FORTRESS

Fortress is a three week defence tech residency sprint. We don't do SaaS, we don't do consumer tech, and we don't do anything adjacent to defense because it looked like an interesting market. We exist for one type of person: the kind who is building defense technology and is serious enough about it to commit three weeks of focused work, multiple times a year, in the same room as the people who actually need what they're building.

We started Fortress because we kept seeing the same thing. Brilliant reservists and engineers with ideas that could change Finnish capability, hitting a wall the moment they tried to get their work in front of the people who needed it. Not because the work wasn't good enough, but because they didn't know the right people, hadn't been in the right rooms, and had no realistic path to getting there on their own. We've been in those rooms. We built Fortress to bring you with us.

We run three-week sprints in Lappeenranta where you show up, move in, and build. Four to six times a year. Each sprint addresses real problems, with structured accelerator content built into the work itself.

We are the direct link between you and the defense industry. The mentors we bring in have spent careers inside the sector with procurement, operations, technology, and the field. They've seen what gets adopted and what gets shelved, and they'll give you an honest read on your work long before you find out the hard way.

We're not trying to sell you on Lappeenranta. It's simply the right place to build defense technology in Finland right now, and if that matters to you, you'll see why immediately.

Finland has one of the longest borders with Russia in Europe and a defense culture that carries real weight. Lappeenranta sits inside the historical defense corridor, and our building, Radiotalo, also is in a historical fortress itself.

Fortress doesn't close between sprints. The house in Lappeenranta operates year-round as a space for defense-adjacent founders, hosts ecosystem events, and serves as the standing meeting point for the Finnish deftech community. Sprint alumni who want to continue building come back here. Founders working independently work here. Visiting allied operators come here. The FDF, investors, and partners all know where to find us.

This continuity is the point. Programs that happen once a year and disappear cannot build anything that lasts. We are building the institution that lasts.

Reservists who already understand that defense doesn't operate like other industries. There's no VC playbook here, no growth hacking your way to a government contract. Sales cycles run long, the regulatory environment is serious, and when something ships that doesn't perform in the field, the consequences are nothing like a bad quarter.

We work with engineers and entrepreneurial operators, mostly in their twenties and thirties, at a point where committing three weeks to real work on a real problem is a real option. Hardware, software, or both, we don't mind. We just care that you're starting from a real problem, not retrofitting a consumer product into a defense use case because the market looked interesting.

You live in Radiotalo, in Lappeenranta. Accommodation and food are covered for the three weeks of the sprint. You get the tools you need to build, workshop equipment, components, sovereign defense AI compute, and ongoing access to mentors from inside the industry who work with you directly throughout the sprint, not just for a one-hour session.

A defense use case built and tested. Feedback from people who operate in the field. A working prototype against a problem that has been named, evaluated by the operators who would use it. A clear next step: either continued engagement toward procurement or the path toward becoming a Finnish defense company. The people we work with in the industry can tell the difference the moment you walk in the room.

The Finnish defense sector needs innovation that moves faster than it currently does. The window is open right now and it won't stay that way. We built Fortress because the people who can do this already exist in Finland, they just need to be in the right place, with the right people around them.

If that sounds like you, come build with us.