Applied research
Hacking for Defense — Stanford 2025
An independent research workspace I built from Steve Blank's public lessons-learned readout on the 2025 Hacking for Defense cohort. It turns the final-presentation writeup into a working study of how eight teams used the Lean LaunchPad method to move real defense problems toward deployment.
- Source
- Steve Blank's public H4D readout, June 2025
- Method
- Lean LaunchPad, mission-model canvas, customer discovery
- Format
- Structured notes, curated links, reusable templates
- Affiliation
- Independent study — not affiliated with Stanford, H4D, or Anduril
The 2025 cohort
Eight teams, eight national-security problem areas. Across the cohort: 1,106 stakeholder interviews, and seven of the eight teams went on to the DIU Defense Innovation Summer Fellows program.
Omnyra
Visibility into AI-generated bioengineering threats
HydraStrike
Swarm technology for the maritime domain
HyperWatch
Detecting and tracking hypersonic threats
ChipForce
Securing U.S. dominance in critical minerals
ArgusNet
Instant geospatial data for search and rescue
NeoLens
AI-assisted troubleshooting for military mechanics
Omnicomm
Resilient, secure comms for special operations
Strom
Simplifying the critical-minerals value chain
What it covers
- A structured readout of all eight 2025 teams and their problem areas.
- Public slide and video links from the cohort, collected in one place.
- Reusable templates: mission-model canvas, stakeholder discovery, and interview prep.
- A link-extraction script to keep the source list current.