What Building Defence Tech in Ukraine Really Looks Like

Viktoriia Yaremchuk (CEO & Co-Founder of Farsight Vision) was handed a problem nobody had solved: Ukrainian frontline units drowning in drone footage with no way to process it, sitting manually watching hour-long videos to spot something useful. She had a PhD, a software background, and friends calling from the front asking for tools that didn't exist. So she built them.What followed was three years inside one of the most unforgiving product environments on earth - geospatial AI and digital twin technology tested not in a lab, but in GPS-denied warzones where the users can't always tell you what they need because the information is classified, and getting it wrong costs lives. From a first investor cheque of ~$100K with little more than an MVP, to contracts spreading brigade by brigade through word of mouth on Signal, to a team now spread across four countries, many of them with husbands, brothers, and fathers serving on the frontline.In this episode, Viktoriia delivers a masterclass in building and selling in defencetech, how Farsight Vision actually works, how to sell to a military customer when there's no conventional sales cycle, what it takes to build and lead a team when there's no end date on the mission, and what Europe still doesn't understand about the war being fought on its doorstep.Get in touch with Viktoriia:https://www.linkedin.com/in/viktoriia-yaremchuk-3ba80116Want to get hired by Farsight Visionhttps://farsightvision.hurma.work/public-vacancies-----------------------------------------------Chapters:(00:00) Introduction(01:45) What Farsight Vision Actually Does(17:40) How to Find the Right Co-Founder(27:08) The Personal Turning Point That Started Farsight Vision(46:44) From Idea to Battlefield: MVP in Months(53:07) The Biggest Mistake They Made in the First Year(01:01:00) How to Hire for a Mission-Driven Team Under Extreme Stress(01:07:04) Raising the First $100K: What Investors Saw Before Victoria Did(01:16:59) How to Price a Defence Software Product Nobody Has Ever Built Before(01:32:10) From One Sale to Hundreds: How Word of Mouth Works at the Frontline(01:43:48) What Is Darkstar and Why It Changed Everything(01:57:40) Closing a €7M Round: What Actually Got Investors to Say Yes(02:06:13) The Most Important Lesson for Building DefenceTech-----------------------------------------------You will learn:- How to sell to a military customer with no procurement process, no sales cycle, and classified feedback- Why your product development methodology breaks the moment it meets a warzone- How word of mouth on Signal became Farsight Vision's entire go-to-market strategy- Why founders undersell what they're building — and how the right framing changes everything- What it actually takes to lead a team when the mission has no end date- How to get your first defence contract with nothing but an MVP and a problem worth solving- Why co-creation and ecosystem thinking beats going it alone in defencetech- What European defence is still getting wrong — and why Ukraine has already figured it out- How digital twins are changing the doctrine of modern warfare