5 Counter-Intuitive Go-to-Market Lessons from VoxelSensors’ Deep Tech Journey

Sometimes the best startup advice comes from founders who break conventional wisdom. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, VoxelSensors CEO Johannes Peeters shared how embracing constraints and radical honesty helped them win major enterprise customers in both consumer electronics and industrial markets.

1. Use Market Constraints as a Focusing Tool When COVID lockdowns hit right as VoxelSensors was founding in March 2020, most would see it as devastating timing. Instead, they used the constraint to their advantage. As Johannes explained: “We can have a quiet start, meaning we can really put the foundations of the company in place, find a couple of patents, look at or scout the world, look at what kind of investors we would be looking at, what kind of people we would hire.”
2. Reject Strategic Investment to Maintain Focus While many startups chase strategic investors early, VoxelSensors made the controversial choice to turn one down. “Even though they say we as a company are free to do and define our strategy and our objectives, you just know they’ll be there breathing down your neck trying to figure out if or trying to influence the strategy,” Johannes shared. This decision preserved their ability to pursue multiple markets on their own timeline.
3. Skip Marketing Until You Have Something Worth Saying Until CES 2023, VoxelSensors didn’t even have a website. As Johannes noted: “Until CES earlier this year, I don’t think we even had a website or the website was under construction and it worked. We had fantastic seniors, we met the right people and so we didn’t need to do a lot of marketing to get our name known in that industry.”
4. Build Different Engagement Models for Different Markets Rather than force-fitting one approach, VoxelSensors recognized that consumer electronics and industrial customers needed different engagement models. “In consumer electronics with the big tech companies, whether they’re American or Asian, they’re used to try things out and have big budgets for that… In the industrial space, those budgets aren’t there,” Johannes explained.
5. Make Radical Honesty Your Sales Strategy Counter to the typical startup tendency to oversell capabilities, VoxelSensors embraced total transparency about their development stage. This morning, a major American firm told Johannes: “We appreciate your honesty of where you are in your roadmap, where you are in your maturity. And if we depict something that you haven’t seen, that you’re willing to work with us.”

This approach builds trust faster than pretending to be more mature. As Johannes put it: “Trust can build up slowly but goes away quite fast. Right, so be honest. That’s, I think, be honest where you are, what you lead, why you’re working with a certain customer.”

The results validate this counter-intuitive approach. VoxelSensors has secured partnerships with major tech companies and JBL, one of the world’s largest contract manufacturers. Their technology is being evaluated for next-generation consumer devices and industrial automation systems.

For founders navigating deep tech go-to-market challenges, Johannes’s experience shows that embracing constraints and being radically honest about them can be more effective than trying to hide them. The key is turning what many would consider weaknesses into strategic advantages through focused execution and authentic customer relationships.