Hey there,
I'm writing this fresh off the Trade Mission to Toulouse, still processing everything that unfolded there. What started as a networking trip turned into something more significant: a forcing function for articulating exactly where Askara is headed and why.
Last week I wrote about the breakthrough we achieved through shadow work and discovering how military operational frameworks create the foundation for genuine high performance. This week, those frameworks got stress-tested in real conversations with potential partners. And something clicked into place that I want to share.
The Ground Beneath Your Feet
There's a certain grounding that comes from knowing what kind of company you're building before you walk into a room full of potential partners. We're building a multi-million euro company with a healthy financial and cultural bedrock. Not through venture capital that demands unsustainable growth, but through bootstrapping and EU subsidies. Not through hustle culture that burns people out, but through military discipline coupled with the deep shadow work that enables genuine collaboration.
Walking into Toulouse with this clarity changed how conversations unfolded. I wasn't there to figure out what we are. I was there to find out who resonates with what we're already becoming. That's a fundamentally different energy, and people pick up on it.
The Three-Year Rhythm
Through researching how the military approaches strategic planning, we've adopted a framework that feels right for where we are. They plan on a five-year horizon, but only detail the first three years. Each cycle moves through three phases:
Execute → Take action, deliver results, learn from reality
Prepare → Structure those lessons into a realistic strategy for scaling
Shape → Invest in long-term resilience through strategic alliances
Looking back, the past year was pure execution. We delivered an MVP, landed our first customer, assembled a team, established our way of working, and built shared ownership of what we're creating. We moved fast, made mistakes, and learned constantly.
The coming year shifts into preparation. We take everything we learned and structure it into a roadmap for scaling operations responsibly. This isn't about growing for growth's sake. It's about building the foundations that can support real scale when the time comes.
Year three will be about shaping. Using a scaled operation to form strategic alliances that position the business for the decade ahead. And with those alliances, a new three-year cycle begins.
Why Defence Matters
The most interesting conversations in Toulouse were with people from the defence sector. This might seem like an unexpected direction for a company focused on helping SMEs with cybersecurity compliance, but there's a logic to it that became clearer through these discussions.
Military-grade standards create trust. When you can say your software meets defence requirements, civilian companies know they're getting something robust. The security-conscious clients we want to attract understand this immediately.
Tales, one of the major defence companies we connected with, represents exactly the kind of partnership we're looking for. They need solutions for their supply chain of SMEs. We can develop military-grade software through that partnership, then leverage it for civilian markets. Start with the most demanding use case, and everything else becomes easier.
This doesn't mean we're betting everything on one relationship. We have backup strategies, other potential partners, multiple paths to the same destination. But the defence angle gives us something valuable: a north star for quality that's externally validated and universally respected.
Distributed Command
One framework that's becoming central to how we operate is what the military calls Commander's Intent. Clear direction that empowers autonomous decision-making at every level.
We're structuring leadership around three domains. CEO focuses on partnerships and funding, building relationships for EU subsidies, maturing strategic partnerships, maintaining oversight. COO focuses on scaling operations responsibly, training the team, optimising processes, maximising current potential. CTO focuses on engineering bulletproof solutions, the technical foundation everything else depends on.
Each commander develops their own intent for the coming year, aligned with our preparation phase objectives. This creates accountability without micromanagement. Clear ownership without bottlenecks.
What makes this work is the shadow work we've done as a team. In traditional structures, distributed command often fails because interpersonal friction creates misalignment. People protect territory, avoid difficult conversations, let resentments build. We've done the work to clear those patterns, which means we can actually trust each other with autonomous authority.
Seeds Planted
The immediate outcome of Toulouse is a handful of promising conversations that could develop into EU project collaborations for 2027. That's the timeline we're working with: 2026 for preparation and securing funding, 2027 for execution.
But the deeper outcome is clarity. Clarity about our ambition, our timeline, our approach. Clarity that came from being forced to explain ourselves repeatedly until the essence emerged.
I came back from the trip exhausted but energised. There's something about seeing how your vision lands with people outside your bubble that either validates or challenges your assumptions. In this case, it validated. The story resonates. The direction makes sense. The partnerships are possible.
Now comes the work of following through.
With care, Ben