From Lab to Market: Inside Membrion’s 5-Year Commercialization Strategy for Deep Tech
Five years is a long time to wait for revenue. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Membrion founder Greg Newbloom shared how they survived – and thrived – during the long journey from breakthrough technology to market success.
The Scale-Up Challenge
For deep tech startups, the path to commercialization isn’t just about product development – it’s about scale. “If you looked at the history of Membrion, we’re just about to turn eight years old, really, the first five, six years of the company were figuring out how to go from something that was the size of a thumbnail up to something that you could actually treat multiple gallons of water at the same time,” Greg revealed.
Managing Investor Expectations
This long development cycle required special investor management. “We stayed really lean for a long time,” Greg explained. “Small team, a lot of capabilities, knew that we had to what milestones were trying to hit, and we just had to stay really focused.”
The key was finding the right investors. They built support through “angel investors with strong technical engineering background. So they understood the problem after they understood that we could crack that nut, that there was something really special inside.”
Diversifying Funding Sources
They supplemented private investment with “federal government funding, state funding, things like that, to really get us to the point where we could say… we’re actually now out here selling this.” This diverse funding approach helped maintain runway through the development phase.
The MVP Challenge
In deep tech, the minimum viable product poses unique challenges. As Greg explained, “If you think about a water treatment, either your water is clean or you’re not. 90% is not good enough. 99% is not good enough.” There’s no room for partial solutions.
This reality shaped their development timeline: “Getting to a minimum viable product, so much of it is, can we make it at a physical size that’s relevant and make it in the quantity that’s relevant that you can actually do something with.”
Strategic Market Entry
Rather than trying to serve everyone immediately, they focused strategically. “We often work in really high impact, but non critical parts of the process,” Greg shared. This positioning allowed them to demonstrate value while building credibility.
They also innovated on business model: “We also do a lot of kind of marketing under water treatment as a service… they pay only for the performance of the system as we generate it.” This approach reduced adoption barriers and accelerated market entry.
Maintaining Focus
Despite opportunities in multiple markets, they maintained strict focus. “I think that we get pulled in a lot of different directions because our technology can do a lot of different things,” Greg noted. Their solution? “If we focus on doing one or two things really well, we’ll get the opportunity to do the other hundred things.”
The Evolution
Their commercialization strategy continues to evolve. “What we’re realizing, what we’re getting pulled towards with our customers, is this concept of being able to provide a complete solution to some of these problems that right now we’re a critical step in solving,” Greg explained.
For deep tech founders, Membrion’s journey offers crucial lessons about commercialization:
- The importance of maintaining lean operations during development
- Finding investors who understand technical development timelines
- Diversifying funding sources to maintain runway
- Being strategic about market entry points
- Using business model innovation to accelerate adoption
The path from lab to market is long, but with the right strategy and support, it’s navigable. As Greg’s experience shows, success often comes not just from technical excellence, but from the patience and discipline to build the right foundations for commercial success.