It is reputation management.
You are building something highly technical, expensive, difficult to explain, and often years away from commercialization. But during those years, you still need funding, credibility, public support, partnerships, and attention. And this is where many founders make the same mistake.
They think: “Why should we communicate anything now? There is nothing to sell yet.”
So they disappear for four years to “just build the product”. The problem is that deep tech is too financially demanding to stay invisible for that long. Many brilliant technologies quietly die because nobody understood why the technology mattered in the first place.
What makes this even more difficult is that communication in deep tech evolves slowly.
At first, you can only explain the product to people who already speak the same technical language. Then you start attending conferences and realize that outside your niche, most people simply do not understand what you are talking about. A few years later, you suddenly need funding, public trust, customers, or government support — but the market has never heard of you before.
And only then do many companies begin thinking about positioning and communication. Usually much later than they should have.
Recently, one founder told me: “At first I thought positioning was bullshit. Until we actually entered the market.” I think this happens because many engineers see communication as something external to the product.
But in deep tech, communication is part of the product itself.
If people cannot understand what you are building, they will not support it, fund it, trust it, or adopt it.
You are building something highly technical, expensive, difficult to explain, and often years away from commercialization. But during those years, you still need funding, credibility, public support, partnerships, and attention. And this is where many founders make the same mistake.
They think: “Why should we communicate anything now? There is nothing to sell yet.”
So they disappear for four years to “just build the product”. The problem is that deep tech is too financially demanding to stay invisible for that long. Many brilliant technologies quietly die because nobody understood why the technology mattered in the first place.
What makes this even more difficult is that communication in deep tech evolves slowly.
At first, you can only explain the product to people who already speak the same technical language. Then you start attending conferences and realize that outside your niche, most people simply do not understand what you are talking about. A few years later, you suddenly need funding, public trust, customers, or government support — but the market has never heard of you before.
And only then do many companies begin thinking about positioning and communication. Usually much later than they should have.
Recently, one founder told me: “At first I thought positioning was bullshit. Until we actually entered the market.” I think this happens because many engineers see communication as something external to the product.
But in deep tech, communication is part of the product itself.
If people cannot understand what you are building, they will not support it, fund it, trust it, or adopt it.