Praestes
Praestes

Praestes: 'pri.stiːz' - to stand before, to excel, to guarantee

Praestes: 'pri.stiːz' - to stand before, to excel, to guaranteePraestes: 'pri.stiːz' - to stand before, to excel, to guaranteePraestes: 'pri.stiːz' - to stand before, to excel, to guarantee


Bridging the gap between innovation and mission success

Our Services

Specialist user validation workshops and field trials

We partner with innovators to validate and optimise products and services for the defence, security and resilience sectors.


Our expert-led workshops and field trials rigorously stress-test, refine and prove your capabilities, ensuring they are not just technically sound, but also operationally viable and positioned for market success. 


We provide highly discreet access to a unique network of former UK specialist users, who bring extensive knowledge and operational insight from careers at the vanguard of government.

Talent placement

We connect industry and venture partners with exceptional talent from across the government services community. By working closely with employers to understand their hiring priorities—and with service leavers to understand their aspirations, skills, and values—we create meaningful, high-impact matches. Every introduction is a reflection of us. We don’t just place people—we vouch for them. We stake our reputation on every placement, ensuring that transitioning personnel find fulfilling, purpose-driven roles, while organisations gain access to individuals with proven leadership, adaptability, and mission-focused experience.

Frequently Asked Questions

Please reach us at info@praestes.co.uk if you cannot find an answer to your question.

Our network is built around a core of recently transitioned veterans and subject-matter experts drawn from the UK elite specialist user community, wider Defence and other government departments. Each workshop and trials team is carefully curated to match your specific needs, giving you direct access to the most operationally current service leavers. This ensures the expertise you receive is role-specific, mission-focused and grounded in recent, real-world experience.

We support organisations at every stage — from early-stage innovators testing ideas, to companies with fielded capabilities seeking to sharpen their edge.

Our workshops and trials deliver critical feedback that helps you refine your product, accelerate adoption, and strategically position your business with defence, security and resilience customers and investors. We provide more than just an assessment of strengths and weaknesses; we deliver clear, actionable recommendations based on what is proven to work in the field.


For innovators:


  • Faster development cycles – validate product-market fit sooner with real operator feedback
  • Reduced development costs – avoid wasted R&D by aligning with operational needs from the start
  • Lower BD costs – save months of outreach by accessing government users and decision-makers directly.
  • Accelerated time to market – arrive adoption-ready, not just prototype-ready


For Investors:


  • Pre-investment insight – stress-test capability claims and operational relevance before capital deployment.
  • De-risked portfolio growth – companies backed by Praestes validation scale faster, burn less and win adoption earlier.

No two workshops are the same; the format depends on the capability or service being assessed. For some, a single day of interactive discussion and scenario-based stress-testing is right. For others, a day on the range is more valuable. Every workshop is bespoke — designed to deliver clarity, challenge assumptions, and optimise your path to success.

We make the process simple and tailored to your needs:


  • You book the venue or range: Whether it's a training ground or test site, you choose the location that suits your objectives.
  • We provide the expert users: Our team consists of hand-selected, highly experienced former specialist users with operational currency, who are familiar with your domain and capable of delivering constructive feedback.
  • We tailor the team to your requirements: Based on your goals, we select users with the right background, skillset and operational experience to ensure the trial delivers actionable insights.


Our aim is to validate product performance and gather structured feedback—all in a controlled and client-led environment.

Everything from autonomous systems, advanced sensors and AI tools, to novel munitions, cyber technologies, logistics solutions and decision-support software. We tailor the team to the requirement.

Instead of one consultant, you get a curated, multi-disciplinary team with decades of lived operational experience. The format is fast, discreet and delivers sharper, more actionable insights than traditional consultancy.

Yes. All sessions are conducted in strict confidence, underpinned by professional discretion and NDAs where required.

If you are in a hurry, we can usually assemble a tailored team within 2–3 weeks, depending on the scope and required expertise, but the earlier we understand your goals, the better able we are to deliver the results you need, according to your timeline.

Yes. A concise, actionable report that captures key insights, risks and optimisation opportunities will follow each workshop.

The outputs are yours. If you wish, we can advise on how to shape them for HMG engagement, but we do not share them without your permission.

Absolutely. Several investors have used our workshops as part of their technical and operational due diligence process before making capital commitments.

Many clients engage us for follow-on support — from refining propositions, to facilitating introductions, to helping shape trial and evaluation pathways with defence, security and resilience customers.

Pricing depends on the scale and scope of each engagement. We offer one-off workshops and field trials, as well as ongoing advisory relationships for those looking to embed Praestes expertise longer term. Get in touch and we can recommend the best approach over a call.

Contact Us

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Praestes Ltd

First Floor, 85 Great Portland Street, London W1W 7LT, UK

Info@praestes.co.uk Praestes Ltd. Company No: 16486930

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