Sci-Fi fans among us might recognize the moment: We are living through what Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” universe would call a “Seldon Crisis” - a moment of systemic fragility that demands decisive action to avoid decline. I believe Techno-Industrial Vertical Integrators are the mechanism to overcome our crisis. 

Geopolitical tensions, conflicts, and wars show the ugliest side of humankind, but historically they have also been powerful catalysts for innovation and industrial mobilisation. The TV series “For all Mankind” plays out a simple counterfactual where the Soviets beat the Americans in putting the first man on the moon in 1969, triggering a drawn out space race over decades. It ultimately delivers abundant clean energy for the world and manned missions to Mars before the year 2000 - decades ahead of our own timeline.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with sci-fi - using technology to push the frontier, to build what once seemed impossible, to explore the universe. Nearly seven years since my first exposure to startups and VC as a teenager, I began noticing the emergence of a new pattern about three years ago and have devoted most of my time to it since: The rise of a new archetype - Vertical Integrators.

What surprised me was the resistance. The idea felt self-evident, but the skepticism was consistent - especially in Europe. Now, more than two years later, I still keep hearing the same questions, and still watch ambitious founders having to dodge the same surface-level objections. That disconnect compelled me to write this paper.

I hold two strong convictions:

1. Techno-Industrial Vertical Integrators will drive the majority of value creation over the coming decades.

2. This theme remains deeply misunderstood, especially in Europe.

Many still think all Vertical Integrators are capital-intensive, unscalable, or simply “too hard.” I believe this view is wrong and I’ve gathered the evidence to show why. I’m not alone in this conviction, but existing discourse only captures fragments of the story - only a select few deeply understand the opportunity and see the whole board. This work is my attempt to make it visible.

Europe, and the Western World more broadly, needs a new generation of wildly ambitious founders, paired with visionary, yet precise capital allocators to make this vision a reality. The goal of this paper is simple:

1. Share my learnings to unlock a new wave of educated capital for Vertical Integrators and improve their odds of success - to lay out my observed principles of success for Vertical Integrators.

2. I’m looking for ground truth. If you disagree with parts of this work, see blind spots, would like to add more nuance, or feel something is missing, I’d love to hear from you.

Finally, while much of the geopolitical rhetoric around this topic is often framed in an anti-China stance by others, that isn’t the intent here. The points I’m trying to make are not ideological. They are about the geopolitical interplay of nations, technological trends, and economic principles in the context of rebuilding a sovereign industrial base - for the sake of abundance and deterrence.