VoxelSensors’ Radical Transparency: Why Being Brutally Honest About Your Product’s Stage Wins Enterprise Deals

VoxelSensors’ Radical Transparency: Why Being Brutally Honest About Your Product’s Stage Wins Enterprise Deals

Most deep tech startups try to hide their limitations. This morning, VoxelSensors CEO Johannes Peeters had a different conversation with a major American tech company: “We appreciate your honesty of where you are in your roadmap, where you are in your maturity. And if we depict something that you haven’t seen, that you’re willing to work with us.”

This wasn’t a one-off success. Speaking on Category Visionaries, Johannes revealed how radical transparency has become VoxelSensors’ core sales strategy, transforming potential weaknesses into relationship-building opportunities.

The Power of Early-Stage Honesty “Be honest to where you are, what you are,” Johannes emphasized. Rather than pretending to have a finished product, VoxelSensors explicitly frames their technology as an evaluation kit with known limitations: “This is all not an evaluation kit which does ABC, but it doesn’t do DEF. And you might detect things we haven’t seen yet because we are still in the process of doing that.”

This approach creates a profound shift in customer relationships. Instead of anxiously hiding flaws, VoxelSensors turns customers into development partners. When issues emerge, customers respond with “Hey, we found something that you might want to know because you’ll see it with other customers as well.”

Building Trust Through Vulnerability The strategy extends beyond individual sales conversations. Until CES 2023, VoxelSensors didn’t even have a website. As Johannes noted: “I don’t think we even had a website or the website was under construction and it worked. We had fantastic seniors, we met the right people and so we didn’t need to do a lot of marketing to get our name known in that industry.”

This selective transparency helped them focus on a small group of potential customers who could actually drive integration programs. “In the consumer space, it’s half a dozen, maybe ten, maybe a dozen max… companies that are big enough, that can drive an integration program,” Johannes explained.

The Trust Equation The approach is based on a simple principle: “Trust can build up slowly but goes away quite fast. Right, so be honest. That’s, I think, be honest where you are, what you lead, why you’re working with a certain customer.”

This philosophy shapes how VoxelSensors handles both consumer electronics giants and industrial customers. In consumer electronics, where companies “have big budgets” for trials, transparency helps set realistic expectations. In industrial applications, where “those budgets aren’t there,” honesty about capabilities helps find the right fit.

Results That Speak The strategy has yielded partnerships with major tech companies and JBL, one of the world’s largest contract manufacturers. More importantly, it’s created the kind of relationships where, as Johannes noted, “A few hours after we sent an email, we got the answer.”

For deep tech founders, VoxelSensors’ experience offers a counterintuitive lesson: sometimes the fastest way to win enterprise deals isn’t to present a perfect facade, but to be brutally honest about where your product stands. In an industry where trust is everything, radical transparency might just be your best sales strategy.