Commercial capability for your deeptech portfolio.
Your companies raise on technology and then stall on the first industrial revenue. That happens long before any of them can justify a full commercial team, and it is the gap we are built to close.
What this is
SLSCRW is pooled commercial capability for deeptech companies. Instead of each portfolio company hiring its own commercial people, they buy defined commercial output from one team that already runs the same motion across several deeptech companies.
The reason this shape works is simple. Deeptech commercial work is not constant. It arrives in bursts: a tender window opens, a pilot needs a business case, a plant manager finally answers, a procurement process demands three documents in ten days. Between those bursts there are quiet weeks. Payroll does not know about quiet weeks. A hire locks in a fixed monthly cost against workload that is anything but fixed.
We charge for the work that gets produced, not for the time someone is available. A portfolio company pays for positioning, an account list, a campaign, a pilot proposal or a tender response. When there is nothing to produce, there is nothing to pay for. You can see how that is priced on our pricing page, and how the work is run on how we work.
What is in scope
- Commercial positioning and the story an industrial buyer will actually accept.
- Target account definition and the map of who decides, who blocks and who pays.
- Outbound and relationship building into industrial and public buyers.
- Pilot design, business cases and pricing for first paid deployments.
- Procurement and tender support through to a signed contract.
What is out of scope
We do not do brand campaigns, generic lead generation or volume outbound that ignores the buying process. We do not take over a company's technical roadmap, and we do not replace a founder in front of a strategic customer. We put the commercial machine around the founder, we do not pretend to be one.
Why fund partners choose us
Runway stays where it belongs
A commercial hire in a deeptech company is a long, expensive bet made at the exact moment the company can least afford it. Recruitment takes months, onboarding into a technical domain takes more, and the fixed cost starts on day one whether or not the pipeline justifies it. Buying commercial output per unit turns that fixed cost into a variable one. Capital that would have gone into a salary stays available for the technology and for the pilots that prove it.
You get comparable signal across companies
Because the same commercial motion runs across several companies, the evidence it produces is comparable. You can see which company is getting real buyer conversations and which one is getting polite interest, which pilot is moving into procurement and which one has been parked for two quarters. That is a very different quality of information from a founder update that says traction is building. It also makes the uncomfortable conclusions visible earlier, which is usually the more valuable outcome.
Incentives point the same way
Pricing is tied to output and, where it fits, to results. A partner can fund part of the fixed cost while the company carries the outcome and success economics, so the founder keeps skin in the game and we carry part of the risk with them. Nobody is paid to look busy.
It starts in weeks, not quarters
There is no hiring cycle. Scope is agreed, the work starts, and the first outputs land inside the first weeks. For a company with a closing tender window or a pilot that needs a business case now, this is often the whole point.
We know the buyers
Industrial, energy, defence and public buyers do not behave like software buyers. They have long procurement cycles, safety and compliance gates, incumbent suppliers and budgets that are decided a year in advance. We work in that world every week, so the learning curve your companies would otherwise pay for is already paid.
How a portfolio engagement runs
01. Screen
We look at the companies you nominate and assess whether there is a credible route to industrial revenue: is there a buyer with a budget, is the technology at a stage a buyer can act on, and can the founder carry a commercial conversation. We say clearly which companies are not ready and why. Screening a portfolio is cheap. Running commercial effort against a company that has no buyer is not.
02. Prioritise
For the companies that pass, we put effort where the buying case is strongest. That usually means one sector, one buyer type and one use case rather than the four the company would like to chase. Focus is what converts a technically interesting company into a supplier someone can actually purchase from.
03. Run mandates
Each selected company gets a mandate with defined outputs and an agreed price. Work runs in bursts that follow the real commercial calendar of the buyer, not a fixed weekly rhythm. Companies can start small with a single output and scale up when the pipeline justifies it. A founder can begin the process on the intake form.
04. Report
You get one view across the portfolio: qualified opportunities, active pilots, procurement stage, contracts signed and what changed since the last report. The same definitions apply to every company, so the numbers can be read next to each other.
How it can be funded
A company does not have to fund commercialisation out of its own runway. The partner can fund part of the fixed cost while the company carries the outcome and success economics. Runway is preserved, the founder keeps skin in the game, and the partner gets structured visibility on commercial progress across the whole portfolio.
What you can expect
The artefacts
Every mandate produces things you can read: a positioning document, a named account map, outbound sequences and their responses, meeting notes from buyer conversations, pilot proposals, business cases, tender responses and contract drafts. Nothing is described as progress unless there is an artefact or a buyer behind it.
The reporting
Portfolio reporting covers qualified opportunities, meetings held with real budget holders, pilots in preparation and in flight, procurement stage per opportunity, and signed contracts with their value. Stages are defined once and applied identically across companies.
The honest timeline
In the first weeks you should expect clarity rather than revenue: a sharpened proposition, a named target list and the first buyer conversations. In the first quarter you should expect qualified opportunities and, in the better cases, a pilot in preparation. Signed industrial contracts typically sit further out, because industrial and public procurement cycles run in quarters and sometimes in years. Anyone promising you a signed plant contract in six weeks is selling you something else.
What we will tell you
If a company is not ready, we will say so and we will say what would have to change. If a market is not buying, we will say that too, early, while there is still runway to act on it. A clear negative in month two is worth more to a fund than an optimistic narrative in month nine.
We work with organisations that have a direct stake in whether deeptech companies reach commercial traction: deeptech venture funds, accelerators and venture builders, EIC and national innovation programmes, universities and technology transfer offices, and regional development organisations. The engagement shape differs, but the question is always the same one: which of these companies can sell, and what would it take.
If you have a portfolio where the technology is proven and the commercial side is not, the fastest way forward is a conversation about two or three specific companies.