In the early stages of a deeptech startup, it’s easy to confuse who your real customer is. Early funding often comes from government R&D programs like SBIR, and it can feel like a lifeline. But many founders fall into a trap: they begin to treat the funder, typically represented by the Technical Point of Contact (TPOC), as the customer.

This is a critical and common mistake. And if left unaddressed, it can lead to years of technology development with no path to actual market adoption.

Understanding the Role of the TPOC

Let’s be clear, TPOCs are incredibly important. They are often technical domain experts, genuinely invested in your success, and can be instrumental in refining your technology. Many of them have deep scientific expertise, thoughtful guidance, and significant influence within their agencies.

But they are not the buyer of your product. Their role is to sponsor your R&D, not to adopt, purchase, or deploy a product at scale. Treating their feedback as equivalent to that of an end-customer can put your company onto the wrong trajectory.

This confusion can cause a founder to over-index on pleasing the sponsor: shaping the business roadmap based on the SBIR topic, pivoting scope, or chasing milestones that may result in a great research report, but not with winning follow-on product development contracts or creating commercial demand. Often, it leads to the development of a capability no one is prepared to buy.

The R&D Sponsor ≠ The Customer

Here’s a practical example. Suppose you’re working with the National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), or NIH. These agencies are deeply committed to advancing science and solving major societal challenges, but broadly speaking, they don’t purchase products. Their programs are built to fund research, not acquisition.

Contrast that with a group like the Department of Defense (DoD), which does buy products. Even in DoD-funded projects, most early-phase SBIR or OTA funding comes from the R&D side (like Research, Development, Test & Evaluation branches), not from acquisition offices. If your TPOC is from R&D, they may not be well-connected to the actual program office that makes buying decisions.

And this extends beyond acquisition personnel at the program offices to end users. For instance, a company building a system for the F-18 must engage the relevant acquisition staff, as well as end users such as pilots, maintainers, and logisticians. Missing these key inputs during the early prototyping stages (TRL 3 to 5) can create a disconnect that can kill a transition effort, no matter how technically strong the solution is.

Avoiding the Trap: Do the Hard Work of Customer Discovery

To avoid this pitfall, founders must adopt a deliberate process of customer discovery. As Steve Blank1, Eric Ries2, and Bill Aulet3 have all emphasized, startups succeed not by building the best technology, but by solving real problems for real people.

Customer discovery means:

  • Identifying different types of potential users and buyers.
  • Interviewing them to understand their pain points, priorities, and workflows.
  • Testing hypotheses about how your solution fits into their lives or missions.
  • Validating (or invalidating) assumptions before locking into a product roadmap.

There are excellent frameworks for this including the Business Model Canvas and structured interview approaches taught by programs like the NSF I-Corps.4

It’s critical to get out of the building, both figuratively or literally, to talk to the people who would actually use or purchase your technology. Not just your sponsor. Not just your champion. But the actual customers and end users.

Use the TPOC Relationship Strategically

All of this doesn’t mean you ignore your TPOC. Quite the opposite: they should be treated with professionalism, responsiveness, and the same customer service mindset you’d offer any key stakeholder. Their guidance on technical feasibility, domain challenges, and prior experience pursuing similar solutions can be invaluable.

But the key is to put their input into the right context. A TPOC is a stakeholder—sometimes a very influential one—but not the final buyer or user. Their feedback often reflects a technical or programmatic lens, rather than a mission capability or end user roadblock. Some of the best TPOCs position themselves as end-user advocates, and while this
Smart founders leverage the TPOC relationship to expand their network, building trust through technical execution to earn intros to acquisition officers, mission owners, and end users. That’s the path to bridging the “valley of death”—and aligning technology development with real market demand.

Mapping the Stakeholder Landscape Early

To avoid these pitfalls, one of the best things a founder can do is to map out their stakeholder landscape:

  • Who are the funders?
  • Who are the users?
  • Who are the buyers?
  • What are their respective priorities?
  • How do they interact?

We recommend doing this before even writing the proposal. This allows you to weigh feedback appropriately, manage trade-offs, and avoid costly misalignments between technology development and business success.

Because at the end of the day, government R&D sponsorship is not a business model. It’s a resource that enables innovation. To succeed, it must be paired with rigorous customer discovery and a sharp focus on value creation.

Balancing funding and customer alignment is one of the hardest parts of early-stage growth. If you’re looking for help to steer your strategy back toward real customers, Transition to Scale can help.

Citations & Further Reading

Steve Blank – The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Eric Ries – The Lean Startup

Bill Aulet – Disciplined Entrepreneurship

NSF I-Corps – Customer Discovery Training Resources: https://www.nsf.gov/funding/initiatives/i-corps