From Deep Tech To Growth

Deep Tech is defined as “novel scientific or engineering breakthroughs making their way into products and companies for the first time” according to the European Deep Tech Report 2025.

There is some form of exaltation to choose to build a startup to change the world in such a way. Not building a recipe site and spending VC money on advertisement but going through the tedious work (what Paul Graham at Y Combinator calls the schleps) of identifying a market with a hairy problem looking for a solution, and not the opposite.

Deep Tech in Central & Eastern Europe

That is why I am so excited to participate to the Deep Tech CEE Summit in Warsaw at the end of October where I’ll be chairing the Startup stage. The event will showcase the best deep tech entrepreneurs and investors across Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), bringing together 70+ ecosystem organizations from across the region and inviting them to Demo Days during the conference. This region is full of young, innovative entrepreneurs and has so much to offer in all categories of Deep Tech, be it AI, the future of compute, energy, space tech, robotics, etc.

In Telecoms, we see novel connectivity startups now developing ties with Defense or Space sectors, underscoring the trend of dual-use technology in today’s world. Case in point: Microamp has recently secured strategic funding to further scale next generation 5G mmWave networks, primarily used for real-time decision-making and data analytics in both commercial and defense scenarios.

The European Deep Tech Report 2025 underscores the importance of governments and large corporates as customers, strengthening the exit channels. It goes on saying that “Europe must cultivate a sense of urgency to avoid falling further behind amid escalating geopolitical tensions, an inward-turning US, increasing pressure from China, and Russia's ongoing threat”.

Obstacles to partnering with Startups

I’d like to pause here and focus on the fundamental collaboration between (big) corporates and startups/scaleups. I emphasized in previous articles (here and here) that working out this relationship is a Key Success Factor of most B2B Tech Startups. And it is not always a walk in the park.

Andrew Shipilov and Nathan Furr at INSEAD identified four obstacles to partnering with startups in this article:

• Lack of understanding of partners’ needs

• Targeting corporates in the wrong country

• Going it alone

• Rushing into collaboration.

How to overcome these obstacles?

• Set up a dialogue before jumping to PoC (Proof of Concept). A corporate is usually a complex organization with not one, but several decision makers. You need to draw a “power map” of the organization and make sure that the people with the budget love your product and are the main stakeholders in the decision-making process.

• Choose carefully your international markets. An internationalization strategy depends on many factors. It is usually costly to invest in a specific market. There are compliancy and regulatory frameworks specific to each country, often to protect domestic champions. Moreover, the appetite to collaborate with startups heavily vary from country to country.

• Choose the right accelerator at the right time of your development curve. The right accelerator, such as Match-Maker Ventures, will turbo-charge the internationalization process by amplifying your market success beyond your initial few major contracts. This is what we do with scaleups such as 5x9 Networks (light-weight network monitoring), Shabodi (network APIs) or EkkoSense (Data Center energy optimization).

• Corporates themselves must choose what they need startups for. It should not be to get an “innovation stamp” or to please the “Chief Innovation Officer” with some toys to play with. The corporate should embed the work with startups and weave it with its own innovation strategy.

A reflective question: do you collaborate with (big) corporates or universities to be a “PoC toy” or to turn your “Deep Tech Genius” into sustainable business growth?

Thank you

Philippe

P.S.1. You may take the “From Tech To Growth” self-assessment scorecard. It is free, it only takes two minutes. It offers some reflective questions and provides some customized tips based on your score.

P.S.2. Whenever you are ready, you can take a short, complementary appointment with me to discuss your business growth issues at hand. Go to Recognition Call.