18 July 2024
In the near future, government will move away from building technology, or working only with primes. This future will see a greater role for venture funded tech companies. This changes how R&D is managed and funded, and how defence and security is funded.
For this new paradigm to work, it is essential that government, venture capital investors, and startup founders get to know and understand each other better. This is about building new networks, but also about understanding and aligning cultures that have not traditionally worked so closely together.
The government-startup-investor puzzle
This new dialogue is about government communicating clear demand signals to venture capitalists, so they can decide where best to deploy their capital to support startups to build the tech government needs. These are groups who do not have a long history of engagement, and who have very different cultures, incentives, and practices. Resilience Conference is bringing these communities together in order to support this important and impactful dialogue.
At Resilience Conference, we have convened managers of a huge amount of deployable private sector capital looking to understand the opportunities they should back with investment.
We will have established and emerging founders in the room who have taken on often huge, intractable problems to bring new technologies to the front line of defence and security.
We have experts from across the military and national security community who will be explaining their missions, technical requirements, and concerns, and sharing some of their great knowledge and expertise.
There is a healthy tension between startup founders, who often see the simplicity in existing complexity, and experts in security and defence who can explain why some of that complexity is necessary.
This is the theme running through Resilience Conference. We are working hard to bring people from defence and national security into a room with the leading venture capital investors and startup founders to support the growth of this emerging ecosystem. We also want to use the founder stories to communicate to the wider tech sector the moral imperative and commercial opportunity of working in defence and security.
We believe in ecosystems, and this conference is designed to leave the ecosystem better connected. An ecosystem contains networks and includes capital, infrastructure, regulation, and repositories of knowledge. We are excited to be bringing together people and networks that are not already connected. We will have leaders from defence and security, from venture capital, and from the startups and scale-ups that are becoming new suppliers to government, and in some cases the new primes.
Resilience Conference News
Women in Defence UK Partnership
In alignment with our commitment to gender equality at Resilience Conference, we're pleased to announce our partnership with Women in Defence UK. Their purpose is to accelerate gender equity in the defence sector. Working as one of the three legs of the Women in Defence Charter, they strive to support the Charter ambition of 30% of all roles to be filled by women by 2030. By achieving this critical mass, we will speed-up the transition towards a more balanced, inclusive and equitable defence enterprise.
If your organisation is interested in partnering with us, contact us to learn more.
New Speaker Announcements
Prof Dame Fiona Murray
Professor & Associate Dean of Innovation at MIT
Professor Dame Fiona Murray CBE DCMG is the Associate Dean of Innovation at the MIT School of Management and William Porter (1967) Professor of Entrepreneurship. She received her BA ’89 and MA ‘90 from the University of Oxford in chemistry. She subsequently earned a PhD from Harvard University in applied sciences. Her research, teaching and professional activities focus on the intersection of critical technologies, entrepreneurship and geopolitics. She is a leader in shaping innovation ecosystems and their stakeholders to drive the formation and scaling of deep tech ventures that solve global challenges - notably in defense, security, and resilience. She is the Vice Chair of the NATO Innovation Fund - the first multi-sovereign venture fund to support deep tech ventures with a defence, security and resilience focus across Allied nations - and is a member of the UK Ministry of Defence Innovation Advisory Panel.
Clayton Williams
Managing Director at In-Q-Tel
Clayton Williams is the Managing Director of IQT International UK Ltd., where he manages IQT’s relationship with the UK government and is responsible for identifying, investing, and guiding IQT’s portfolio of deep tech start-up technology across Europe, Middle East, and Africa. Prior to this role, Clayton was the Managing Director of IQT International’s Asia-Pacific business, and managed IQT’s relationship with the Australian government. Clayton has invested and advised early-stage startups broadly across “deep tech” critical technology areas such as quantum, space, robotics, and next generation communications. Clayton joined IQT initially as a specialist on IQT’s technical team focused on the development and diligence of technology in autonomous systems, remote sensing, and advanced manufacturing markets. Before IQT, Clayton worked as a technologist and integrator for signal processing platforms at the US Naval Research Laboratory in support of the US Intelligence Community.
Dr. Daniel Biene
Leadership & Strategy at the German Armed Forces Innovation Hub
Daniel Biene is a member of the German Army Reserve and serves on the Leadership & Strategy Team of the German Armed Forces Innovation Hub. There, his work focuses on enabling the German military to utilize startup innovations. In his civilian life, Daniel has spent the past ten years founding, growing, and selling several innovative tech-enabled companies in the SaaS, digital marketplaces, and professional services spaces. He has extensive experience working with major venture capital funds and structuring small and large transactions. Previously, for another ten years, he has held senior leadership roles in well known media companies in Germany and the United States.
What We're Reading
Geopolitics
Ukraine
Cyber Resiliency
Quantum Technologies
Startup Ecosystem
Podcasts
Notes from Resilience Conference co-founder, Tobias Stone
Get Involved with Resilience Conference
Register for a ticket to join national security innovators and be a part of the conversation | Apply for your startup to be featured at Launch, the premier dual use and defence startup showcase | Sponsor an open or closed-door workshop or private dinner during the event |
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