Eric Slesinger, a former CIA officer, is disrupting the venture capital world. Now, he’s focused on European defense tech startups. Pair that with his role as founder of 201 Ventures, through which he recently closed a $22 million fund. This fund focuses on seed-stage companies in this sector, representing a big headline investment in a field that has often received scant funding.
For Slesinger, his journey into venture capital started in earnest after witnessing a major change in the defense landscape. He saw the private sector players getting more engaged. This was a departure from his past conception of competition, which he believed only existed among governments. This epiphany prompted him to launch 201 Ventures, with the mission of investing in growing opportunities within European defense tech.
In 2022, Slesinger set up the European Defense Investor Network. This unique collaborative forum brings together innovators, investors, and policymakers from across Europe to discuss and map out strategies to promote defense technology innovation across Europe. This network drives innovation, lowers costs, and attracts investment. It’s a big deal that it focuses on a field that has generally been neglected due to cultural timidity around defense-related endeavors.
So far Slesinger has made eight investments through 201 Ventures, focusing on technologies that operate in the space of gray zone competition. He considers gray zone dislocations to be special, positive asymmetric risk investment opportunities. These opportunities are the result of price inefficiencies and the increasing influence of governments in markets. His perspective underscores a growing recognition of the need for a more autonomous European defense ecosystem as geopolitical tensions rise.
“I left because I noticed that the private sector was increasingly playing a role in this competition that I previously had understood really to just be a government to government competition.” – Eric Slesinger
Slesinger is a fierce advocate for market-disrupting companies. One potential example is Delian, a European defense tech startup that has recently raised a successful seed funding. Another is Stockholm-based Polar Mist, which focuses on maritime drones. He focuses on getting people to invest in these firms. Second, he wants to help them cut through the bureaucracy and confusion of the defense market.
In his view, European companies must engage in lobbying much earlier in their development process to cultivate a robust defense sector. Cultural attitudes have historically hampered conversations around defense tech. As a result, too many founders with good ideas and market opportunities fail to start, or worse, give up.
“Many founders thinking about it, deciding not to build a company in the space.” – Eric Slesinger
As Slesinger’s comments suggest, there is a growing confidence and a new way of thinking spreading across Europe. As he mentions, investors and entrepreneurs are becoming aware of the unique opportunities within the defense sector. This change is occurring, in part, due to the historic line between government and private industry growing increasingly more opaque.
The new European Defense Investor Network is a promising place to sow this new mentality. By facilitating dialogue among key stakeholders, it aims to create an environment conducive to innovation and investment in defense technology.
“Europe has individual entrepreneurs that are just as hungry, just as high conviction, and just as smart as anywhere else in the world.” – Eric Slesinger
Amid rising geopolitical tensions, defence tech investment, Slesinger thinks, will continue to be a major trend throughout Europe. He observes that this trend is “happening at scale in Europe, and it will for the next couple of decades.”
His approach is guided by a philosophy he attributes to his CIA experience: “Go where others don’t go and do what they can’t do.” This attitude is what drives his dedication to pursuing the next frontier in defense innovation. He thinks that’s where the big opportunity is.
