From Niche to Necessity: How Bedrock Is Converting Early Adopters in the Geothermal Space

Converting early customers in deep tech isn’t just about having innovative technology – it’s about finding the perfect intersection of pain point and possibility. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Bedrock CEO Joselyn Lai revealed their strategic approach to turning geothermal energy from a niche solution into a mainstream necessity.

Finding the Right Pain Points

Rather than trying to convert everyone to geothermal, Bedrock has developed a precise profile of their ideal early adopters. “We really need to focus on the kinds of customers that have a near term need for geothermal,” Joselyn explains. “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 in order to build the new building that they want.”

This laser focus on immediate needs rather than general sustainability interest has proven crucial to their early success. It’s a strategy that recognizes the reality of enterprise decision-making: good intentions aren’t enough – there must be pressing business imperatives.

Aligning Environmental and Financial Benefits

A key element of Bedrock’s customer conversion strategy is demonstrating clear financial benefits alongside environmental impacts. As Joselyn notes, “This is a form of decarbonization, where we can actually put money into the pockets of real estate decision makers… Nothing good or positive for society can scale unless it also has a financial value proposition. And geothermal delivers that.”

Leveraging Existing Knowledge Networks

Instead of shouldering the entire burden of market education, 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 explains. This approach significantly reduces the education burden and accelerates adoption through trusted advisors.

Proving the Concept

Bedrock’s first major installation with CIM Group in Austin, Texas, serves as a crucial proof point for their approach. The project demonstrated their ability to overcome key objections by showing they could “shrink the footprint of the geothermal system” to fit urban properties while proving they could “drill faster” and “drill more quietly.”

Managing Long Sales Cycles

Converting early adopters in deep tech requires patience and pipeline management. “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,” Joselyn shares. This reality shapes their entire go-to-market approach, requiring them to build and maintain relationships over extended periods.

Building for Scale

While focusing on early adopters, Bedrock maintains a clear vision for broader market adoption. They aim to enable “many tens of thousands of rigs operating around the world that we’re licensing our hardware and our software to other construction players to go do geothermal as kind of the obvious default solution for buildings.”

The lessons from Bedrock’s approach to early customer conversion extend beyond geothermal energy. Their strategy demonstrates the importance of finding customers with immediate, pressing needs rather than just interest or good intentions. By focusing on these pain points and leveraging existing industry knowledge, they’re systematically building the foundation for broader market adoption.

For other deep tech founders, the key takeaway is clear: success in early customer conversion comes not from trying to convince everyone of your solution’s value, but from finding those who already recognize the problem you’re solving as urgent and critical to their business.