This is Good. That is Bad.
There's no playbook for Deep Tech, so communicate things that are impressive.
Deep Tech (especially aerospace/hardware) startups face a unique communication challenge: there is no shared baseline for what “good” looks like, unlike in software where everyone intuitively understands benchmarks (user growth, revenue, etc.).
When I was in 8th grade, I was on the JV-B2 basketball team. That means that I didn’t make Varsity A, I also didn’t make Junior Varsity B1. For the record, I wasn’t bad, just misunderstood :)
I like basketball though. It’s probably the best team sport I play.
One afternoon in 8th grade, my parents wanted me out of the house, so my Dad challenged me with a clear goal: “Shoot ten, 3 pointers, in a row.” I had never tried it, so I took the challenge and went for it.
We had a basketball hoop in the backyard, and my brother and I had recently measured out a 3 point line, so I started to shoot. I was out there for hours. I got to 4 in a row a lot. I got to 6 in a row a few times. I hit 8 in a row twice.
After a few hundred shots, the sky got so dark that I couldn’t shoot anymore, and I walked in disappointed. I hadn’t hit my goal. It turns out I like to hit goals.
Later that week at school, during PE, we had a three point competition for the 8th graders. All the Varsity A players were there. We had one minute to hit as many three pointers as we could WITH someone passing the balls to us — way easier than chasing every ball down and calibrating the shot like I had been doing earlier in the week at my house.
So I started and missed my first few, and then I locked in and hit 14 in a minute. Not in a row, just in a minute. After three head to head competitions, I ended up being the highest three point shot conversion in all three head to head challenges. I won the competition by a fair margin.
To everyone else, this seemed crazy random. I remember people being very confused that I had hit the most three pointers. Even the coaches! More than anyone on Varsity a by a fair margin.
I’ve always loved evoking that feeling of surprise in people, the ability to be underestimated is a great skill. However, in order to evoke surprise you have to have set expectations of a baseline. And my baseline was “Average basketball player.” Which means they already have context for “Good basketball player.”
When starting a company, especially in aerospace or Deep Tech, the problem and opportunity is that no one knows the baseline. No one knows what good is.
Is a 30 second rocket engine test impressive?
Is 10 hours of flight on a drone good or bad?
Is a dome test for nuclear good?
So investors and the general public have no context for what a “Good basketball player” is. We don’t know if you can shoot threes from the corner - we don’t even know if shooting threes from the corner gets you points!
In a software startup this is less true, there are benchmarks of what “Good” is that people can compare you to, but in hardware products this is far more difficult.
Founders have a tendency of getting too much in the weeds, and assuming that the rest of the world is having the same conversations that they are, which makes it more difficult to communicate progress with clarity. When aerospace companies announce something, my first thought tends to be “Is that impressive or not?” and “Why?”
Everything you do as an aerospace startup is educating the market on what good is, and so as a startup, it’s important to tell us “What good is and why it is good.” And then get back to us on that every month.
It only works to go in a cave and come out with a Zig zap or a wig wam that’s impressive if I already have context of what is impressive about it. Always assume no context. :)