Navigate Ventures’ portfolio companies represent exceptional innovators leveraging cutting edge technologies and AI to address complex challenges across industries, society, and global supply chains. We work closely with our portfolio CEOs to help them achieve their strategic goals, scale effectively, and secure successful growth financing, delivering strong value creation for our limited partners. 

Through our regular Charting the Course series, we talk to founders and leaders who’ve scaled, rebuilt, or reimagined companies in tough markets, to lift the lid on what it really takes to go the distance in tech.

In this edition of Charting the Course, our Managing Partner Ivan Nikkhoo connected with Max Buchan, founder and CEO of Valarian, a British deep tech startup building sovereign digital infrastructure for enterprises and national security clients across the globe. 

Max shares the journey that took him from an early fintech startup to building sovereign cloud infrastructure for governments and global enterprises. The conversation explores how Valarian's core platform, ACRA, has evolved to meet a new era of geopolitical tension, decentralized operations, and AI integration at the infrastructure level. 

Let’s start with your background. What led you to found Valarian? 

I graduated university in London and joined a young fintech business called CoinShares. I worked closely with the founder and CEO, Ryan Radloff, to get it off the ground. We didn’t raise any external venture capital but still managed to get the first regulated crypto derivative listed on the NASDAQ Stockholm. Within 18 months, we went from zero to about $55 million in revenue, with the business scaling from a few of us in a one-bedroom apartment to 250 people, and eventually went public at a $1.2 billion valuation. That was a pretty formative early experience for me. 

But what stood out during that time was the challenge of operating in a cross-jurisdictional environment – data moving between Sweden, the UK, France, etc. I started thinking deeply about the problem of digital sovereignty, both at the enterprise level and nationally. That coincided with broader geopolitical shifts, like Brexit, the situation in Ukraine, the early return of Hong Kong to China, and a growing belief that the future would demand sovereign solutions. That’s really what led to founding Valarian. 

Tell us about ACRA, your core platform. What does it do, and how did it evolve? 

ACRA is the foundation of what we’ve built. Technically, it’s a system for virtualized enclaves – extremely secure Kubernetes clusters. Practically, it lets you spin up secure, isolated environments on public cloud, private cloud, hybrid, or on-prem. You run sensitive applications inside these “bubbles,” and the data stays put. No exfiltration or leakage across jurisdictions. 

Originally, it was built for enterprises – banks, airlines, pharma companies. We didn’t set out to serve the defense sector. But then I met my co-founder Josh, who’d spent 18 years in the US military, including time with Army Rangers and other units, and then 12 years at Palantir. As the platform matured, it became clear there were national security applications. The technology was naturally dual-use, and the demand pulled us in this direction. 

One of the reasons we backed Valarian was your ability to build a remarkable team. How did you do that?

It’s something I’ve thought a lot about. I’d say the key is that great people attract great people. We brought on our chairman Nick, who co-founded Darktrace – probably the UK’s most successful cybersecurity company. That helped us bring in one of Darktrace’s top engineers, who’s been pivotal in building AI integrations on ACRA. 

Our investor networks played a big role early on. For example, a friend from UK Special Forces introduced me to Josh. I eventually met Josh in Doha and convinced him to leave Palantir and join a scrappy UK startup. Once the flywheel starts turning, talent brings more talent. 

Have there been hiccups along the way? 

Of course. Everyone deals with mis-hires or people who overstate their experience. We put a premium on real due diligence. In the national security space, relationships are tightly interwoven, and peer recommendations and references carry a lot of weight. 

How did you know you had product-market fit? 

It's an ongoing question. In 2020, when I started building this, everyone told me SaaS would centralize – i.e. one server in the US, one in Europe, one in Asia. But geopolitics was telling a different story. So it was a contrarian bet. 

We validated by talking to buyers. For example, a global COO at HSBC described exactly the kind of cross-jurisdictional data challenge we are building for. More recently, we’ve rolled out an integration that lets users run LLMs on highly classified data, using ACRA to secure the training data, the model, and the environment. That product took just five weeks to ship because it sat on top of four years of foundational infrastructure work. 

Is Valarian a decentralized or centralized company? 

It depends. Internally, we have a hub in London and offices in the US. Josh is based in Wyoming. But in terms of the product, it’s highly decentralized. Every deployment of ACRA is unique. We drop a full replicated backend into the customer’s environment, which we can’t access ourselves. There’s no backdoor, no admin access. That’s the whole point. It’s built on zero trust principles from the ground up. 

So how do you handle upgrades and bug fixes across so many unique installations? 

The billion-dollar question! It’s much harder than running a traditional SaaS platform. But we’ve learned from others: Databricks, Palantir, Darktrace. Frequent updates, robust patching, and secure channels have all had to be built in. It’s a very different operational paradigm. 

Where do you see Valarian going over the next five years? 

We’re aiming for true agnosticism across use cases and deployment environments. ACRA should be something that you can run to support communications, databases, AI models, in any location, any sector, and under any jurisdiction.

We want other platforms to build on top of us. Say Salesforce needs to meet Germany’s strict data residency rules – they could deploy on ACRA in minutes. We’ve even built ruggedized, GPU-powered Pelican case deployments for defense clients to run ACRA in the field. These are virtualized private networks that can be air-gapped, portable, or destroyed on site. 

Tell me about the regulatory environment – how does that affect your business? 

It’s evolving fast, especially with AI. Regulation is struggling to keep pace. For us, that means the burden is on the technologists. We can’t wait for regulators to catch up. So we’re focused on securing AI models, defining what data gets ingested, and enforcing architectural safeguards proactively, not reactively. 

What kind of CEO are you? What does good leadership look like in a business like yours? 

It’s about knowing your strengths and your weaknesses. I’ve surrounded myself with people who are better than me in their domains. Josh, my co-founder, brings deep operational and sector experience. Nick, our chairman, took Darktrace from inception to IPO – 4000 employees and counting. I learn from them every day. 

And I’ve learned to listen. But you can’t be paralyzed by too many opinions. You need to be decisive, move quickly, and stay focused, especially when the world is changing around you every six months. 

You started Valarian at 24. How did you raise money and build credibility? 

CoinShares gave me a solid foundation. But being a founder is different. I called Ryan afterwards and said, “Now I see how much you shielded me.” 

We were lucky to have early backers like IQ Capital in Cambridge, who believed in our long term thesis. Especially now, being a UK company working with NATO states, there’s real interest in non-US infrastructure solutions. That’s a strategic advantage. 

Any advice to other founders building complex, regulated companies? 

Honestly, I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re obsessed with the space. But if you are, then deeply understand the buyer first. Don’t build anything until you’ve validated the problem with the people who will pay for the solution. 

And don’t be afraid to be contrarian. If it’s obvious to everyone, it’s probably already saturated. But remember: chasing what VCs are investing in is useless. Focus on what real buyers actually need. 

I said at the time: whatever Max is doing now, it’s going to evolve within 24 months – but he’ll build something special. That’s exactly what’s happening. Max, thank you for joining us., Ivan Nikkhoo

About Valarian 

Valarian is a London-founded startup, offering a secure data management platform - ACRA - designed to give organizations and governments digital autonomy, ensuring discreet, controlled handling of sensitive information. 

About Max Buchan 

Max Buchan is the Founder & CEO of Valarian. He began his career as the first employee at CoinShares, where he worked closely with the co-founder and CEO. In just 18 months, the company grew from idea to over $55M in revenue, nearly $2B in assets under management, and later IPO’d on Nasdaq with a market cap of over $1B. 

The experience of helping CoinShares expand across cities like London, New York, Paris, Stockholm, and Jersey sparked Max’s interest in the complex challenges of digital sovereignty. This ultimately led him to launch Valarian, a company focused on securing digital infrastructure for governments and enterprises navigating increasingly fragmented regulatory environments. 

Max studied History and Economics at the University of London and was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for European Technology. 

About Ivan Nikkhoo

Ivan Nikkhoo is the Founder and Managing Partner of Navigate Ventures, an early growth fund specializing in partnering with exceptional B2B Enterprise SaaS companies outside Silicon Valley between Series A and Growth rounds. Navigate employs a risk-mitigated strategy designed to achieve a short holding period and an accelerated path to Distributions to Paid-In Capital (DPI). A sought-after speaker, Ivan frequently shares his insights at venture capital and family office conferences globally and is a regular contributor to several leading industry publications.

‍