For years, European innovators have lacked a safe, legal, and operationally relevant environment to validate defence technologies. Ukraine offers a uniquely demanding testbed, and our role is to create a professional, transparent, and responsible pathway for companies to work with official defence counterparts. This is not about speed alone – it is about ensuring that the right technologies reach the right users with real data behind them.

Over the past decade, I’ve seen hundreds of startups succeed or fail depending on how quickly they gain access to real users and real operational environments. Nowhere is this more critical than in defence technology. Ukraine provides an unmatched opportunity for structured, responsible, and data-driven testing that simply cannot be replicated in simulators or domestic training grounds. Our role is to ensure that companies enter this environment with the right preparation, the right partners, and a clear framework that benefits both innovators and front-line users. This accelerator is, in my view, the most effective way for defence startups to find real product–market fit. In defence, true demand is defined by the battlefield—not by presentations, prototypes, or theoretical use cases. When companies receive direct feedback from units operating under real combat conditions, they quickly learn what works, what fails, and what must be improved. That level of validation shortens development cycles by months or even years and prevents teams from investing in the wrong features. Nothing brings a product to market readiness faster than exposure to actual operational needs.