The era of large prime contractors owning an entire system is ending. The companies that will win are those who are highly interoperable, collaborate with other vendors, and integrate best-of-breed capabilities with a low-ego approach, focusing on delivering a mission capability rather than a standalone widget.
The ideal growth leader for defense tech is a unicorn. Instead of searching for one, founders should do sales themselves first to understand the pain points, then train technically curious people internally by creating a playbook and throwing them in the deep end.
When re-architecting the business, the new COO (now CEO) physically boxed up a major drone project to signal a radical shift. This forced the team to focus on doing one thing exceptionally well—building an autonomous platform—before expanding off of that solid base.
Startups obsess over "Programs of Record," but what they're actually seeking is a stable, multi-year indication of demand from the Department of Defense. This is functionally equivalent to a large enterprise SaaS company securing a three-year contract to justify long-term R&D investment and de-risk the business.
Forterra avoids the trap of serving two masters by maintaining a defense-first roadmap. Commercial applications are pursued only when they directly benefit the core defense product by providing scale, lowering costs, and generating broader data sets for development, making the warfighter's product better.
Veterans transitioning to the private sector are advised to avoid seeking high-level strategy roles immediately. Instead, they should embrace entry-level tasks—"washing the windows" and "taking out the trash"—to build tangible, domain-specific expertise from the ground up, which creates a stronger foundation for long-term growth.
The simple question "What motivates you?" can be a powerful filter. A Forterra leader was once told by a banking vice chairman that being motivated by "team mission" over money would make for a difficult finance career. This advice proved correct and became his favorite question to uncover a candidate's core intrinsic drivers.