Robin Dechant

A few weeks on from the Munich Security Conference, something many of the Resilience Media community no doubt attended, I keep returning to three things. Beyond immediate headlines, which can age quickly in a space like this, I want to understand the underlying patterns that I believe will still be true in five years. So I went in with a manufacturing and industrial lens. That’s my background, and it shapes how I hear conversations about defense and resilience.

Every founder knows about the first valley of death – that phase where you’re doing everything possible to find your first customers and make them happy. Build, test, iterate, learn. I’ve been through this myself. If you survive, more customers will come, investors get excited, and capital flows (or you get acquired, as in my case). Building hardware is hard. Everyone knows it. Most hardware companies don’t even make it to product-market fit.

It’s a question we’ve heard again and again over the past months — from investors, from policymakers, and most importantly, from founders: Is Europe finally having its moment? At General Catalyst, we believe the answer is yes — but making it last will take discipline and commitment. What’s happening now isn’t just a surge in entrepreneurial energy. It’s a mindset shift. More and more, founders are choosing to build with Europe in mind, not just as a market but as a mission.