From Pitch to Adoption: James Murray on NATO DIANA and Defence Innovation

In this episode of DefTechPod, Erica Dill-Russell is joined by James Murray, Accelerator Manager at Janus, the UK accelerator delivering the NATO DIANA programme in partnership with UK Defence Innovation.

James brings a wide-ranging background in entrepreneurship, venture capital, university innovation and early-stage company building. Before joining Janus, he worked across entrepreneurship education, autonomous systems, drone companies and university seed funding, including the Oxford Seed Fund. His move into defence has been driven by a desire to use that experience to support founders building technologies that can matter to national security, sovereignty and the NATO alliance.

The conversation starts with what NATO DIANA is actually designed to do. James explains how the programme supports emerging defence and deep-tech companies from across the NATO alliance, taking them through validation, testing, mentoring, exposure to end users and investor readiness. Janus delivers the UK programme, bringing together business support, science and technology, defence and security expertise, and deep-tech investment experience.

Erica and James also discuss what founders often misunderstand about defence as a market. Defence is formal, regulated and difficult to navigate, but it is also deeply relationship-driven. Conversations after events, introductions through trusted networks, and informal moments around conferences can matter just as much as the formal programme itself. For companies without a defence background, learning how to build those relationships is part of the work.

The episode then moves into dual-use technology, and James offers a useful challenge to the way the term is often used. Rather than treating dual-use as a neat technical category, he argues that it is often better understood as a business and market strategy. The real question is not whether a product can be labelled dual-use, but whether the capability is genuinely useful to an end user, whether it has been validated, and whether the company understands how to translate between commercial and defence markets.

There is also a practical discussion about pitching. James has seen thousands of companies and is clear about what good pitches need: a clear problem, a defined customer or end user, evidence of validation, a realistic view of the market, and a strong call to action. He and Erica discuss where technically strong founders often go wrong, particularly when they get trapped in technical detail, fail to explain the operational problem, or do not show that they have spoken to real users.

One of the strongest themes in the episode is the need to “get out of the building”. James and Erica both stress that founders cannot build credible defence companies from behind a screen. They need to speak to users, attend industry days, test assumptions, join relevant programmes, listen hard, and use feedback to iterate quickly. For companies coming into defence with no track record, this early learning and relationship-building can be just as important as the technology itself.

The episode also highlights one of NATO DIANA’s most important advantages: reach across the alliance. James explains how the programme can give companies exposure beyond a single national market, connecting them with different NATO countries, different ways of working, end users, test opportunities and potential routes to adoption. He also talks about the Rapid Adoption Service and why access to a NATO-level programme can significantly change the commercial opportunity for the right company.

This is a useful episode for founders, SMEs, investors and non-traditional suppliers trying to understand NATO DIANA, dual-use company building, defence pitching, end-user validation and how to move from an interesting technology to something defence users can actually adopt.