From Lab to Market: What I’ve Learned From Coaching Founders Who’ve Raised Over £100M

The conversation usually starts the same way. A scientist or technologist comes to me with something genuinely novel. A breakthrough. Something that could matter. And they have this moment of clarity: this should be more than an academic paper. This should be in the world.

Then reality hits. They’ve never sold anything. They don’t know what a go-to-market strategy is. They don’t know the difference between a customer and a user.

I’ve worked with founders who successfully commercialised breakthrough tech. I’ve also worked with founders who gave up on tech that could have mattered because they didn’t know how to get it out of the lab. The difference is rarely the quality of the technology. It’s almost always the commercialisation strategy.

The Pattern I See Most Often

Researchers and technologists often come at commercialisation as a separate activity from innovation. But the best tech doesn’t get commercialised despite the commercialisation strategy. It gets commercialised because of it.

The companies that moved fastest were the ones who thought about commercialisation from the beginning. Who asked: “Who would actually pay for this? What problem does it solve for them?”

The Mistakes I See Most

1. Building for the perfect customer instead of the real customer. The real customer is often someone less glamorous and more hungry: a small team with a specific pain point and real budget to fix it. Win them first. Then scale up.

2. Confusing “interesting technology” with “commercially viable technology.” Your breakthrough is genuinely novel. But does anyone want it? Do they have budget for it?

3. Staying too close to the academic path. The winning strategy is often: prove the concept just enough to show it works, then find customers and iterate with them. Let the market help you build.

4. Not charging enough, or not charging at all. Charge something. Even if your initial price is wrong, you’ll get feedback. Customers who pay care more.

What Actually Matters

1. Obsessive focus on the customer’s problem. Not your solution. Their problem.
2. Willingness to iterate fast. Your first version is wrong. The question is how quickly you can learn.
3. Clear-eyed understanding of who will actually buy this.
4. Patience with the long game.
5. The ability to tell the story compellingly.

If you have breakthrough technology and you’re not sure how to commercialise it, that’s not a flaw in you. It’s a gap in your knowledge. A gap you can close. Start with the customer. Not the technology.