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Highlights
The Counterintuitive Path to Enterprise Sales: How Membrion Turned Being a Startup into an Advantage
Deep tech founders often believe their breakthrough technology will sell itself. But in a recent Category Visionaries episode, Membrion founder Greg Newbloom revealed how focusing on go-to-market strategy, not just technical innovation, unlocked their path to working with the world’s largest semiconductor manufacturers.
“I feel like the go to market strategy in the business model is as critical, if not more critical, than the actual technology itself,” Greg shared. This insight didn’t come easily – it emerged from years of learning how to commercialize advanced materials in an industry where failure isn’t an option.
The conventional playbook says startups should prove their technology’s superiority. But Greg’s team discovered that technical excellence alone wouldn’t overcome their biggest obstacle: no semiconductor manufacturer would risk their production on an unproven startup. As Greg put it, “None of these fabs can handle is none of them are willing to, that their production on a startup company.”
Rather than fight this reality, Membrion turned it into an advantage through clever business model innovation. “We often work in really high impact, but non critical parts of the process,” Greg explained. This strategic positioning allowed them to demonstrate value while sidestepping the “unproven startup” objection.
But the real breakthrough came from reimagining their entire business model. Instead of selling technology, they shifted to selling outcomes. “We also do a lot of kind of marketing under water treatment as a service,” Greg shared. “We’re basically finance the hardware for the facility, and that allows them to not have to fit within capital budget cycles. They pay only for the performance of the system as we generate it.”
This transformation eliminated multiple barriers at once. Capital budget constraints? Gone. Implementation risk? Eliminated. Career risk for the buyer? As Greg noted, “No one’s going to lose their job if they’re only having to adopt it if it’s successful.”
This service-based approach also gave them an elegant solution to the classic “how long does it last?” objection that plagues many deep tech startups. Rather than getting trapped in technical discussions about longevity projections, Greg’s team simply said: “Let us worry about how long it lasts. We’ll factor that into our economics.”
The path to this strategy wasn’t linear. Membrion initially targeted a completely different market – flow batteries for grid-scale energy storage. But as Greg explained, “It turns out that the problems that exist with being able to handle extreme environments are just really widespread. And we’re just kind of scratching the surface with the initial application.”
This ability to pivot while maintaining focus has been crucial. “I think for us it’s really come down to focus,” Greg emphasized. “I think that we get pulled in a lot of different directions because our technology can do a lot of different things… if we focus on doing one or two things really well, we’ll get the opportunity to do the other hundred things.”
Their selective approach extends to customer targeting. Counter-intuitively, they often say no to larger opportunities to focus on smaller but more strategic ones. As Greg explained, “Say no to the larger, bigger ticket items, to say yes to ones that are smaller but a lot more valuable in the long run was one of those things that was not intuitive.”
For deep tech founders, the lesson is clear: your go-to-market strategy deserves as much innovation as your technology. Sometimes, the path to success isn’t about overcoming objections – it’s about making them irrelevant through clever business model design.
Looking ahead, Membrion is expanding beyond just providing technology to delivering complete solutions. “What we’re realizing, what we’re getting pulled towards with our customers, is this concept of being able to provide a complete solution to some of these problems that right now we’re a critical step in solving,” Greg shared. It’s a vision that emerged not from the lab, but from deeply understanding their customers’ needs and building their go-to-market strategy accordingly.
Actionable
Takeaways
Leverage Unexpected Sources of Inspiration:
Greg’s story of how a simple silica gel desiccant pack inspired Membrion's breakthrough in membrane technology highlights the value of seeking inspiration from unconventional places. For B2B tech founders, this emphasizes the importance of staying open to creative solutions from outside your immediate field of focus.
Pivot with Purpose:
Membrion's shift from battery technology to wastewater treatment underscores the strategic pivot’s value when the original market doesn't align with your technology’s strengths. For founders, it's crucial to remain flexible and pivot towards markets where your technology can solve significant problems, even if it's not the market you initially targeted.
Focus on Building a Strong MVP:
Greg's discussion about the importance of developing a minimum viable product that genuinely solves a problem highlights the necessity of focusing efforts on creating a tangible, testable product, rather than getting caught up in the potential of the technology alone. This approach is especially crucial in industries where efficacy is binary, such as water treatment.
Strategically Navigate Investor and Customer Expectations:
The contrast between investor expectations and customer needs that Greg experienced underscores the importance of tailoring your pitch and narrative depending on your audience. Founders should develop the skill of articulating their vision and product's value differently to investors and customers.
Adopt a Customer-Centric GTM Strategy:
Membrion's success in the semiconductor industry and its marketing strategy of treating water as a service illustrates the effectiveness of a customer-centric go-to-market approach. This involves understanding and addressing the unique challenges and risks your potential customers face and offering solutions that align with their needs and limitations.
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