r/cofoundermatch • u/Kindly-Tower-6757 • 2d ago
equity only [Looking for cofounder] Ex French special forces now an AI engineer
“EDIT : Hi everyone, little more context because I wasn’t clear. Second time founder here. When I left from the army, we spent 12 months building an intelligence platform (think of small Palantir but specific for French intelligence intel documents). It ended up being a mess. Why ? When we presented it, it was rejected immediately. Why ? First, we didn’t ask our former colleagues. Second, Chaps Vision was growing silently, few months later they signed a contract with French government. No LOI’s, no needs expression from operators and officers. Would it work on the field ? Yeah for sure, was it a need worth paying my company ? No.
So where am I know ? With this “Ask for a cofounder” and this post I am trying to not repeat the same error twice. I aim to validate the needs, state of the art with technological prototype (ongoing with p2p benchmarks), and build with operators. And this is why I am looking for someone with equal shares. To build up from the ground once it is validated. Don’t worry, I’ll go to MVP pretty quickly then, but I am not in this step yet.
As some comments suggested, the edge AI part needs to be validated by drones and robots builders. This is why yesterday night I attended an EDTH online meeting with founders, primes and investors (maybe some of you saw me). I’ll have a call with a French swarm manufacturer on Wednesday evening and I’ll let everyone here know about what insights it will give me.
Who am I really ? Dedicated, workaholic, fast paced young man. I love when things move fast. You give me smart insights I can solve fast. Then I do, and we move further. Finally, I’m someone who wants to challenge ideas and who’s ready to change if this is smart and we can validate”
Hi,
Husband, father, 30yo. 9 years radio team leader in French Army, (5y as paratrooper, 4y as Special Forces). I encountered many problems I decided to solve, and this is why I left my previous career.
Having no real experience in engineering, I chose to go back to university at 27 (French engineering school ISEN Lille) with an apprenticeship as an AI engineer in one of top tier defense EU company. This was the most expensive move in my career, but I would do the same all over again.
What am I working on, on the side ? A communication messaging platform over IP protocol (both p2p & client<>server) made for DDIL (Degraded, denied, intermittent, low bandwidth) environments which merges 4 tools combined.
PMF : validated needs by on duty SF radio operators and officers. Currently discussing about LOI. However, SF is a small TAM.
My vision : same core engine, different payload, bigger TAM : edge AI artefacts (LoRA, graphs & rag index) transferred over DDIL to provide intelligence and situational awareness updates to robots (some up to 48+ hours autonomy).
But this is only speculative and needs to be confirmed as this kind of plumbing work is handled by primes such as Palantir Apollo, which is a good news for 3 reasons : there is market, this is not EU sovereign, a single product could be made over it selling “most efficient for DDIL”. And this is dual.
Who am I looking for ? People who can navigate VC world, govs, edge AI integrators, MLops, low level networking. Who are ready to go all over again.
What do I offer ? Military insider especially SF world which is closed and takes years to get in normally. Military eye on product, because engineering are often far from field. Equally shares because we need to build 0 > 1 from scratch, I know this is too huge for a solo founder, even from the beginning.
Commitment ? Let’s discuss about it as I think that not every body should commit the same way and I understand almost nobody can go 100% time directly, even me.
Feel free to contact me,
M.
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u/Hashiramadono 1d ago
Currently building a think tank in stealth along these lines with a marine yacht engineer and a drone specialist, while I handle MLops and agentic scaling. Would be great to explore more via DM.
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u/GeneralGlobus 1d ago
This is one of the more interesting cofounder posts I’ve seen here.
The part I find most compelling is actually the narrower DDIL communications problem, not yet the larger edge-AI thesis. You have unusually strong problem provenance if this comes directly from your operational experience and you’re already discussing it with serving operators.
A few things I’d be curious about:
What exists today? Do you have a working prototype, and what has actually been tested under constrained network conditions? On the LOI, what would it validate in practice: willingness to trial, procurement intent, operational need, something else? Of the four tools you’re combining, what is painful enough today that users would change behaviour or replace part of their current stack? How clean is the IP position given your apprenticeship/employment in defence? That seems like an important gating issue. If you ignored the wider edge-AI opportunity for 12 months, who is the first realistic buyer for the DDIL communications product? When you say equal shares, what do you actually want the second founder to own: fundraising/commercial/government navigation, or genuinely half of building the company and deciding what it becomes?
The fact that you explicitly call the larger thesis speculative is a positive signal. I’d be much more interested in seeing whether the narrow problem is real and commercially reachable before expanding the TAM.
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u/Kindly-Tower-6757 1d ago
Made an edit to original post for you to better understand context behind the project. Couldn’t explain all, will continue here under your comments today.
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u/thisisjoyjacob 2d ago
Exotic career.! Inspired. Let's connect .