EcoLocked’s Two-Year Silence: Why Delaying Your Launch Can Accelerate Growth

EcoLocked’s Two-Year Silence: Why Delaying Your Launch Can Accelerate Growth

Every startup playbook preaches the same gospel: launch early, iterate publicly, fail fast. Ship your MVP, gather feedback, pivot quickly. The faster you move, the faster you learn.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Steff Gerhart, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of EcoLocked, explained why her team ignored all of that advice—and why staying quiet for two years was the best strategic decision they made.

The Launch Paradox

EcoLocked develops CO2-negative concrete admixes that turn buildings into carbon sinks. From day one, they had a compelling story: climate tech solving construction’s massive emissions problem. Press would have been easy. Conference invitations were available. Social media buzz was just a few posts away.

They said no to all of it.

“I would say we didn’t do much of marketing, to be honest, because it took us a while to have a functioning product,” Steff explains. This wasn’t about perfection or being overly cautious. It was about understanding a specific market dynamic that most founders miss.

“We knew it would take some time and there’s the risk then that you go out. Everyone is like interesting and looking and wanting to talk, but you’re not ready. And until you get ready, you are kind of yesterday’s news.”

This is the launch paradox in conservative B2B markets: visibility has a shelf life. Get attention too early, and you waste your one shot at a first impression. By the time you’re actually ready to sell, the market has moved on. You’re not new anymore—you’re the startup that promised something two years ago and still hasn’t delivered.

What They Did Instead

While their competitors were announcing partnerships and collecting press mentions, EcoLocked was doing something harder: actually building relationships with customers who mattered.

“We actually really tried to work just with a handful of customers to make sure we are market ready and we are ramping up our marketing efforts, really just I would say in the last few months. So this is kind of two years from founding.”

Those two years weren’t silent internally—they were intensely focused on a small group of early customers. “Before that, it was really a one one approach with selected customers that we had proactively reached out to.”

This created a compounding advantage. When EcoLocked finally did ramp up marketing, they weren’t selling a hypothesis. They had case studies, proven results, refined product-market fit, and deep knowledge of customer objections. More importantly, they had references in an industry where reputation spreads through word-of-mouth.

Understanding Market Memory

The key insight is understanding how different markets remember startups. In fast-moving consumer markets or viral social apps, attention spans are short. Launch today, pivot tomorrow, nobody remembers your V1. Market memory resets constantly.

Conservative B2B markets work differently. The concrete industry that EcoLocked sells to has long memory and tight networks. “Everyone knows everyone and people talk a lot amongst each other,” Steff notes. In these markets, your early reputation calcifies. Mistakes get remembered. Promises get tracked. “The reputation that you have is important and you don’t want to like screw it up.”

This creates asymmetric risk for early-stage visibility. The upside of premature press—some inbound leads, maybe an easier investor conversation—pales compared to the downside: burning credibility with the exact customers you’ll need in years two, three, and four.

The Product Readiness Question

Most founders conflate “functional” with “ready.” EcoLocked understood the difference. A functional product demonstrates that the technology works. A ready product has navigated every objection, de-risked every concern, and proven itself in real customer environments.

For EcoLocked, getting ready meant going into customer labs, testing with their specific materials, working alongside their heads of laboratories, and building the trust that “this is something solid.” That process takes time—measured in quarters, not sprints.

This distinction matters more in industries with high switching costs or safety implications. Software bugs are annoying; concrete that fails structural tests is catastrophic. The bar for “ready” is fundamentally higher.

The Focus Advantage

Staying quiet created another benefit: focus. Without the pressure of public expectations or the distraction of inbound inquiries, EcoLocked could concentrate on getting the fundamentals right.

“It took us a while to have a functioning product” isn’t an admission of slowness—it’s an acknowledgment that deep tech hardware requires actual development time. You can’t hack your way to chemical formulations. You can’t growth-hack supply chain logistics. You need to do the work.

Public launches create their own momentum that’s hard to resist. Press generates leads. Leads demand demos. Demos reveal gaps. Suddenly you’re managing expectations across dozens of prospects before you’ve actually solved the core problems for your first handful of customers.

When to Break Silence

EcoLocked’s timing for ramping up marketing—two years from founding—wasn’t arbitrary. They waited until they had achieved several specific milestones:

First, they had a product that consistently worked across multiple customer environments. Not a lab prototype, but something proven in real-world conditions with real customer materials.

Second, they understood their customers deeply. Two years of intimate work with select concrete producers taught them the language, objections, and decision-making processes that would inform all future sales.

Third, they had refined their value proposition. They could articulate not just what their product does, but why it matters in terms their market actually cared about—moving beyond “CO2 negative” to specific business outcomes.

Fourth, they had the infrastructure to handle scale. Marketing creates demand. Demand requires fulfillment. They waited until their operations could actually deliver.

The Framework

EcoLocked’s approach reveals a framework for launch timing that depends on three variables: market attention span, product complexity, and consequence of failure.

If your market has short attention spans (consumer products, trending categories), launch early. If customers have long memories (tight-knit B2B industries), wait until you’re truly ready.

If your product is simple (digital tools, straightforward SaaS), iterate publicly. If it’s complex (hardware, chemical formulations), perfect it privately.

If failure is low-stakes (entertainment apps, productivity tools), move fast. If failure has serious consequences (construction materials, medical devices, financial infrastructure), move deliberately.

For EcoLocked, all three variables pointed toward patience: long market memory, complex product, high-stakes consequences. The decision to stay quiet wasn’t conservative—it was strategic.

The Compounding Returns

Now, as EcoLocked scales marketing after two years of quiet building, they’re experiencing the compounding returns of their patience. They’re not explaining why their product didn’t work as expected in early customer deployments. They’re not apologizing for overpromises. They’re not rebuilding damaged relationships.

Instead, they’re entering the market with credibility, proven results, and a product that actually delivers on its claims. In the concrete industry’s tight-knit networks, that reputation advantage compounds with every conversation.

For founders in conservative B2B markets, the lesson is clear: your launch date is a strategic decision, not a default timeline. Sometimes the fastest path to growth is staying quiet until you’re ready to scale.