Work with me

Narrative precedes product. In this sector the state defines the threat and signs the contract. Narrative does not create demand; it decides who wins inside a window that is already open. Reading it correctly is the hardest part.

Every week I analyse the narrative mechanics of European defense tech, publicly and from primary sources, in 51 Wire. The same work serves two audiences: companies that need to become legible, and investors who need to read a company before committing capital.

Narrative decode: what your story actually holds

A written reading of your positioning and that of your direct competitors. What your narrative says, what it lets people assume, what it cannot support. Where your share of attention sits against the players chasing the same budgets, the same funds and the same engineers.

The reading runs on a seven-stage map of how marketing moves through this sector: who writes the threat, who names the capability gap, who frames the solution, and where the sequence lands, in a budget line, a contract, a round or a hire. You get a document, with sources.

For investors: the same reading applied to a target before you commit.

(Each reading also passes your wording against the French classification texts. The DGA's classification request form warns that a commercial brochure showcasing use by the armed forces, with no precise technical characteristic or standard, can lead to a product being classified as matériel de guerre. I flag what carries that risk and leave the ruling to your counsel or your export control function.)

Who this is for

Founders and teams building in European defense tech and dual-use, whose narrative has to hold up under scrutiny: from procurement officers, from investors, from the people who classify what you sell.

Investors, funds and private capital placing money in the sector, who need to know whether a company's story matches what it has built, and where attention really sits in its sub-sector.

What I do not do

I deliver analysis and positioning, in writing. I do not execute it for you, and I do not act as an agency, an intermediary or an advertising agent for any product. Article L.2339-2 of the French defence code makes that last one a regulated activity, and staying outside it is a condition of how I work.

How I work

Every fact is checked against a primary source and carries an explicit status: established, estimated, or still a hypothesis. Every analysis is challenged internally before it reaches you. No tool output counts as a source.

The protocol has already caught an error of law in my own work, before it was published.

I do not work for a player I cover in the Wire.

How to start

Send me what you have (deck, site, product pages, the competitors you have in mind) and the question you need answered. I reply within five working days with a scope, a delivery date and a fixed fee.