You have spent years developing a technology that genuinely works. But who will be the first customer? A go-to-market (GTM) strategy is the answer to this question: which specific customer will pay, how much, through which channel, and why this customer.
A technology rarely reaches the market through a classic product launch. More often, it passes through customer discovery, pilots, validation in the user environment, negotiations with a partner, a test order, a license or a regulatory pathway. A GTM plan puts that journey in order. It translates a sequence of decisions into a plan that defines how you will reach target customers for your specific technology: which segment to enter first, who the real customer is, how to reach the decision-maker and what proof of value must be delivered.
Researchers often treat a GTM strategy as a general plan covering the whole market for the technology, with every possible application, and leave its refinement to the investor. That is a mistake. An investor expects the team to know who buys first, why that customer specifically, and what evidence will prove it. In other words, how you will move toward the first transaction and traction.
What investors look for in your GTM strategy
- Who is the first customer? Not “the market”, not “the sector”, and not “everyone with the problem”. The first customer is a specific type of organization with a budget, a pain point and the ability to decide and purchase.
- What is the market entry wedge? A deep-tech project rarely starts with the whole market. It starts with the segment where the problem is urgent and painful, access to the customer is possible, entry barriers are manageable, and value can be proven quickly. The rest of the market comes later through evidence and references from the first segment.
- What is the value proposition? Customers do not buy technical parameters such as efficiency, sensitivity or processing speed; they buy a measurable improvement to an existing problem that matters most to them. The value proposition must therefore be expressed in the language of the specific customer segment, which may differ from that of other segments.
- What must be true for the customer to buy now? It is not enough that the technology is better. The customer needs a compelling reason to act, an available budget, internal approval, a workable purchasing process, and suitable deployment conditions. These requirements may differ between customer segments, even within the same sector.
- Which route to market will be used? Licensing to an industry incumbent, direct sales through a spin-off, an OEM arrangement and distribution through an intermediary each create a different balance of speed, margin, investment requirements, market access and control over IP. The choice of route should be defined by the target customer segment rather than as a default assumption.
- How will the offering be priced? Pricing should not begin with development or production costs plus a margin. In deep-tech, this approach often undervalues the solution. The starting point is the value created for the customer: what the customer saves, earns, avoids or improves, compared with competing solutions and with the option of doing nothing.
| Important: a letter of intent is not sales, and a free pilot is not yet traction. These are signals of interest. For an investor, stronger evidence is a paid pilot, a test order, customer budget, a reference or a repeatable route to similar customers. |
Five GTM decisions to make
The table below shows the set of initial decisions to be made before any conversation with an investor or acceleration programme. It is not an exhaustive sales strategy – it is a minimum market entry plan.
Area |
What to decide and how to test it |
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Beachhead |
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Value proposition |
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Channel |
|
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Pricing
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|
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Evidence
|
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If the answer to any of these questions is “everyone”, “we'll see” or “the market is huge” – the GTM strategy does not exist yet.
The GTM strategy and the technology TRL level
- TRL 3-4: customer discovery. A few dozen conversations with potential customers before the product exists. The goal is to verify the problem and the language the customer uses to describe it, not to sell.
- TRL 5-6: beachhead validation. First paid pilots, channel selection, price testing. This is the window in which PRIME (FNP) and AKCES NCBR operate (see entry “E” – Innovation Ecosystem).
- TRL 7 and above: channel scale-up. Repeatable sales in the first segment justify entering the second. Only at this stage does GTM start to resemble a classic sales plan.
GTM decisions are best made in parallel with putting the IP ownership chain in order (see entry “D” – Due Diligence): an investor will check whether the chosen channel is even feasible given the current status of the IP rights.
The key principle
A GTM strategy answers the question: “How will we take the first customer from problem to paid deployment?”. Until you know the first customer, the payer, the channel and the proof of value, you do not have a market entry strategy, but merely a list of possible applications. It is also worth noting that a GTM strategy is not written once and filed away. It is a working document that evolves as you learn more about your customers.
