Strategic Renewal for Telecom Tech Company
The Challenge
A 20‑year‑old technology company had lived almost entirely on government R&D funding and was now facing an abrupt, total loss of that income. Because they had never needed a commercial strategy, there was no real go‑to‑market plan, no repeatable sales motion, and no investor story beyond grants. They came to me to help build a credible commercial strategy from scratch and position the company to attract outside capital before the cliff hit.
Three Keys to Success
Developing a Product Strategy
The company’s core technology was developed under DARPA grants, with almost no commercial pressure. Working with the founders, we identified a specific niche in remote monitoring where their tech had a clear, defensible edge and could solve a real, urgent problem. From there, we defined a focused product strategy and initial market entry plan built around that wedge, not a generic “platform” story.
Attracting Strategic Capital
Given the history, we assumed typical VCs would be skeptical of a 20‑year R&D‑heavy team suddenly promising venture returns. Instead, we targeted strategic manufacturers whose hardware was already part of the company’s integrated solution. In exchange for a period of exclusivity, one of these partners committed a multimillion‑dollar minority investment to fund the commercial push.
The Courage of Conviction
Once the crisis passed, the company drifted back toward familiar government work and deprioritized the new commercial plan. Only after sustained pressure from the strategic investor did leadership fully commit. The business plan we’d prepared was, as one executive put it, “pulled out of the drawer and dusted off”, and once executed, commercial sales ramped, the company was named to a Fastest Growing Companies list, and was ultimately acquired by a public company.
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