The Celadyne Way: Building Additive Tech That Makes Integration Painless

Most deep tech startups dream of disrupting their industry with revolutionary technology. But in a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Celadyne Technologies’ founder Gary Ong revealed why they chose a different path: making their groundbreaking technology work seamlessly with existing systems.

The Integration Challenge

The hydrogen fuel cell industry, dominated by established manufacturers and OEMs, is notoriously resistant to change. As Gary explains, “Our first technology, basically, we shipped it to the OEMs, the fuel cell manufacturers, and the car makers… The Toyotas, Volvo of the world and such.” These companies had invested heavily in their existing systems and weren’t looking for wholesale replacements.

The Additive Advantage

Instead of asking customers to rip and replace, Celadyne developed their technology to complement existing solutions. “Our technology, because it’s a materials technology, doesn’t just force them to replace their current materials,” Gary notes. “Our technology bolts on to the current state of the art and basically has very little drop in problems.”

Reducing Career Risk

This approach addresses a crucial but often overlooked factor in B2B sales: personal risk to the buyer. “I think of it as like, basically, if you’re a manager in, say, an OEM, and you’re going to try to procure this material, right. It won’t get you fired because it’s a material that is additive to something that you’re already using,” Gary explains.

The Technical Implementation

Celadyne’s additive approach extends to their core technology. “If you have something that is not very good at blocking gases, we add our technology on top of that, and suddenly we make the material that you love block gases better. If you love this other material, well, we can augment that, too,” Gary describes. This flexibility allows customers to enhance their existing investments rather than abandon them.

Customer-Driven Development

This integration-first mindset shaped their entire development process. When simplifying their technology during the pandemic, they focused on features that would complement, not replace, existing solutions. “If I think of this as software instead of hardware for a minute and consider all these things as feature sets, which one is the most important for you?” Gary recalls asking their customers.

The Evolution of Integration

The journey to this approach wasn’t straightforward. Initially, like many deep tech startups, Celadyne had developed a multi-feature technology that could potentially replace existing solutions. “It wasn’t just good at blocking gases, it was actually good at blocking gases, but also lets you increase the temperature profile of your device. It lets you operate with less water and lower humidities,” Gary explains.

But through customer discovery, they realized that an additive approach focusing on one key feature – gas blocking – would be more valuable than a replacement approach with multiple features.

Market Impact

This strategy has positioned Celadyne uniquely in the market. Rather than competing head-on with established solutions, they’ve become an enhancement layer that makes existing systems work better. “In terms of closing deals, we spend most of our time trying to send products out to our customers and iterating with them and making sure the technology meets their specs,” Gary notes.

For technical founders, especially those in conservative industries, Celadyne’s approach offers a valuable lesson: sometimes the path to adoption isn’t through disruption, but through enhancement. By making integration painless and reducing adoption risk, you can turn conservative industries’ resistance to change from a barrier into an advantage.