European deep-tech scale-ups foresee that their go-to-market strategy’s top challenge over the next 12 months will be securing and engaging customers. Other key challenges include sales, business expansion, market positioning, and operational efficiency, according to a new study by the EIC Scaling Club.

The report, conducted in collaboration with IESE Business School, analyzes the go-to-market challenges that European deep-tech companies estimate to face and provides recommendations for overcoming them. The study is based on in-depth interviews, workshops, and surveys with 43 European deep-tech scale-ups, investors, corporations, policymakers, and more.

To see the full report, visit this link.

Unique challenges and opportunities in deep-tech

Deep-tech scale-ups face unique hurdles, from lengthy development timelines to complex technologies and substantial capital requirements. Despite these challenges, the sector presents significant opportunities and has attracted considerable investor attention, with over $52 billion (€47.7 billion) in venture capital raised in 2020-2022.

"The report provides data-driven insights into some of the challenges faced by European deep-tech scale-ups. It also showcases possible paths and actionable recommendations to help companies develop and optimize their go-to-market strategies – something that only 29% of top executives, including Europe-based, have implemented effectively. By sharing this knowledge, we want to empower both companies and supporting stakeholders to make informed decisions and drive growth within the European deep-tech ecosystem," said Josemaria Siota, Executive Director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center at IESE Business School

Priority actions and stakeholder misalignment

The report also reveals the most common actions scale-ups plan to implement to tackle the key challenges identified. The actions include increasing customer reach, improving market forecasting, growing their sales teams, investing in product marketing, and optimizing metrics to guide business decisions. 

However, there's a misalignment with what key stakeholders see as priorities – they place a higher value on assessing competition, optimizing business models, achieving production scalability, brand standardization, and setting and optimizing metrics to guide decisions.

Understanding the misalignment between European deep-tech companies and their stakeholders is crucial for mitigating potential misunderstandings and barriers to innovation, fostering more effective collaboration in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

About the report

The “European Deep-Tech Scaleups: Go-To-Market Strategy” report is the first in a series of 10 studies analyzing challenges deep-tech ventures face during their growth journey – from commercializing their innovation and growing the business to ensuring attracting investment and contributing to the ecosystem.

See the report:

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About the EIC Scaling Club

The EIC Scaling Club is a curated community where 120+ European deep tech scale-ups with the potential to build world-class businesses and solve major global challenges come together with investors, corporate innovators and other industry stakeholders to spur growth.

The top 120+ European deep tech companies will be carefully selected from a pool of high-growth scale-ups that have benefitted from EIC financial schemes, other European and national innovation programmes, and beyond.

The EIC Scaling Club is an EIC-funded initiative run in partnership by Tech Tour, Bpifrance (EuroQuity), Hello Tomorrow, Tech.eu (Webrazzi), EurA and IESE Business School.

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