As a lawyer in the startup space here's what I see happen all of the time: oil and gas entrepreneur introduces a pretty badass product to investors and potential customers. It's going to revolutionize operations.
There's a buzz about it. Everyone is impressed. Everyone talks about it. This is especially seen here in Dallas, Texas and Houston, Texas. You get a lot of really great product innovations in the energy tech space.
But then no one does anything about it. No one invests in it. No one really cares when it really comes down to it. (By the way--how do you know when things get real? When people actually and seriously talk about putting down money.)
So what's going on?
What's often going on is that the product is not easy to deploy. Time and time again, I've noticed that a lot of entrepreneurs don't give enough consideration on how to easily deploy their product into a new customer's existing system.
It's a problem because it has the effect of making the product unattractive to investors, potential customers, etc.
You need to make it easy for your customers to adopt your product. Let your potential investors understand that it would be easy for customers (or themselves) to do so. You need to make your startup product easy to deploy.
So how do you do this?
a. You make it so that you can insert your technology into existing infrastructure seamlessly with minimal disruptions
Particularly in the oil and gas energy industry, you have these companies that have large, established systems that are full of all sorts of unimaginable processes. So what happens when some late great technology comes out? The energy company actually LIKES what the entrepreneur is offering, but there's not an easy way to deploy the new product into the established system.
Think about it from the viewpoint of those guys. You have this awesome system going, do you really want to change things up for something new?
Of course you want to change things, because if you don't innovate then you're headed into trouble; but you want to change things while minimizing disruptions in your current operations. The new product has to be deployed quickly and seamlessly.
b. You communicate clearly how this is all done
You would think that clear communications is pretty obvious, but it's not. A lot of people need to be reminded about this.
Let venture capital/private equity investors and customers you are pitching to know how this will all fit in cleanly. Remember also that in the energy/clean tech space that a number of big investors are also going to be the ones that utilize your technology. Tell these individuals what's going on and how this is all going down.
Furthermore, if you are an energy entrepreneur speak clearly and SHOW to these companies how your product will fit in quickly. Do some demonstrations if possible. Communicate that incorporating your startup product will not be an unreasonable transition--that it will not disrupt their current operations, and additionally will make operations better and faster.
If you can't communicate these points clearly, then everyone will be hesitant to jump on your bandwagon.
The more seamlessly you can make your product deployable and the more clearly you communicate how this all fits in, the easier it will be to deploy. This makes sense.