In August, the first part of this series argued that Europe has learned to fund deep tech but not to explain it. In October, someone who spent more than a decade backing European energy start-ups told me I had the problem slightly wrong.

Explaining the technology, he said, is rarely the hard part. When companies stall on the way to their first industrial customer, it is usually because they cannot yet meet everything that customer expects: quality, performance, maintenance, environmental impact, permits — and the financial stamina to last until cash flow covers costs.

The first customer often has to take a risk, and help the start-up endure, in ways it never would with an established supplier. To him, that is less a communication problem than a culture clash.

He is right. But his objection does not close the explanation gap. It moves it to where it actually decides deals: inside the buyer.

What the first buyer is actually buying

A first industrial customer is not buying a technology. It is buying six promises that it will have to defend on the supplier's behalf.

| Risk | The question inside the buyer | Who asks it | | --- | --- | --- | | Quality | Will every delivery match the pilot? | Quality, operations | | Performance | Will it hold at full scale, in our conditions rather than the lab's? | Engineering, plant management | | Maintenance | Who services it in year four, with which parts and which people? | Maintenance, operations | | Environment | Can we report it, and does it pass our own sustainability screen? | Sustainability, reporting | | Permits | Does it change our permits, inspections or insurance? | Legal, compliance, the authorities | | Staying power | Will the supplier still exist when we call the warranty? | Procurement, finance, risk |

None of these is a question about how the technology works. Each is a question the buyer's organisation will ask in writing, usually before anyone from the start-up is in the room.

The champion argues a case you never hear

Every first deal has a champion: the plant manager, head of innovation or engineer who saw the pilot and believed it. The champion does not sign alone. They carry the decision into the rooms in the right-hand column above, none of which the start-up ever enters.

In those rooms, the start-up exists only as whatever the champion can forward. Usually that is an investor deck and a technical datasheet. One was written to raise money, the other to convince engineers, and neither answers the six questions.

So the champion improvises. They rebuild the supplier's case in an email or a slide, against an incumbent whose case was settled years ago.

The old line that nobody ever got fired for buying IBM still describes industrial procurement. The incumbent needs no defence; the newcomer needs one on every page. That asymmetry is the culture clash.

Part 1 described the moment the founder stops being enough to explain the company. In the first sale, the founder is not even in the room where the decision is made.

Staying power is a story problem

Of the six questions, staying power is the one founders least like to answer. A buyer asks it politely: what happens to us if you are gone in three years?

Cash flow will eventually answer that. Until it does, only a written argument can. Europe's rules show how seriously the question is meant: the EU procurement directive lets public buyers demand a yearly turnover of up to twice the contract value (Directive 2014/24/EU, Article 58).

A start-up cannot show revenue it does not have. It can show what stands in for it: who has funded it and for how long, which partner can take over production, who holds the designs in escrow, and what the buyer may do if the company fails.

Some of that can now be bought. In 2019, Munich Re began insuring battery makers' ten-year performance warranties, with cover that could pay out even if the manufacturer became insolvent.

The culture clash runs deeper than paperwork. A first customer is often asked to do what no incumbent would ask: prepay, sign an offtake, co-fund the first unit or tolerate a longer ramp-up. Each of those requests needs its own justification inside the buyer.

Written down, staying power stops being the weakest answer. It becomes evidence that the supplier thought about the buyer's risk before the buyer had to.

Where it shows up

The pattern is visible in public. InnoEnergy's agenda for The Business Booster in Munich in late October 2026 states it plainly: "Too many collaborations stop at pilot stage." It blames misaligned incentives, procurement barriers and unclear pathways to scale.

Buyers struggle on their own side too. In 2019 the World Economic Forum reported that more than 70% of industrial companies were stuck in "pilot purgatory" with new production technologies.

A pilot proves that the technology works. It does not prove that the buyer can defend a second, larger order. The step from pilot to plant is where the six questions stop being hypothetical.

Public money follows the same path. On 22 October 2026, GreenIron was invited to prepare an EU Innovation Fund grant of up to €20m for its next industrial facility. The Swedish company makes metal with hydrogen instead of fossil fuels, and its final investment decision is still ahead.

Between a selection like that and a working plant sit more rooms: lenders, offtakers, permitting authorities. Each reads the same six questions with a different weight.

This is also why the problem belongs to deep tech. A buyer can trial software for a month; nobody trials a first-of-a-kind plant.

And it is where Europe's new capital meets the old gap. The EU's Scaleup Europe Fund began operating in August 2026 with EQT as manager and a €5 billion target (European Commission). It invests in scale-ups, companies that have already crossed the first-buyer gate; getting across it is still left to the founder.

What fixes it: write the buyer's case

Part 1 named four audiences — customer, investor, recruit and procurement — each needing its own version of the same truth. The objection behind this piece shows what the procurement version really is. It is not a brochure but a risk argument, written for someone who has to defend you.

Call it the buyer's case. It is short enough for the champion to attach to an internal email without rewriting it, and it holds five things:

  1. The claim at the buyer's scale. What the product does in their conditions, with the pilot data behind it.
  2. The six answers. Quality, performance, maintenance, environment, permits and staying power, each with its evidence and each gap named with its mitigation.
  3. The comparison they will be asked for. Against the incumbent, on the buyer's terms rather than the start-up's.
  4. The ask. What the buyer is expected to contribute, whether prepayment, an offtake commitment or a co-funded first unit, and what it gets in return.
  5. The exit. What happens, and who carries what, if it goes wrong.

Founders tend to leave out the last two. They are exactly what the champion's risk committee asks about first.

Written this way, the case does the work the founder cannot do in person. It lets the champion explain you accurately, with you nowhere in the room.

The gap moves

Part 1 placed the explanation gap at the point where the founder stops being enough. Part 2 follows it into the buyer's organisation, where someone else explains you and the first deal is won or lost.

Technology that cannot be defended internally does not get bought, however well it is explained. The fix is the same as before: translation rather than polish, aimed this time at a reader the founder will never meet.

Thanks to the reader whose objection made this piece sharper.

Deriss is a research-driven studio and product company guiding leaders through growth, brand transformation, and AI-native innovation in the challenges of Industry 5.0.

Sources

Part 2 of The Explanation Gap series. Part 1 located the gap at the startup-to-scaleup transition (August 2026).

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