Advisory · Defense technology, autonomy and the capital behind it

Where a company is tested before it is fielded.

Four decisions cannot be taken twice: opening the books, selling the company, being underwritten, and entering the public markets. This firm is built for those four, and nothing else.

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Partner-led Fixed fee, never hourly Autonomy · Robotics · Defense · Aviation · Applied AI

The problem

At the four moments that decide what happens to the company, nobody in the room has been the client.

Banks and capital-markets advisors

Can execute a listing and hold the underwriter relationships. Cannot tell you what the books will do under a first audit, and engage only at the transaction — not in the years before it.

Accountants and transaction-services practices

Know the standards. The firm you hire to audit is barred from preparing you for it, and a readiness practice sells a methodology rather than a judgment about your company.

Sector-specialist consultants

Fluent on the technology and on how the government buys. Have never carried a Form S-1 registration statement, sat through a first audit, or sold a company.

The Big Four have the scale and sell process rather than judgment. Independent operators have the judgment and no institution behind them. The company that needs all three is venture-funded, government-dependent and expected to exit — which is most of this sector, and it is served by nobody who has done all of it. The gap in the middle is where this firm is built.

The firm

A proving ground is where a system is tested against real conditions before it is fielded.

Aberdeen. Yuma. Dugway. That is what every line in this firm sells: readiness. Audit-ready, deal-ready, diligence-ready, listing-ready — and a client is either the company, or the family office, hedge fund, venture fund or private-equity firm that owns it.

Partner-led Every engagement has a named partner accountable throughout, present in the room. There is no analyst layer to hand you off to.

Fixed-fee The firm does not bill hourly. Projects are priced against a written deliverable set; retainers against a defined scope with a quarterly review. No timesheet, no rate card by seniority, no incentive to overstaff your problem.

Agent-run The research, monitoring and drafting layer beneath the partner runs on a fleet of artificial-intelligence agents rather than junior consultants. What that does and does not mean is set out below, in full.

The offering · Four lines

Opening the books. Selling the company. Being underwritten. Reaching the public markets.

Capital Markets & Public-Company Readiness

Form S-1 and listing preparation; underwriter selection and process management
Independent board build-out; audit and compensation committee design
Sarbanes-Oxley readiness, disclosure controls, Regulation Fair Disclosure discipline
Investor narrative and first-year public-company operating cadence

Standing deliverable

A Form S-1 readiness register, scored weekly against a codified checklist, with risk-factor and disclosure drafts benchmarked to comparable filings and to the Securities and Exchange Commission's comment-letter history in this sector. You see the questions before you are asked them.

For companies twelve to twenty-four months from a listing decision, recently listed companies whose infrastructure has not caught up to the filing calendar, and investors preparing a position for a public exit.

Corporate Development & Mergers and Acquisitions

Buy-side thesis, sourcing and integration planning
Sell-side positioning and preparation for dual-use companies
Carve-outs and divestitures
Post-close integration management — the first four quarters, not the first four weeks

Standing deliverable

A maintained target landscape for your thesis: every company in the defined category scored on award history, program dependence, recompete exposure and financial-reporting maturity, refreshed as filings and awards publish.

For consolidating platforms in autonomy and defense, founders approaching an exit, and sponsors and family offices managing portfolio-company transactions, carve-outs and bolt-ons.

Investor Diligence & Principal Investing

Technical, commercial and regulatory diligence on autonomy and defense targets
Government revenue durability, concentration and program risk
Financial-reporting maturity: whether the books will survive the next audit
Portfolio-company operating support and board placement

Standing deliverable

A diligence pack in four business days, because the award-history and financial-reporting picture is already standing and maintained before the target is named. Every assertion is sourced to a primary record, with an explicit open-questions list.

For family offices investing directly without a sector bench, hedge and crossover funds underwriting pre-IPO and small-capitalization positions, venture and growth funds, and sponsors without an in-house operating partner in this category.

Audit & Financial Readiness

Profit-and-loss and revenue-recognition analysis under ASC Topic 606, by contract type
Auditor identification, scoping and selection; independence screening
Accounting support through fieldwork — close calendar, technical memoranda
Material-weakness remediation and audit-committee preparation

Standing deliverable

An audit-readiness register: the prepared-by-client list scored weekly against the evidence actually in hand, every material account tied to its support.

For companies twelve to thirty months from a listing, a sale or a priced round, whose books were built for a venture investor and will now be read by an auditor — and for sponsors preparing a portfolio company for a quality-of-earnings review.

Companies typically enter at 04 or 01 and move through 02 across a two- to four-year relationship. Investors enter at 03 and pull the firm into their portfolio. Every line ships a continuously maintained, primary-source-cited asset alongside the advice — included in the fee, never priced separately or licensed as software.

The operating model

This is a monitoring problem before it is an advice problem.

A Form S-1 file goes stale the moment a comparable company files. A prepared-by-client list is out of date the week after it is drawn. Auditor landscapes change without notice, and a target landscape ages with every award. So the deliverable is not a memo — it is a standing register, monitored against primary sources and re-scored when one of them moves, with a dated remediation plan attached.

4 days

Not three weeks

A diligence pack turns in four business days because the award-history and financial-reporting picture is standing before the target is named.

Weekly

Not at the end

A readiness register is scored every week against the evidence actually in hand — not assembled in the fortnight before fieldwork. That is the difference between a plan and a scramble.

Cited

Not asserted

Every assertion carries a citation to a primary record. Anything that cannot be cited is delivered as an open question, not a finding.

What the machines do not do

They do not decide whether to move a listing date, accept a price, or restate a number. Those are judgments with consequences, and a person makes them.
They do not sit in the room, read the counterparty, or hold the relationship.
They do not sit on a board, take fiduciary duty, or carry professional liability. Those are the partner's, personally.
They do not audit anything, and neither does this firm. The register assembles the evidence; it does not test it, conclude on it, or opine on it.
They do not reduce the need for specialist counsel or a licensed Certified Public Accountant.

The signature rule

No agent output reaches you, a regulator, an auditor or a counterparty without a named partner's review and signature. Citations are verified before anything ships.

The firm's perimeter was set before it opened. Transaction-contingent compensation runs through a registered broker-dealer referral relationship. The scope is non-advisory in writing under the Investment Advisers Act, and strictly non-attest in the financial-readiness line. Controlled unclassified information and export-controlled client data sit in a two-enclave information architecture built to NIST SP 800-171, with contractual zero retention and no training on your data.

If your programs restrict the use of artificial intelligence in work product, any engagement can be delivered with the agent layer restricted to public sources only — same fee, longer timeline, stated in the proposal rather than negotiated afterward.

The record

Four companies. Four times the job was to change what the company was.

Exyn Technologies Nasdaq: EXYN | EXYNW Chair, chief executive & director · 2023–2026

A hardware-led robotics vendor with a narrow customer base, repositioned to a software-first, platform-agnostic autonomy business while the listing process was running. Gross margin to 42.2% in the first quarter of 2026 from 35.6% a year earlier — 660 basis points on a software-weighted mix. Exyn Defense, Inc. established, and an independent board with audit and compensation committees seated for the listing. Registration statement effective 14 May 2026; 2,500,000 units at $7.75 for approximately $19.4 million gross, trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market from 15 May.

Unusual Machines NYSE American: UMAC Co-founder, chief executive & director · 2022–2023

A listing path attached to no operating business. A carve-out and a listing run at the same time: Rotor Riot and Fat Shark acquired out of Red Cat Holdings to create the operating company, and the Form S-1 carried through to a NYSE American listing and a $5.0 million initial public offering.

EagleNXT NYSE American: UAVS Chief operating officer, then chief executive & director · 2021–2022

A listed small-capitalization company — then AgEagle Aerial Systems — that had committed publicly to an acquisition strategy and had to fund it as the window was closing. Over $75 million raised through an at-the-market facility while the market would still take it; senseFly acquired from Parrot Group for $23 million and MicaSense for $23 million, executed and integrated concurrently, roughly doubling headcount and revenue.

MEASURE Private Founder & chief executive · 2014–2021

A category leader in a market that had stopped rewarding scale. Built past fifty people around Drone as a Service and the Ground Control platform on more than $30 million raised — then the judgment to stop building and start selling, and to sell in two pieces rather than one: the services division, then the software division for $45 million.

4×

Chief executive of a venture-backed or listed company in this sector

Form S-1 registration statements carried to listing, on Nasdaq and NYSE American

$125M+

Raised across initial public offering, at-the-market, venture and private channels

$100M+

Deployed across completed acquisitions, plus two divestitures executed

This is not a restructuring practice and the firm does not take operating control of a client. It is the record of a chief executive who four times had to change a company's model, ownership, cost base or reporting obligations against a deadline set by somebody else — with a board watching and, three times out of four, a public market pricing the result every day. That is the condition a client is in when they call.

The founder

Brandon Torres Declet

Founder and managing partner. More than twenty years building and transforming companies at the intersection of autonomy, robotics, defense technology, aviation and applied artificial intelligence — four chief-executive tenures, each of which required changing what the company was against a deadline set by somebody else, and three of the four with a public market pricing the result daily.

Four first audits and comment-letter cycles from the client's side of the table, and the purchase accounting three acquisitions created. He has been the company being diligenced, four times, and the party writing the check as a board director and investor — which is why he knows which answers management gives in a diligence session are the true ones and which merely sound true. He has given both.

The moments that matter in this work are rarely technical. They are the ones where a position held for two years does not survive, the number moves, and somebody has to tell a board and a market.

Government and policy

National Security Counsel to the United States Congress, 2007–2011, advising the House Homeland Security and the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees under a Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance. New York City Police Department Counter Terrorism Bureau, 2005–2007. Vice president for the defense and homeland-security practice at McAllister & Quinn, 2011–2014. Appointed by the Secretary of Transportation to the Federal Aviation Administration Advanced Aviation Advisory Committee; advisor to the Centre for Technology and Global Affairs, University of Oxford.

Boards and advisory

Workhorse Group (Nasdaq: WKHS), 2023–2024, on the Human Capital Management and Compensation Committee. Co-founder and director of ReadyMonitor. Director at TruWeather Solutions (2019–2025) and Ascend Engineering (2024–2026), chairman of Aerodyne MEASURE, director of the Latino Corporate Directors Association, and venture partner at The Flying Object.

Education

Master of Laws in National Security, Georgetown University Law Center. Juris Doctor, Fordham University School of Law. Bachelor of Arts, Union College.

Recognition

Technology & Engineering Emmy Award, 2018. Washingtonian Tech Titan, 2018 and 2019.

Common questions

What the firm does, what it does not do, and how it is priced.

What does Proving Ground Partners do?

Proving Ground Partners is a partner-led advisory firm working with autonomy, robotics, defense-technology, aviation and applied-artificial-intelligence companies, and with the investors behind them, at four decisions that cannot be taken twice: opening the books to an auditor, selling the company, being underwritten, and entering the public markets. The four service lines are capital markets and public-company readiness, corporate development and mergers and acquisitions, investor diligence and principal investing, and audit and financial readiness.

Does Proving Ground Partners perform audits?

No. The firm performs no audits, reviews, compilations or opinions, and holds no certified public accounting licence. The audit-readiness line prepares a company for its auditor: the register assembles the evidence, it does not test it, conclude on it or opine on it. Every technical accounting position is signed by a certified public accountant.

How is an engagement priced?

Fixed fee, never hourly. Projects are priced against a written deliverable set; retainers against a defined scope with a quarterly review. There is no timesheet and no rate card by seniority. Specialist counsel, contracted certified public accountants, cleared technologists and travel are billed at cost with no markup.

How long does an investor diligence pack take?

Four business days, against roughly three weeks for a conventional diligence boutique. The turnaround is possible because the award-history and financial-reporting picture on the category is already standing and maintained before the target is named. Every assertion carries a citation to a primary record, and anything that cannot be cited is delivered as an open question rather than a finding.

What is a readiness register?

A standing, continuously monitored alternative to a point-in-time memo. A Form S-1 file goes stale the moment a comparable company files, and a prepared-by-client list is out of date the week after it is drawn. A readiness register is scored weekly against primary sources and re-scored when one of them moves, with a dated remediation plan attached. Registers are included in the fee and never priced separately or licensed as software.

How does the firm use artificial intelligence, and can it be restricted?

The research, monitoring and drafting layer beneath the partner runs on a fleet of artificial-intelligence agents rather than junior consultants. No agent output reaches a client, regulator, auditor or counterparty without a named partner's review and signature, and citations are verified before anything ships. Where a client's programs restrict the use of artificial intelligence in work product, any engagement can be delivered with the agent layer restricted to public sources only — same fee, longer timeline, stated in the proposal rather than negotiated afterward. Controlled unclassified information and export-controlled client data sit in a two-enclave architecture built to NIST SP 800-171, with contractual zero retention and no training on client data.

Who is the founder of Proving Ground Partners?

Brandon Torres Declet, founder and managing partner. Four chief-executive tenures in this sector — Exyn Technologies (Nasdaq: EXYN), Unusual Machines (NYSE American: UMAC), EagleNXT, formerly AgEagle Aerial Systems (NYSE American: UAVS), and MEASURE — including two Form S-1 registration statements carried to listing, four first audits and comment-letter cycles from the client's side, more than $125 million raised and more than $100 million deployed across completed acquisitions. Previously National Security Counsel to the United States Congress and a member of the Federal Aviation Administration Advanced Aviation Advisory Committee.

Start here

Which of the four is unresolved in your next twelve months?

Not “is it interesting.” Is there a line in your next twelve months — or in a company you own — where one of these four things is unresolved and someone will have to fix it. That is the conversation.

Email Brandon directly

Companies

Twelve to thirty months from a listing, a sale, a priced round or a first audit — and the finance function was built for a venture investor, not an auditor.

Capital

Underwriting a position, preparing a portfolio company, or making a direct investment in this sector without a bench of your own.