A vision is not enough. “A company will often sell the vision — and you absolutely need to have that vision — but we also need to see that there’s a way to get to that vision. You don’t have to have all the details knocked out, but we want to know that there is a clean alignment between how you’re intending to develop the technology and the commercial vision that you're painting for us.”
Make a mini version, not just a lab demonstration. “We need to see something that’s integrated, that looks almost like a mini version of what you are going to take to the market. For instance, if the technology is related to electrolysers, the model should be incorporated into an electrolyser stack, ideally with power flowing in and hydrogen flowing out.”
Understand what the customer wants or needs. “What else does your customer need apart from your product in order for them to swap to your product? There is maybe a tendency to get too fixated on your own product and not think more broadly around actually the offering you need to put around the product.”
Or predict what the customer will want. “I’m always reminded of the fact that customers don’t always know what they want. Some of our most successful start-ups have been able to think about how things might change and how their product is going to be supportive of that change.”
Think how to get margins, not just subsidies. “Think through how you’re going to get that product to market and what price you can set. An early-stage tech start-up will think high level about the size of the market, how much they can address in that particular market, and how to generate a margin. We want to see that there is a decent healthy margin to be made, it can’t just rely on subsidies.”

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