You Cannot Win US Defense Contracts from a Slide Deck
Intention does not win contracts. Presence does.
The Beaten Zone crew kicked off 2026 in LA and Vegas with a two-day team strategy session, followed by the largest trade show for the firearms, ammunition, hunting, and shooting accessories, held annually in Las Vegas, SHOT Show
But before the bright lights of Vegas, we got serious with Strategy, we do this every six months, not as a ritual, but as a reset on reality. Strategy, when done properly, is not planning theatre or box-ticking. It is about pressure testing where you are, what is working, what is no longer fit for purpose, and what must change next.
These sessions are deliberate, reflective, critical and not a note taking exercise. They are meant to force decisions and surface gaps. They remove sentiment and replace it with facts. This is the same standard we expect of founders, and the same standard we hold ourselves to as a fund.
During the session, we assess everything that matters. We look at our portfolio, our pipeline, and the quality of opportunities we are seeing. We examine our LP relationships, the language we use in our communications, how founders enter our funnel, and how we support them once they are in it. Most importantly, we test whether we are genuinely positioned to help founders execute in the US market, not just talk about it.
This time we also ran some extended DISC profiling on the team. Not as a team-building exercise, but to understand how we communicate in general, are we speaking the right language in a way that the listener needs to process the information? No only is this important for our own team, but for all our communications with Founders, and our LPs. Different personalities process information differently. What lands with one person, might confuse another. What motivates one founder might alienate the next. Understanding these patterns makes us better advisors, better partners, and better communicators.
The better we become at this, the more equipped we areo support our portfolio companies when they need to develop their teams in general, looking to close their capability gaps, or when they need to scale across different cultures, age groups and continants. Execution depends on communication, and communication depends on understanding how people actually work.
Our position is clear. If you want to scale in Defence, the US market is not optional. Founders need to either establish themselves in the US or build a credible US team from day one.
That requires:
- Being on the ground.
- Building relationships in real time.
- Establishing trust before contracts are on the table.
Presence builds credibility. Proximity accelerates outcomes. Distance slows everything. You cannot win US Defence contracts from Australia on intention alone.
This belief is also why we go first. We do not ask founders to do anything we have not done ourselves. If we are not on the ground meeting partners, testing assumptions, and learning how decisions are actually made, then our advice becomes theory. Theory does not win contracts. Being in LA and Las Vegas is not about optics. It is about immersion. It is about understanding how the ecosystem really operates and where momentum actually comes from. Every visit deepens relationship density. Our week long US trip was only one of 30+ others where we have one of our BZV team members or advisors attending events, building the ecosystem, supporting founders or nurturing key relationships.
We attend events and spend time with accelerators, workspaces, advisers, systems integrators, and industry operators. Not for business cards, challenge coins, badges and stickers ( even though we love a good challenge coin) For execution speed. The goal is always the same: compress the founder’s timeline from thinking about expansion to executing it – the strength of our connections in the US help with this.
A core part of our strategy work also involves revisiting every deal we have touched. The ones we passed on. The ones we paused. The ones still in diligence. The ones we lost. A no is rarely final. More often, it is a ‘not yet’ with conditions attached.
Strong founders do not take a no personally. They treat it as instruction. They ask what failed the test, fix it, and return with proof. Silence after a no is not professionalism. It is withdrawal. Follow-up is discipline, and discipline is what we track.
Our strategy sessions exist to remove ambiguity. If they feel safe, we are not doing the work. We challenge who we back, how we support founders, and whether we are delivering for our LPs. We look for evidence, not intention, and proof that exists now, not promises for later.
From Australia, this can feel slow. There is pressure to manufacture momentum or announce progress before it is earned. We do neither. What is building is real. It is deliberate. And when it moves, it will move with force.
This is why every investment we consider now requires a clear and operational US market entry plan. Not aspirational. Not eventually. Practical and executable. This is not about diminishing Australian capability. It is about recognising that sovereign capability at scale requires US validation and US contracts.
Our 2026 kick off session was not about optics or timing. It was about operational truth. We do the work first so our advice is earned, not theoretical. If founders are expected to execute in the hardest market in the world, we expect the same of ourselves.
Stay tuned for what comes next, our insights and learnings from SHOT Show