5 Counter-Intuitive Go-to-Market Lessons from Circu Li-ion’s Deep Tech Journey

5 Counter-Intuitive Go-to-Market Lessons from Circu Li-ion’s Deep Tech Journey

Deep tech founders often assume their technology’s societal impact will be enough to win customers. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Circu Li-ion CEO Antoine Welter revealed why this approach fails and shared the unexpected strategies that helped his battery upcycling company gain enterprise traction.

Lead with Economics, Not Impact

Three weeks of customer meetings across the U.S. taught Antoine a crucial lesson about selling sustainability solutions: “If you start a story with sustainability, no one cares, but you always need to start with money first.” While Circu Li-ion’s environmental impact is significant, their sales conversations now lead with “anywhere above 40% less cost by using our service.”

Win the Operators Before the Executives

Most enterprise startups focus on winning over C-suite decision makers. Antoine discovered the opposite approach works better: “We’ve seen that in the customers developing most successfully, it’s not because the CEO or the strategy or head of operations love what we do, it’s because the people on the field love what we do, where we help them have a better workflow.”

Make Category Creation Tangible

Creating a new category requires more than just innovative technology – it demands concrete proof. Antoine explains why they built their own facility: “We’re not a paper startup… customers come, they see their own classically, they do a bigger pilot project with us before they visit us, so that they can really see their own batteries being processed.”

Leverage Existing Infrastructure

Rather than building standalone facilities, Circu Li-ion developed what Antoine calls “the McDonald’s of upcycling” – implementing their solution within customers’ existing infrastructure. “By using existing infrastructure, we can scale a lot quicker.” This approach solved both regulatory challenges and deployment speed, requiring only 30 square meters of space within existing facilities.

Actively Seek Negative Feedback

Most founders chase positive validation. Antoine takes the opposite approach: “Don’t focus on the yeses that you get. Focus on the nos and make sure you can fix those.” He recommends using “The Mom Test” methodology, suggesting founders should “get at least one no” in each customer meeting. This commitment to honest feedback extends to their entire market approach: “Be honest to yourself of what you’re seeing and what you’re hearing. Don’t try to sugarcoat if a customer says, I don’t pay for that.”

These counter-intuitive strategies helped Circu Li-ion overcome the typical challenges deep tech startups face in gaining enterprise adoption. Instead of relying solely on their technology’s merits, they’ve built a go-to-market approach that addresses customers’ immediate practical and economic needs while making their innovative solution accessible through existing operations.

Antoine’s experience demonstrates that even the most revolutionary technology needs a carefully crafted go-to-market strategy that meets customers where they are. By focusing on economic benefits first, winning over operators, providing tangible proof, leveraging existing infrastructure, and actively seeking criticism, Circu Li-ion has found a repeatable path to market that other deep tech founders can learn from.

The lesson for technical founders is clear: superior technology alone isn’t enough. Success requires understanding and adapting to the real-world constraints and priorities of your customers, even if that means leading with different value propositions than you initially imagined.