Which startups could become primes

Scott Sanders has seen the defense tech industry from just about every angle. As a Marine officer, he watched promising capability stall somewhere between a program office and the field. As an early employee at Anduril, he helped build one of the companies that bet it could do better.  

Now, as Chief Growth Officer at Forterra, he's making that same bet on autonomous ground systems, a market that's been promised for years and is only now being put to the test. In this episode of Valley of Depth, we press Scott on what's actually working, what isn't, and where the hype is running ahead of the hardware.

We get into:

• Why the gap between a cool tech demo and a real defense business is wider than most founders think
• What investors still fundamentally misunderstand about defense timelines and business model risk
• Why most defense startups won't become primes and what the ones that do have in common
• How Forterra is approaching autonomy, mesh networking, and distributed operations at the tactical edge
• What it looks like to actually get capability to operators, not just into a program of record
• The procurement dysfunction that everyone in the room knows about and almost no one fixes

• Chapters •

00:00 – Intro
00:50 – Sun Valley
03:14 – Scott’s time in the Philippines
09:04 – Why Scott joined Anduril
14:01 – Working with the government: then vs now
17:34 – What investors should look for in defense tech
20:27 – Forterra in 2022 vs 2026
25:12 – Forterra’s products today
26:39 – Autonomy-as-a-service model
30:13 – Hardware and software
32:36 – Commercial end users
33:52 – Why acquire mesh networking from goTenna?
37:27 – Current programs and contracts
40:55 – Fully autonomous systems in contested environments
44:30 – Hiring in a competitive defense tech industry
47:25 – How many SVDG companies could become primes?
47:52 – Exciting technologies for investors
51:46 – Forterra in 7–8 years
53:34 – What Scott does for fun

• Show notes •

Forterra’s website — https://www.forterra.com/
Forterra’ socials — https://x.com/ForterraDrive=
Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam
Payload’s socials — https://twitter.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace
Ignition’s socials — https://twitter.com/ignitionnuclear /  
https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/
Tectonic’s socials  — https://twitter.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/
Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/

• About us •

Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world’s hardest technologies.

• Payload: www.payloadspace.com
• Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com
• Ignition: www.ignition-news.com