Field Notes

The hardest part of deep tech isn’t the tech.

Pieces on positioning, narrative and go-to-market. Written for founders, not marketers.

The Commercial Translation Gap The distance between what a deep tech founder has built and what the market can understand. What it is, why it exists, and why it is the most expensive problem most founders are not solving.

The Cost of Being Misunderstood Misunderstanding is not a soft problem. It has a measurable cost — in fundraising timelines, sales cycles, talent and momentum. Here is how to put a number on it.

The Traction Problem Thiel Never Named No traction is the symptom every founder names and nobody can diagnose. Thiel blamed distribution. In deep tech there is a third failure sitting upstream of both.

Navigating the Australian Defence Procurement Landscape An interactive blueprint of the Australian defence capability, acquisition and innovation ecosystem. Tick what describes your company and your way through it lights up, node by node.

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The Six Deadly Sins of a Founder Pitch Six patterns that separate exceptional pitches from painfully cringeworthy ones. These sins are fixable.

The Shopping List Defence just published what it wants to buy. The 2026 Innovation, Science and Technology Strategy names six technologies for the next decade; here is what that means for your positioning, with the sceptic's case from the room where it launched.