Improving
frontline soldier survivability.
A new venture in defense. Early, in stealth, and I talk specifics in person. Behind it: eight years shipping products and three spring seasons flying thermal-drone search operations.
Say helloNow
This year I started building a company in defense. The work is keeping people alive at the front.
Right now I'm deliberately in the wide part of that: mapping where the demand actually is before I lock a product. Operator conversations, primary research, and learning the European procurement world from the inside.
I'm looking for a technical cofounder.
The short version: hardware and software, prototypes that go into the field, European defense. You'd join early, not at zero. The long version is a conversation. If that pulls at you, or you know someone it would, email me. I reply to everything.
hello@manuelschurr.comTrack record
Every spring since 2024 I've run a fawn-rescue network in Bavaria: 70 volunteers, 424 thermal-drone search missions coordinated across three seasons, more than 100 flown myself. The first two seasons ran on WhatsApp threads and spreadsheets, so I built Scout to replace them; 145 of those missions were dispatched through it in 2026. Over 1,000 hours on UAVs all told, and this year my first FPV build from scratch: a frontline-ready drone for Ukraine with the DroneAid Collective.
Before that, two years in the volunteer fire brigade: fifty calls a year, qualified as drone pilot, boat operator, and breathing-apparatus wearer.
And under all of it, eight years of product: strategy at board level, prototypes in the codebase, discovery in the field.
European Defense Tech Hackathon
Jun 2026One of three winning teams: underground last-mile logistics for contested airspace.
filu
2024–2026Head of Product at the vet-care startup: clinical tooling, board-level product.
Personio
2023–2024Product manager, time tracking. Compliance-critical features for European HR.
Hyzerbase
2022–2024World's first fantasy disc golf app, bootstrapped with a friend. 1,500 organic users in six weeks, 89% seven-day retention, still running. Read the story.
Strategy Compass
2021–2023Head of Product & Design. Built both functions from scratch.
Digital-Agentur Heidelberg
2020Led a data-science team turning traffic data into mobility insights.
Deloitte Digital
2018–2019Venture architect. The B2B platform grew to €4B revenue by 2023.
Lab
May to July 2026: a deliberate walk through the substrate my products always sat on. Radio, silicon, orbits, and how sensing becomes a decision. Not a phase I finished: it's how I find the thing worth building.
Open the lab notebookWork below the software layer.
3D printing & CAD
Jigs, fixtures, and filament discipline: learning to make the parts the other threads needed.
UWB ranging
Two DW3000 boards ranging at ±2 cm, in bare-metal C.
SDR receiving
HackRF + PortaPack: ADS-B, AIS, weather satellites, ham voice, Class A licence prep.
SAR & thermal
Own drone orthophotos over Sentinel-2, NASA ARSET trainings, SAR physics.
Intelligence tradecraft
Grabo, Lowenthal, Clark, Biltgen & Ryan: how sensing becomes warning.
Products
Software I built because my field operations needed it.