GTM for Hard Tech Startups

Taking a hard tech product to market is, at a thematic level, similar to the process of creating the product itself. Much like prototyping, a smart go-to-market (GTM) strategy tests the plan, reworks failure points, tests new approaches, refines, and tests again.

The plan isn't static. It isn't simply inherited or copied from another successful company.

The knowledge and talent required to envision and develop novel tech hardware is, as much as engineers and founders won't relish hearing this, only as important as the ability to get the product into buyers' hands.

Here are the most well-worn hard tech GTM paths:

• Build it and they will come — raise private money, build the product, and buyers will follow
• Government ladders — the government funds you, sometimes at milestone intervals, with the end goal of winning government contracts
• Customer investment — a company backs you and commits to buying the product
• License and GTM — a licensee takes the technology to market for you
• Primes and their buyers — you sell to a prime contractor and reach other buyers
• Sell side products first — generate revenue in an adjacent market while building toward the real one

These can be mistakenly viewed as single tracks where you head in one direction and don't cross other routes.

A better way to view this landscape is as — to use Jorge Luis Borges' phrase — "a garden of forking paths."

Smart startups explore the paths. They sequence them according to their phase of development, revenue needs, market demands and competitor positioning.

When GTM Doesn't Work

When the same creative problem-solving that guided the prototype isn't applied to the GTM strategy, you get market misalignment. Here's a couple of cautionary tales.

Case #1 Rethink Robotics

Rethink Robotics was a startup that raised about $150 million from 2008-2017 to build robots that collaborated with human workers in factories. The product checked requirements boxes for safety and ease of use, but not the one that mattered most to customers: precision. Company leadership incorrectly assumed they could change the buyers' minds. Rethink (ironically named, in hindsight) shut down in 2018.

While this is a classic case of not trusting your audience to know what they need, or betting that you can convince them otherwise, there is also a sequencing lesson here. The original robots did find an unexpected market in universities and research labs. This generated revenue that presumably was used to iterate on the product to meet the factory market's demand for precision, but the sequence timing was too slow.

When the 2.0 robot finally went live, a competitor had precisely cut deep into the market.

Case #2 SBIR Mills

It is so common for aspiring hardtech companies to fail to land defense contracts that DoD circles call them "SBIR mills." Ambitious small companies enter the government's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant program, which funds early development in steps. Phase I is a feasibility grant to prove the concept. Phase II is a development grant to build the prototype. Phase III is the exit, where grants turn into actual contracts.

Only about 16% of companies in the DoD's program ever cross into Phase III. The remaining 84% never convert to contracts.

Many of these companies win grants for years across various agencies. From a GTM standpoint, the sequence is supposed to run from grants to buyers. But these companies stall, either because they treat the funding ladder, not actual buyers, as the market, or because the funding reduces the need to find buyers.

Successful GTM Strategies

These examples demonstrate thoughtful sequencing that accounted for stages of product development, funding sources and market demands.

A Supersonic Pattern

More than one supersonic aircraft startup is positioning its engine technology as ground power for energy-hungry AI data centers. The final products, full supersonic aircraft, are billions of dollars and years away from market-ready production. Venture capital built the companies, with the Air Force providing additional funding. The engine tech serves the important purpose in the meantime of generating revenue and proving the core technology.

Fervo Energy

The geothermal startup applied drilling techniques from the shale boom, horizontal wells among them, to a long-standing problem: making geothermal power work in hot rock anywhere, not just where Mother Nature offers it. The Department of Energy supported the founders at its incubator and funded early research, including at the DOE's test site in Utah.

Venture capital carried the company to a commercial pilot in Nevada, online in 2023 and powering the grid that serves Google's data centers. That proof converted into a purchase agreement with Google the next year, then a far larger one to anchor a massive utility-scale plant. It's the ideal story of the grants supporting the science, venture money backing the pilot and proof, and the proof connecting with the buyers.

So a takeaway here is that smart startups have identified the data center boom as an opportunity. For some it is their end market, and some capitalize on it as a revenue stage in a longer GTM sequence.

Who Owns the GTM Sequence at a Hard Tech Startup?

Marketing, but not always. Marketing is often strapped or non-existent at a startup since it's competing with other priorities. AI has also shifted work away from marketing professionals to smart people who can do analysis and content generation themselves. But do product builders and company visionaries have the time for it, and is their output worthy of the advanced product they are creating?

Leading a winning GTM strategy is about being a miner. Hear me out. There are gems of market insight all around you. It's in the minds of the smart people at the company.

The product builders and engineers, the executive leadership and partners, people talking to government employees or potential buyers. Any customers, customer success reps, even recruiters or talent acquisition. They all have distinct viewpoints on the product, its differentiators, audience segments and their pain points. This is what largely informs the positioning and messaging.

Additionally, each GTM path demands different types of marketing work:

• The DoD grant ladder requires credibility with program offices and support for capture.
• An adjacent commercial market will need demand gen, meaning a website that converts and targeted campaigns to hit pipeline goals.
• Customer investment and licensing deals ride on proof like case studies and verified evidence. If you sell through a prime, you'll need alignment with an external team.
• And landing that raise, well you probably know you have to craft an investor narrative for the specific round of funding.

So the question really is, who owns all of this? Who will be accountable for it? Do they have the skills needed to take your very cool product to market?

Because their skills, fair or not, are just as valuable as the ones that created the product. If you can't identify the best GTM sequencing and connect with buyers, then the output of your vision, technical know-how, creativity and courage never gets the chance to become the real, on-the-market product it deserves to be.

By the way, this is exactly what I do, and I'd love to hear your prototype story.