HOW WE WORK
Working With Us
What Deployment involves, and the one honest way to start.
Since the second day of the full-scale invasion, the Borderlands Group has done one thing: stand between the builders of the West and the defenders of Ukraine, and make each real to the other.
We have taken more than fifteen defense companies into the war — to the units, the ministries, the test ranges, and the front. Some of them became real there: programs of record, allied contracts, products soldiers ask for by name. All of them left knowing the truth about what they had built.
WHAT THAT HAS PRODUCED
ALL SIX RESULTS →US-government-funded letter of request, with a €100MM+ German follow-on in development.
Submitted letters of request for an acoustic sensor company, built on frontline demand.
Raised by an air-defense interceptor company on the back of frontline letters of intent.
Clients are anonymised by category. Outcomes vary by product, performance, and demand. No specific outcome is guaranteed.
THE ONE HONEST WAY TO START
Everyone begins with the Readiness Assessment.
Three working sessions and a written decision — including “not yet”, where that is the answer.
DEPLOYMENT — OUR DONE-FOR-YOU WORK
We run the entire journey, in person, from Kyiv
For companies ready to commit. Five stages, in order, with our team alongside you for each of them.
We pressure-test your product, your claims, and your assumptions against what the front actually needs this month — before Ukraine does it for you.
Registration, procurement rules, export questions, the paperwork that kills momentum — handled with people who do it weekly.
The right units, the right engineers, the right officials — in the right order. Our team includes senior Ukrainian defense-industry leadership and retired general officers who know the difference between a meeting and a decision.
Real trials with real end users under real conditions — the whetstone. Honest data, fast iteration, no theater.
Presence, partnerships, and the standing that makes you one of the companies that was here during — not after.
Deployment is a serious commitment on both sides, and we do not sell it on a webpage. We admit companies into it the same way Ukraine admits companies: after we have worked together once, honestly, and both sides know it is right.
THE UKRAINE READINESS ASSESSMENT
That first work, and how everyone starts
Three working sessions with our senior team, built around one question: is your product — and your company — ready for the proving ground, and what exactly would it take?
A senior partner takes your product and claims through the lens of the current front: EW environment, unit needs, what has died there before, where you would actually fit.
Compliance path, testing options, which doors exist for you — grants, unit trials, procurement routes — and what it would cost in time and money to walk through them.
Sixty minutes, one on one. We put the whole picture together and I tell you plainly what I would do in your position — including “do not come yet”, if that is the truth.
WHAT YOU LEAVE WITH
- A written readiness assessment — the honest map of your path into Ukraine, whether you work with us again or not
- The compliance and testing path, with what it costs in time and money
- A clear decision, including “not yet” where that is the answer
AND AFTERWARDS
Assessment clients who move forward get complete one-on-one work with a member of the senior team — and access to our advisory bench in Ukraine: the technologists who evaluate what actually works, the relationships that open the right rooms, the logistics that move people and hardware safely, and the government-funding pathways once demand for your product is identified.
Not there yet? Start where everyone starts — the talk — or, if you are pre-seed, Basic Training for Founders.
Samuel P.N. Cook (August 2026)
Founder, The Borderlands Group · Kyiv
TO START
Request the Readiness Assessment
Tell us about your company and we will confirm scope, fee and scheduling. Along the way you see exactly how we work.
Or write to us — scheduling begins within one business day.