Elias and I met during our studies at VU Amsterdam, where we found ourselves programming autonomous vehicles and debugging kernel allocators at odd hours. Over time, our work kept converging so we decided to formalize under this new company, Defined Once. We're happy to officially launch here at RustWeek, it's great to meet so many new faces. At last year's conference, Nico Matsakis described the particular niche that Rust fills very well, namely building foundational software. That stuck with me and laid out a mental model for what we wanted to offer with our own company.
At Defined Once, we help teams write their foundational layers in Rust. More specifically, we work alongside engineering teams who either already have or are considering the move to Rust, whether its migrating load-bearing parts of the stack or building systems from scratch with the rigor they deserve.
For a Sovereign Europe
However, Rust is only half the reason we started Defined Once. Earlier this year, Cory Doctorow argued that "software is a liability, not an asset". The asset is what the software does for you; the code itself is debt and right now, most of Europe's foundational debt is held by a handful of overseas corporations. European organizations should be able to run their systems without being one policy change or one service termination away from losing control. Building software that lasts means building it in ways that preserve the autonomy of the people who depend on it.
The second half of our work is helping teams in Europe build that foundational layer themselves. If any of this resonates and you're at RustWeek this week, come find us because we'd love to hear what you're building.
RustWeek Reflections
Back in Amsterdam, we've recorded a video to reflect on RustWeek 2026. Be a fly on the wall while we discuss the Rust compiler, the community and Rust for Linux.
