Create awareness around a (heavy) deep tech startup

Eighteen months of targeted marketing activities were conducted to raise awareness around the startup during its prototyping phase, culminating in a $15M Series A investment. We then extended the collaboration a year later with a six-month sprint dedicated to content creation, with the main objective of solidifying the company image and preparing for the Series B investment.

‍

WHY DID IT WORK?

• Commitment to long-term marketing investment,
• C-level awareness of the importance of marketing,
• involved engineering team providing tech input,
• agile approach to marketing strategy,
• mix & match reusable deliverables with concise copy,
• adjusting communication with the development and implementation of technology and stages of investments.

‍

PROJECT OVERVIEW
‍
ATLANT 3D Nanosystems is a deep tech startup that aims to revolutionize, among other fields, the microelectronics-making process. In order to secure their Series A round, a huge effort has been deployed for a bold and multi-targets marketing strategy built from scratch.

It is a rare occurrence for an engineers-founded startup to bet a not negligible part of its budget on marketing, especially during its first years of activity. With a lot to do to finalize the prototype, the ATLANT CEO, Maksym Plakhotnyuk, knew they needed external marketing support and decided to go for full outsourcing of marketing strategy and marketing deliverables for 18 months.

1/ THE CHALLENGE: TAKING A BRAND FROM THE LAB TO THE WORLD

‍

A tech that is hard to explain to non-PhD

The tech is extremely complex and difficult to illustrate or represent. We needed to find a concept that could be intelligible by both PhDs and non-engineer investors. It was important to show the potential of the tech in the long run, being clear on the actual state of the prototype, without losing the vision of the revolutionary impact of this tech in the next 50+ years.

‍

‍The limitations of the NDA associated with the technology

The few cases where the tech was tested were actually under strict NDA coverage. This would block any attempt at real usage case studies, which could reinforce the proof of concept in front of the investors and potential customers.

‍

‍Lack of tangibility (nothing to show)

The tech - consisting of printing atoms at an invisible scale - was intrinsically not materializable. Moreover, the use cases of this tech are pretty much infinite, so it was hard to focus on one sector more than another.

‍

‍Difficulties inherent to the deep tech sector

In deep tech, the investment is necessarily massive and long-term. There is no half solution. By that, we mean the client has to close the whole investment he needs or the startup goes bankrupt. The spectrum of potential investors is narrower than in other sectors more mainstream (fintech, apps, environment-related).

‍

2/ THE SOLUTION

‍

The Rubik's cube communication framework

In a Rubik's cube, each side has one color. In our strategy, each color is a specific target: blue is the scientific peers, red would be the VCs, green is the specialized press…

Every square of this Rubik's cube is a deliverable, initially made for one target but movable.

A video dedicated to applications of the technology, made for an investor, can easily be reused in a pitch for an accelerator contest.

If it is impossible to have a one-size-fits-all content with a fast growing deep-tech startup, instead, we introduced a mix-and-match modular approach. This needs a very good file organization in the cloud so you can easily find the piece you want to reuse. It is also mandatory to respect an adjustable but defined brand book. One for each kind of file: word, ppt, photoshop, InDesign…

‍

‍An adjustable pitch depending on the speaker and the audience

The main tool of communication for raising money is the pitch deck: a keynote with supporting speech notes. The idea was to build it on two pillars:

1. 10 constant slides with big vision
2. 50 interchangeable slides to use or take out depending of the target group, time given to pitch, meeting context, level of tech discussions

Using google slides was the best way to collaborate simultaneously without confusion, keeping track of versions and their purposes. But it was important to keep a design lean and powerful through every pitch given. That’s why we had a collection of PNG (transparent) images and backgrounds made on Photoshop, inserted in the google slides to be easily copy/paste.

ATLANT 3D had 3 co-founders who each had a specialized audience: business, mico-electronics, and chemicals. The pitch was adjusted to the function of those audiences, from the most scientific and detailed presentation to the most visual one.

‍

‍Betting on niches network to attract a good fit

‍Integrating the ecosystem

Thousands of associations and professional federations are segmenting the industry. Each one of them regroups highly specialized people and is the most concentrated network node.

The strategy was to apply and integrate all the associations related to the (very large) spectrum of the ATLANT 3D technology applications: additive manufacturing, nanotechnologies, semiconductors, and optics.

Another way is also to participate in sectorized (niche) events, by investing in a booth, but more importantly to manage a place as a speaker on stage. The smaller the niche, the more involved the audience.

‍

‍Participating (and winning) contests

When it comes to startup contests, the offer is uncountable. So the idea is to pick the ones we have a serious chance to win or at least be shortlisted. ATLANT 3D applied to every famous contest which has a deep tech section, and every niche contest.

‍

3/ THE RESULTS

The efforts started to pay off after 8 to 10 months. Winning several awards and being able to present the startup at international high-level events attracted the attention of investors and provided proof of concept to potential customers and collaborators. It took another 10 months for ATLANT 3D to close Series A, with the best partner.

On the road to this long-term objective, several signals confirmed that we were on a good path.

ATLANT 3D brand was created, which provided a solid building platform for achieving the next business goals
Creation of a very broad spectrum of adjustable digital marketing deliverables for all target groups (investors, customers, general audience)
Amount of business angels or VCs requesting information (especially outside of Europe, which indicated a good diffusion of our existence and story)
The rise in quantity and quality of interactions on LinkedIn