5 GTM Lessons from Tensorflight’s Journey: How Deep Tech Startups Can Win Enterprise Customers

Reading startup advice books might be the wrong way to understand your market. At least, that’s what Tensorflight co-founder Robert Kozikowski revealed in a recent episode of Category Visionaries. Instead of following conventional wisdom, his company’s path to securing three of the five largest commercial property insurers in the US offers several counterintuitive lessons about bringing deep tech products to market.

1. Skip the Business Books, Read Industry Manuals

The most surprising insight from Tensorflight’s journey is their approach to market research. While most founders immerse themselves in startup literature, Robert took a different path: “The book is underwriting commercial property… you look all of the startups advice and they say you have to really understand your customer, but you should be reading a book about understanding your customer, not the book telling you that you need to understand your customer.”

2. Scale Matters More Than Initial Vision

Tensorflight’s pivot from drone analytics to satellite imagery demonstrates how technical startups should prioritize scalability over initial vision. As Robert explains, “If you apply AI, you’re kind of making money on scale. And the problem with drones is that there were just too few drone flights, too much challenges with drone flights to really make it that computer vision startups would succeed.”

3. Let Customers Be Your Product Team

Rather than building an internal product management function early, Tensorflight took an unusual approach to product development. “We’re joking that our product management department is our customer underwriter,” Robert shares. “We only recently seriously took the stuff like roadmapping because previously it was like just ask what they need improved and were just improving what they told us.”

4. Systematically Remove Enterprise Sales Friction

Instead of accepting long enterprise sales cycles as inevitable, Tensorflight methodically addressed each friction point. Robert describes their approach: “Over time we just learn how to cut it… we get some security certificate like ISO 27, one that kind of cuts down on the IT assessment… we standardize the agreement, we have a few options… we have some tools built for evaluation process.”

5. Focus on Refining Rather Than Expanding

While many startups rush to add features, Tensorflight spent years perfecting their core offering. As Robert notes about their journey from 2017 to 2021, “It was working with customers, refining the solution to the level that it can scale automatically.” This focus on refinement rather than expansion helped them build trust with major enterprise customers.

The company’s experience demonstrates that successful GTM strategies for deep tech products often diverge from conventional startup wisdom. Rather than following a playbook of rapid iteration and feature expansion, Tensorflight succeeded by deeply understanding their industry, focusing on scalability, and systematically removing barriers to enterprise adoption.

Looking ahead, this approach continues to shape their strategy. Robert explains their focus remains on “Going deeper into insurance and from just providing just building attributes, we provide additional risk scores, additional more in depth analytics than building attributes.” This commitment to depth over breadth reflects their understanding that in enterprise sales, mastery of industry complexities often matters more than feature breadth.

For technical founders navigating enterprise sales, Tensorflight’s journey offers a clear message: success comes not from following startup conventional wisdom, but from deeply understanding your industry and systematically removing barriers to adoption. Sometimes, that means spending more time with industry manuals than business books.