Andrii Hryshchuk, Investment Manager at Defence Builder Fund, has written an op-ed for AIN.UA on how Ukrainian defence companies present themselves to investors — from the deck to the pitch to the follow-up.

The piece draws on three years of selection work for the accelerator and the fund: hundreds of investment decks reviewed and dozens of founder pitches heard live. Its starting point is that a deck holds an investor's attention for about two and a half minutes, and that the decision on whether there will be a second conversation is usually made before the fourth slide.

On the deck, the op-ed argues that the title slide decides more than founders assume. A line like "innovative solutions for modern defence" communicates nothing, while "a ground evacuation robot that works under active EW" gives the product, the user and a reason to keep reading. The problem should be stated in numbers — how many hours a task takes, how many people it exposes, what happens to the mission without that capability.

Traction is identified as the most undervalued slide in Ukrainian decks. Companies delivering to the front daily, with combat statistics, codification and Brave1 grants, routinely place that evidence in the appendix because from inside the country it looks unremarkable. The op-ed argues it should open the presentation, alongside pilot programmes with units, contracts and letters of intent.

Two sections are described as frequently missing altogether: the business model, where "we sell to the state" describes a sales channel rather than how the company earns and scales, and competition, where a slide claiming no direct analogues indicates only that the founder did not look hard enough.

The op-ed also sets out the questions a defence investor holds in mind whether or not they are asked out loud — whether the path from prototype to serial contract fits a venture horizon, what protects the company's advantage, whether the technology survives beyond this war, and whether the team understands certification timelines and procurement cycles in Ukraine and in NATO countries.

On the pitch itself, the recommendation is to prepare four versions — one minute, three, five, and a deep dive — since founders do not control the format of the meeting. On the follow-up, an email within twenty-four hours containing one detail from the conversation and a concrete next step.

Read the full op-ed on AIN.UA.