6 Critical Go-to-Market Lessons from Bedrock’s Category Creation Journey

Building a deep tech company requires more than just innovative technology – it demands a sophisticated go-to-market strategy that can navigate long development cycles, complex customer relationships, and market education challenges. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Bedrock CEO Joselyn Lai shared invaluable insights from their journey in creating a new distributed geothermal energy category.

1. Target Customers with Immediate Pain Points

Instead of trying to convert everyone to geothermal energy, Bedrock focuses on customers who have pressing needs that align with their solution. As Joselyn explains, “We really need to focus on the kinds of customers that have a near term need for geothermal. That makes them an early adopter. So usually these are folks that have an incentive or a mandate to do the more sustainable option in their buildings, or these are real estate developers and owners who really need, they actually require reduction in their power demand.”

2. Leverage Existing Knowledge Networks

Rather than building market awareness from scratch, Bedrock taps into established industry expertise. “All real estate developers and owners, they have a large ecosystem of architects and engineers and construction managers who they rely on. And that universe, especially architects and engineers, already know about geothermal,” Joselyn notes. This approach significantly reduces the education burden and accelerates market adoption.

3. Balance Long-Term Development with Near-Term Revenue

Deep tech companies must manage extended development cycles while maintaining business momentum. Joselyn shares their approach: “We do work primarily with investors who understand two things. First, they do understand that in hard tech the timelines for development are a bit longer than in software, but they’re also excited about the reality that geothermal of this type is already in market.”

4. Build Teams for Undefined Roles

Deep tech requires unique talent strategies. As Joselyn explains, “These people and these roles that you need to build your tech stack and to deploy your tech stack don’t have obvious cookie cutter job descriptions… In hardware, the type of mechanical engineering and the type of electrical engineering that you need done may be incredibly different from the many other mechanical and electrical engineering job descriptions that are out there.”

5. Start with Early Customer Partnerships

For deep tech companies, early customer collaboration is crucial. Joselyn emphasizes, “Because development cycles are long and development costs are high in hard tech, I think finding a customer that you’re able to work with from the very beginning, to get user and customer research, to really dive into the economics of the solution for them and then to deploy as soon as possible in an mvp way is just extra critical because you don’t get that many shots on goal compared to in software.”

6. Manage Extended Sales Cycles

Deep tech companies must build robust pipelines to handle long sales cycles. As Joselyn candidly shares, “Real estate decision making timelines can be long, construction schedules can be long, and it may take over a year from starting a conversation with somebody to really being able to start construction and sometimes even longer. Some of the projects that I’m talking about right now with customers are projects that might break ground in 2025 or 2026.”

Looking ahead, Bedrock’s vision extends beyond individual installations to creating a new energy infrastructure category. Their goal is to enable buildings worldwide to “tap into geothermal for their heating and cooling needs.” By following these go-to-market principles, they’re systematically transforming an established technology into a scalable solution for the future of sustainable building infrastructure.

These lessons from Bedrock’s journey offer valuable insights for deep tech founders facing similar challenges in bringing complex solutions to market. Their experience shows that successful category creation in deep tech requires a careful balance of technological innovation, strategic customer selection, and long-term market development.