The Platform Technology Trap: How Scrona Navigates Doing Everything and Nothing Simultaneously

The Platform Technology Trap: How Scrona Navigates Doing Everything and Nothing Simultaneously

Scrona’s printing technology can revolutionize semiconductor manufacturing. And display production. And life sciences. And consumer electronics. And automotive manufacturing. And microfluidics. And lab-on-a-chip devices. And antenna structures on curved substrates.

That’s not a competitive advantage. It’s a crisis.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Patrick Heissler, CEO of Scrona, a high-resolution printing platform that’s raised $15.5 million, articulated the fundamental problem that kills most platform technology companies: “For a startup to push a technology into a market is pretty difficult, especially if it’s a platform technology, because you can do everything and nothing at the same time.”

This paradox—the ability to serve every market becomes the inability to serve any market effectively—reveals why platform technologies with legitimate multi-industry applications often fail to commercialize despite superior technical capabilities.

The Endless Opportunity Problem

Patrick described the full scope of Scrona’s potential applications: “As a platform technology, we also are looking at life science application, for example, microfluidic applications, lab on a chip applications we’re looking at now consumer tech applications, printing antenna structures, for example. On variables where substrates are getting more complex or more sensitive, where you have topography like curved substrates. So we’re looking at all of these things.”

Every application is legitimate. Every industry represents genuine opportunity. Every conversation with potential customers validates another use case. This should be a founder’s dream—unlimited addressable market, multiple paths to revenue, diversified risk.

Instead, it creates paralysis. Which market do you enter first? Which customer segments do you prioritize? How do you build domain expertise across six industries simultaneously? Where do you focus limited engineering resources when every application requires customization?

Most platform technology founders respond by trying to pursue everything. They build generic capabilities that theoretically work everywhere. They chase opportunities across multiple industries. They fragment their teams pursuing diverse applications. And they run out of runway before proving the technology works definitively anywhere.

The Focus Framework

Patrick cut through the opportunity paralysis with a single focusing principle: “The major point that we have to tackle now is solve a problem for a customer, create value for a customer, because that will facilitate the adoption of our technology into this supply chain.”

The emphasis matters. Not “solve problems for customers” across multiple industries. Solve a problem for a customer. Singular. One supply chain. One adoption path that creates proof points for everything else.

This principle shaped every decision Patrick made as CEO. Rather than building generic platform capabilities, Scrona focused on solving specific problems for semiconductor and display customers where the team had existing ecosystem advantages. Rather than pursuing six industries with moderate effort, they pursued two with full commitment.

The logic extends to pipeline management. Patrick explained: “I don’t necessarily need a huge project pipeline. Like it’s great if I have a lot of interest, it’s great if I have a lot of people coming in. But I want to be very selective on what we’re working on to have the highest impact on a company.”

Selectivity when you have platform technology with broad applications feels counterintuitive. Investors want you to pursue larger TAMs. Board members ask why you’re not exploring adjacent opportunities. Customers in other industries express genuine interest. The pressure to expand is constant.

Patrick resisted because he understood that platform companies die from fragmentation, not from insufficient market size.

The Resource Fragmentation Trap

Platform technologies demand deep customization for each industry. The same core technology that works for semiconductor applications requires different integration approaches, different materials, different operator training, and different qualification processes for life sciences applications.

Building these industry-specific capabilities simultaneously fragments engineering resources. Your team becomes generalists trying to solve multiple complex problems rather than specialists driving breakthrough solutions in one domain. Progress in every area slows to the pace of the slowest effort. You build shallow capabilities everywhere instead of deep expertise anywhere.

Patrick avoided this by making hard choices about what to pursue directly versus through ecosystem partnerships. High-impact semiconductor and display applications stayed in-house. Other opportunities got routed to partners like Notion Systems who could serve them without fragmenting Scrona’s focus.

“So we have a strong partner with notion system that enables like smaller scale systems directly for customers that might not require this kind of immense R and D work,” Patrick explained. “So I’m freeing up time at my team to really focus on value creation for our company and at the same time enable an ecosystem partner to also generate growth and value on their side.”

This approach maintained market presence across multiple applications without the resource drain of serving them directly.

The Investor Pressure Reality

Patrick’s selective approach faces constant pressure from the venture capital model that prefers larger addressable markets. A platform technology that can serve $50 billion across six industries sounds more attractive than focused technology serving $10 billion in semiconductors.

But this logic ignores the reality of startup execution. Large TAMs don’t matter if you can’t efficiently capture market share. Multi-industry potential doesn’t matter if you fragment resources proving the technology nowhere before burning through runway.

Patrick’s framework for resisting this pressure centers on “value inflection points”—specific projects and customers that fundamentally change how markets perceive the technology. “We have to clearly define a couple of say value inflection points or value inflecting projects that bring us forward,” he said.

These inflection points come from deep engagement with major customers in focused markets, not from shallow presence across multiple industries. One major semiconductor customer adopting Scrona’s technology at production scale creates more credibility than dozens of small prototyping projects across six industries.

The Sequencing Strategy

Patrick didn’t abandon platform potential. He sequenced it. The strategy starts with focused execution in semiconductors and displays where the team has ecosystem advantages. Prove the technology works at industrial scale. Build reference customers. Demonstrate reliable production capabilities.

Then leverage that credibility to expand into adjacent markets from positions of strength. Patrick’s three to five year vision makes this explicit. After achieving mass adoption in core markets “starting late 2026, early 2027,” the strategy shifts: “This will help us to actually internationalize the company and also help us to diversify into new fields. As I said at the beginning, we’re not stopping at semiconductor or display industry. We’re looking at life science applications and many more applications, automotive, consumer electronics.”

The sequencing creates compound advantages. Success in semiconductors builds credibility that accelerates adoption in displays. Combined success in both creates proof points that make life sciences customers more willing to take adoption risks. Each market entered from strength rather than starting multiple markets simultaneously from weakness.

“And that’s just starting right now,” Patrick said. “And we will see that three to five years from now, we will see a much larger platform company, a real platform company. On the way up still.”

The Discipline of Saying No

The hardest part of navigating the platform technology trap isn’t identifying focus areas. It’s maintaining that focus when legitimate opportunities present themselves.

Every customer conversation in adjacent industries represents real revenue. Every partnership opportunity promises market expansion. Every new application validates platform potential. The opportunities are genuine, not distractions. That makes saying no exponentially harder.

Patrick’s framework for these decisions centers on whether opportunities create value inflection points or just generate activity. Projects that fundamentally change market perception, enable major industrial adoption, or prove capabilities essential for future scaling get resources. Everything else gets deferred or routed through ecosystem partners.

This discipline requires confidence that depth matters more than breadth for early-stage platform companies. That proving technology definitively in one market creates more value than demonstrating potential across multiple markets. That focus enables the speed required for industrial adoption cycles that measure qualification timelines in years.

The Underlying Principle

Patrick’s approach to navigating the platform technology trap reveals a principle that applies beyond Scrona: for early-stage companies, the ability to do everything creates the obligation to do one thing exceptionally well.

Platform potential is an asset for mature companies with resources to pursue multiple markets simultaneously. For startups with limited runway and small teams, platform potential becomes a liability unless you have the discipline to sequence ruthlessly.

The trap isn’t having platform technology. The trap is believing that platform potential requires platform execution from day one. Patrick’s framework proves that platform companies succeed by being focused companies first, then expanding into platform breadth from positions of proven capability and market credibility.

For founders with platform technologies facing pressure to pursue multiple markets simultaneously, Patrick’s journey offers a clear playbook: identify one market where you have unfair advantages, solve one customer’s problem definitively, build one supply chain adoption path completely, create value inflection points that change market perception, then use that credibility to expand into adjacent markets from strength.

The platform trap catches founders who try to be everywhere simultaneously. Patrick avoided it by having the discipline to be somewhere specific first, then becoming a platform company through sequenced expansion rather than simultaneous fragmentation.