't really matter the company that they come out of.
[30:49] The trouble is for us, it's more the kind of making sure we, we,
[30:53] we get to see them, right? I mean, we, we post a job and
[30:56] we'll have 1000 applicants and we're a fairly small company,
[30:59] but obviously it's just because we're, we're, we're growing
[31:01] quickly. So it's, it's, it's that
[31:03] balance. But yeah, for, for, for, for me,
[31:06] it's really about, you know, attitude, but also about
[31:09] capability much more than the kind of brand that people are
[31:12] coming from. Absolutely.
[31:14] Makes perfect sense. Great.
[31:16] And how, how do you think about building a Moat around Valerian
[31:20] and building a company that is defensible in the highly
[31:24] competitive market? Yeah, that, no, that is a really
[31:27] interesting question because obviously there's the like the
[31:32] obvious answer that I don't think always works is the IP
[31:35] side. Obviously we've generated a
[31:36] bunch of IP, we've filed like 10 patterns and all that stuff.
[31:39] But the reality is that's not going to, you know, as they say
[31:41] about patterns, it just depends, depends how expensive lawyers
[31:45] you have to defend them etcetera.
[31:47] I think for me the defensibility is more in terms of the network
[31:50] effects of you know you get in production deployment.
[31:54] Obviously what we do is pretty critical infrastructure.
[31:57] So once you're there, it's you know, assuming it what you know
[32:00] it, it works and people are happy, which obviously they are.
[32:03] That Moat becomes are they really going to RIP out
[32:06] something they deem as critical infrastructure right now, you
[32:10] know, five years we might start to see competition etcetera.
[32:13] I think for where we are right now, we haven't competed
[32:16] directly on tenders with with other companies.
[32:19] Now I can see a world in 1824 months where you know cloud
[32:22] companies like data breaks or Snowflakes start really looking
[32:25] at sovereign, sovereign stuff like like we're doing whether
[32:28] it's Palantir etcetera. But I think for right, right now
[32:32] for us, it's really first to market deploying really critical
[32:35] infrastructural solutions and then, you know, doubling down
[32:39] what we're already doing. And I think on the government
[32:41] side, I think being the first market, but also building the
[32:44] more kind of slightly more bespoke additive integrations on
[32:49] top as well. I think for me, this is very,
[32:52] very sticky tight technology. But it's also the reason that
[32:55] this, this, this wasn't easy to build.
[32:57] I mean, as I said, I started mid 2020, right?
[33:00] And it took us probably 2 orders of magnitude longer than I
[33:04] anticipated it was going to take.
[33:05] You know, I thought we'll bash it out in a couple of months.
[33:08] The reality of this, the sophistication and complexity of
[33:11] building this kind of infra technology did take us a few
[33:14] years. Now that we've got there in
[33:16] production, we are fortunately, you know, it kind of does equate
[33:21] to some kind of Moat just in terms of time that it takes to
[33:24] build this kind of stuff. So I would say that I would say
[33:27] the technological piece and then frankly just the the the roll
[33:30] out type piece into into production.
[33:33] Right. How do you think about product
[33:35] market fit at Valerian? So look, I do think this
[33:38] slightly, I mean, I know we've, we've spoken about this a few
[33:41] times in the conversation. It does slightly depend on
[33:42] whether we're talking about enterprise OR or or or or or
[33:46] government, right? I think on the latter point and
[33:49] go to market is it's pretty clear cut, right?
[33:52] Either either it makes sense or it doesn't and you find that out
[33:55] really, really quickly, right. And because it's such a tightly
[33:58] knit community, you can present and it might, it might have some
[34:02] product market fit in, you know, one use case and not the other.
[34:05] But then you can slightly, you know, you can slightly integrate
[34:08] into something else and it and it might do that.
[34:10] So product market fit is really, really binary really quickly in
[34:13] the defence base. And you that that feedback loop
[34:16] is incredibly quickly. I think also because the, the
[34:19] community is so tight knit now on the enterprise piece,
[34:23] obviously that's, you know, the market is in the, you know, the
[34:26] time is, it's, it's pretty infinitely large, right?
[34:29] Especially when we talk about, you know, whether it's sovereign
[34:31] AI, whether it's digital sovereignty, whether whatever it
[34:33] is, you know, most institutions around the world that you think
[34:36] about are thinking about this in some guise.
[34:39] I think the product market fit is not necessarily will they buy
[34:42] the product, it's how many people in the enterprise space
[34:45] will buy the same product, right?
[34:47] Because I don't want to end up having 100 slightly different
[34:50] products in the enterprise space.
[34:52] So for me, PMF in the enterprise space is how repeatable and
[34:56] scalable is a single offering, right?
[34:59] Is it's like, can I address 90% of needs in 90% of the instances
[35:05] that they arise, right? I think guess that's how I look
[35:09] at it. The kind of my North star for
[35:11] that is, is how many times can the exact same use case be
[35:15] deployed business after business after business.
[35:18] That's how I look at it in the enterprise space is the
[35:20] repeatability aspect. Yeah, that's that's quite
[35:24] interesting. Talking about metrics, right?
[35:27] What are some key metrics that you obsess over at Valerian?
[35:32] I think the main one that really ties into the last piece, right,
[35:35] which is like, you know, on the enterprise basis, it's really
[35:37] how much, you know, how many businesses can I go to the same
[35:41] use case and how many production instances can I do with the very
[35:43] same technology, the same use case?
[35:46] I think the, I mean, it's, it's hard as well to run metrics
[35:50] between the two, two sides, right?
[35:52] Because for instance, you know, you might have one customer in
[35:56] the defensive space, but the contract value might be the same
[35:59] to 300 customers in the enterprise space.
[36:01] Now, because not just because of the contract value, but but just
[36:04] because of the size and the, and the robustness and the
[36:07] importance of that contract, right?
[36:08] Because you might be servicing frankly, not just the government
[36:11] institution, but something that underpins something for a huge
[36:14] amount of citizens in the given country, right?
[36:16] You might be running critical vision infrastructure for a
[36:20] sovereign state that needs to protect their citizens from
[36:23] malign or malicious activity, right.
[36:26] And so it's, it's hard to compare basically, essentially 1
[36:29] customer, even though it is, it's a really big footprint.
[36:32] I think for me on the defensive side, I like to think about how
[36:35] many end users are we helping? I think that tends to be a
[36:38] better metric than revenue, contract size, etcetera, because
[36:42] you might only have, you know, we're, we're fortunate.
[36:44] We, we are working with quite a few government institutions, but
[36:47] sometimes even if you have one, but the contract quite sizable
[36:50] and you are servicing a ton of end users.
[36:52] Like for instance, you know, you could have a single contract
[36:56] with the, with the defence digital department in the UK,
[37:00] which is part of the military defence, but that could be
[37:02] 100,000 users. I think on the enterprise side,
[37:05] the metric as I mentioned before that I look at is, is how many,
[37:10] you know, how many sign ups, how many production instances can we
[37:12] get to with a unified product? And so for instance, when we
[37:17] sell our Acro platform, we're working on very much of the open
[37:21] SDK model, which is allowing the end user within a bank or
[37:25] whatever to run their own containerized applications
[37:28] within the Acro platform, which makes it a lot easier for them
[37:31] to just build on top. And then not having to worry
[37:33] about how they deploy into a very secure Kubernetes cluster,
[37:37] how they do this with pretty high velocity given how much
[37:40] they create their own enterprise application.
[37:42] So I think those I, I, I appreciate a slightly long
[37:46] answer, but I obviously am running slightly, almost
[37:49] slightly different companies based on the same technology.
[37:51] And so I kind of think about this, it dual hatted all the
[37:54] time. Absolutely.
[37:57] Yeah, That, that's, I think that's a very important point
[37:59] you made that you're running maybe two companies rolled into
[38:02] one in a way, right. And different GTMS, different
[38:05] PMF, different metrics, right? How do you organize that at the
[38:09] company level, inside the organizational structure?
[38:11] Maybe have separate teams for certain things, or maybe one
[38:14] facing the enterprise side, one facing government side, Any
[38:17] segregation of the team on what all fronts is that?
[38:21] At what all levels is that? And how do you personally, as
[38:24] the founder, try to separate these two things and how you're
[38:28] thinking about these two verticals?
[38:31] Yeah, I mean some. Firstly, I'm lucky though, I
[38:34] work with some COO, Josh also kind of runs the American
[38:38] business and we have two entities in in the US, right.
[38:41] But obviously he spent so long in the kind of special forces
[38:45] arena in the US, he kind of, you know, the right type of
[38:48] clearances that he used to hold etcetera.
[38:50] It makes more sense for him, especially on the US
[38:52] governmental side. So that's really helpful.
[38:54] Obviously, I sit here in London and I think from an engineering
[38:58] perspective we very much have a core platform engineering team
[39:01] who builds our product which is called accurate.
[39:03] Now what we are noticing is based on the integration points
[39:07] whether it's, you know, as I mentioned earlier for a
[39:09] defensive institution that needs to have a, you know what with
[39:12] classified information etcetera. We're in the process of hiring
[39:15] kind of security cleared engineers.
[39:17] I mean, we just hired one in, in Texas, for instance, and also
[39:21] someone else in, in Colorado and they will be responsible for
[39:23] very much that side, which is really, you know, I mentioned
[39:27] the kind of 90% similarities. That's really the, the
[39:29] additional 10% where you might have to have security cleared
[39:33] engineers for really specific the OD use cases.
[39:36] I think for me though, we then the majority of the engineering
[39:39] team does focus on the enterprise piece because that's
[39:41] the more repeatable part of the business, right.
[39:44] And then as I said, you have that very much foundational
[39:47] engineering team at the same time.
[39:48] And frankly, as, as I, as I mentioned, we have also looked
[39:51] at the potential of acquiring more companies across Europe and
[39:55] especially like, because you know, it's, it's in terms of
[39:58] hiring and stuff like almost kind of acquiring companies as
[40:00] well and bringing that in. And I think, you know, just
[40:03] given the trajectory that we're on, we'll probably, you know,
[40:06] get to about 100 employees at the end of Q1 next year.
[40:09] And I think that will be from the scale that we'll probably
[40:12] start to more specifically segment.
[40:15] Who's in the, who's in the defensive aspect, Valerian
[40:18] defenses, it's scored, who's in Valerian enterprise, etcetera.
[40:21] But the reality of this is the core engineering team are very
[40:24] much platform engineers and they both very much sit between them.
[40:27] Absolutely. And from what I believe you're
[40:30] the first time founder, right? And all these things are really
[40:34] complex in their own way and everything, every day a new
[40:37] thing comes up that you have to deal with, right?
[40:40] How do you learn these new things?
[40:42] How do you learn to tackle these things?
[40:44] Who are the people that you go to to solve these things when
[40:47] you need help? Give me an insight into that.
[40:51] Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I when I was at Coin Shares, I
[40:54] was so, you know, I worked for the founder and CEO at the time
[40:57] called Brian Radloff. He was this incredible operator.
[41:01] And because I was so close to him, I kind of felt like I'd
[41:03] gone through the journey. And then when I actually started
[41:05] a company, I then called Brian, I was like, Oh, I just didn't
[41:07] realise how much you actually shielded me from, from what was
[41:11] going on, even though I felt very close to the family
[41:13] journey. And so you're absolutely right
[41:15] being an actual first time founder, even though, even if
[41:17] you have gone through a high velocity, high growth companies,
[41:20] it's a, it's a really, really different experience.
[41:23] I think the for me, like the right investors and advisors
[41:27] have been incredibly important. I'm, I'm a firm believer that
[41:31] the wrong investors can be really detrimental to a company,
[41:35] but the right investors can be extremely additive and working
[41:39] with people that really, you know, we're all on the same
[41:42] side. Everyone really, really wants to
[41:43] go this the same way. And then as I said, you know,
[41:46] the right advisors, I mean, for me as well, working with like
[41:50] Tier 1 founders that you really, really respect.
[41:52] I mean, as I mentioned, our chairman founded probably one of
[41:55] the most seismic companies that ever come out of the UK.
[41:58] And I think it's really wonderful to be able to speak to
[42:00] someone like Nick, who, you know, scaled a business from
[42:03] zero to thousands of employees. And so it's, you know, having
[42:05] someone with you that's just been through the experience is
[42:09] really, really important. And I would definitely say to
[42:12] especially all the first time founders listening to this is I,
[42:14] I do think the kind of advisory piece, the mental piece of
[42:18] someone who's actually been there and done it right?
[42:19] Because everyone wants to pontificate about life and
[42:22] everyone wants to theorize on a, you know, about vice.
[42:24] But actually having people in your corner that have done The
[42:27] thing is incredibly important. You know, you want practical
[42:30] life lessons, not just kind of pontification.
[42:32] So that's a yeah, that that's one of my big, big beliefs here.
[42:37] Yeah, absolutely. Great, Great advice here for
[42:40] first time founders as well as the founder of a high growth
[42:44] startup. So many things are evolving, so
[42:47] many things you have to tackle everyday.
[42:50] Sometimes it takes a toll on your mental health, right?
[42:52] And sometimes it's just too much to take, right?
[42:55] How do you take care of your mental health?
[42:57] What are the practices that indulge in to bring some sanity
[43:01] into the chaos that's all around you?
[43:04] I don't know. I think we look, I think we
[43:06] secretly all really love the chaos, right?
[43:08] I think that's why we chose to do what we did because we're not
[43:11] necessarily like neurotypical people.
[43:14] I think that being the slightly glib on.
[43:15] So I think the reality is like, I think personal relationships
[43:18] are the, are the most important, both like familial and I do
[43:21] think, you know, I think I, I did that really badly when I
[43:24] started. I think familiar relationships
[43:26] are so important. You know, fam family and, and
[43:28] really dear friends are so important to invest in,
[43:31] especially, you know, really, you're going to be doing this
[43:33] for a decade. If you want to build a really
[43:35] big thing, it's going to be a decade, right?
[43:37] It's not, it's not going to be 18 months and then and then
[43:39] you're going to go away. It's, you are running this
[43:41] marathon, not, not a Sprint. But then I also think like
[43:44] within the company, it's incredibly important to have
[43:48] folks that you can lean on. I'm fortunate to have a
[43:51] phenomenal business. My name, Josh, I have a
[43:53] phenomenal chief of staff in Chicago that's been with us
[43:55] really since the early days. Obviously, a chairman that's
[43:58] built and scaled A phenomenal company and then a couple of
[44:01] mentors. I think it's, you know,
[44:03] interpersonal relationships, whether it's family or frankly,
[44:05] like colleagues. I think it's really, really
[44:07] important because I mean, that's the only way you're going to be
[44:10] able to share the burden, right? I think the risk is when people
[44:12] internalize everything, don't share it with any other humans.
[44:17] I think that's when it's insurmountable.
[44:18] But I think the reality is solving things with other really
[44:22] bright people with good senses of humor is really important.
[44:26] Absolutely. With that, we'll come to the
[44:28] last main question before we go for the closing questions.
[44:31] And this is looking back at the At Valerians journey so far.
[44:37] What do you think has been the most pivotal decision that you
[44:41] made that made a significant impact on how the company has
[44:46] shaped up or the growth trajectory of the company?
[44:50] Yeah, absolutely. I mean people that have been
[44:51] following me for a while know that like I found the company
[44:54] under a different name and we were building this in for a
[44:56] piece and then we kind of rebound into Valerian.
[44:58] I had met Josh, I brought in Josh as a Co founder.
[45:01] We kind of restructured the company and, and we really made
[45:05] it what it is now. It was this huge evolution that
[45:08] was unbelievably painful. Like it was the most painful
[45:11] thing I've ever been through and frankly probably cost me a bunch
[45:13] of friends as well. But the reality was like, you
[45:16] know, the only, you know, the path for me was really clear.
[45:20] Like I doubled down on what we're doing.
[45:21] I knew that I could see the market in the defense base.
[45:24] And sometimes you just have to make the really difficult
[45:26] decisions and things like that. You know, you, you can see the
[45:28] path and it's, you know, you used to have to execute.
[45:32] The reality is you're not, you know, you're not always going to
[45:35] do be, you know, be able to be friends with everyone along the
[45:40] process. But I think making the hard
[45:41] decision and really quickly is really, really important because
[45:46] the reality is if you kind of know something is the right
[45:48] thing, but you wait a year to do it, you've lost a year, you've
[45:52] lost a burn, a year of burn rate and you've lost a lot of
[45:54] people's confidence. I think acting fast and
[45:57] decisively when you are super aware the what the right
[45:59] decision is, I think for me has served us really, really well.
[46:03] Absolutely. Great point there.
[46:05] With that, we'll come to the closing questions.
[46:07] Where can people learn more about what you're building at
[46:10] Valerian, and where can all listeners follow you?
[46:13] Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I, I use LinkedIn I,
[46:17] I've been told I need to start using XI.
[46:19] Think I've posted once in about 10 years on that.
[46:21] But I will do my, I will endeavour to get more active on
[46:24] X at some point. But yeah, LinkedIn I I'm using
[46:27] fairly frequently as well. So do follow me there if you
[46:29] can. Absolutely.
[46:30] I'll make sure I give you a follow on X to get you started
[46:34] there. Great.
[46:35] Great. Having you on Max Lovely what
[46:38] you're building. Godspeed and I wish you all the
[46:41] best. Thank you.
[46:42] Good stuff. Thanks so much for having me.
[46:44] All right mate, take care.

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