How Renaissance Fusion Navigates the “Fusion Has Failed for 70 Years” Objection

How Renaissance Fusion Navigates the “Fusion Has Failed for 70 Years” Objection

Every sales conversation Francesco Volpe has starts with the same objection. It’s not about his team, technology, or timeline. It’s about whether nuclear fusion will ever work at all.

In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Francesco Volpe, Founder of Renaissance Fusion, explained how he handles the most fundamental objection in his industry: that fusion has been promising commercial viability for seven decades and has never delivered. His approach reveals how category-level skepticism can be transformed from a barrier into a qualification tool.

The Objection That Precedes Everything

Most founders deal with product-level objections: is your solution better than alternatives, does it justify the cost, will it integrate with existing systems. Francesco faces something more existential.

“Fusion has been 30 years away for 70 years now. And so a lot of people are very skeptical that any fusion company will actually reach the goal of producing electricity,” he explains. This isn’t skepticism about Renaissance Fusion specifically—it’s skepticism about whether the entire category is viable.

This creates an unusual sales dynamic. Before Francesco can sell Renaissance Fusion’s technical approach, team capabilities, or execution timeline, he needs to convince stakeholders that commercial fusion is actually achievable by anyone. It’s like selling enterprise software in 1985 when most companies doubted computers would ever replace mainframes.

The temptation is to fight this objection head-on, to defend fusion’s potential and argue why this time is different. Francesco takes a different approach: he accepts the skepticism and uses it as a filter.

Letting Skeptics Self-Select Out

Francesco’s insight is that not every skeptic needs to be converted. In fact, trying to convert die-hard skeptics wastes time and energy better spent on more productive conversations.

The key is recognizing that the market for Renaissance Fusion isn’t everyone—it’s sophisticated investors and partners who either already believe in fusion or are open to being persuaded by evidence. The “fusion will never work” crowd can be ignored.

This realization changes everything about how Renaissance Fusion approaches fundraising and partnerships. They don’t pitch broadly and try to overcome skepticism at scale. They identify and target the subset of potential investors who are already predisposed to believe fusion is viable, then focus on demonstrating why Renaissance Fusion will be the company that succeeds.

This is efficient go-to-market. Let the category’s bad reputation do the initial qualification work. Skeptics self-select out, leaving Renaissance Fusion to focus on believers and the persuadable middle.

Recognizing the Market Shift

Francesco observed something crucial about fusion skepticism: it’s changing. “I think at this point, the private sector has kind of understood that fusion works and we’re going to get there. The question is going to be who and when,” he notes.

This shift transforms Renaissance Fusion’s entire sales motion. They’re no longer selling “fusion is possible”—that battle has been largely won among sophisticated deep tech investors. They’re selling “Renaissance Fusion will deliver it first.”

The difference is profound. Selling “fusion is possible” requires convincing investors to believe in fundamental physics breakthroughs and challenging decades of failed attempts. Selling “we’ll win the fusion race” requires demonstrating team capabilities, technical approach, and execution milestones—things Renaissance Fusion can actually control and prove.

Francesco’s ability to recognize this market shift allowed Renaissance Fusion to reposition from category creation to category leadership. Instead of fighting category skepticism, they accept the new framing and compete on execution.

The Reframing Strategy

When Francesco does encounter the “fusion has failed for 70 years” objection, his response isn’t defensive. He doesn’t argue about why fusion science is sound or list technical breakthroughs that make success inevitable.

Instead, he reframes the conversation around what’s changed. New materials like high-temperature superconductors enable reactor designs that weren’t possible a decade ago. Private sector capital and engineering talent are being deployed at unprecedented scale. The urgency around climate change has focused attention and resources on fusion in ways that didn’t exist before.

This reframing acknowledges the objection—yes, fusion has been difficult for a long time—while pivoting to evidence that the constraints have fundamentally changed. It’s not that fusion skeptics were wrong; it’s that the conditions that made them right are evolving.

Francesco also uses transparency as a reframing tool. “We try to be as transparent as possible. We publish a lot. Our scientists are very eager, obviously, to publish stuff. And we try to do that not only in scientific circles, but also in the general media.”

This transparency signals that Renaissance Fusion isn’t another company making unrealistic promises. By publishing research and being honest about challenges, they differentiate themselves from the fusion companies whose failures created the skepticism in the first place.

Timeline Honesty as Credibility Builder

Another element of Francesco’s approach: brutal honesty about timelines. While some fusion companies promise near-term breakthroughs to generate excitement, Francesco sets realistic expectations.

“We might reach revenues by 2030. And, you know, probably really scale up in the 2035, 2040 timeframe,” he states plainly. This 15-year timeline to commercial scale could seem like a disadvantage compared to competitors promising results in five years.

But for sophisticated investors who’ve seen decades of missed fusion milestones, Francesco’s honesty builds credibility. Investors know fusion is hard. They’re skeptical of promises that sound too good to be true. By acknowledging the realistic timeline, Francesco positions Renaissance Fusion as the company that understands the challenges and has a credible plan to overcome them.

This honesty also filters out investors looking for quick returns. If an investor hears “2040 timeline” and walks away, that’s a successful qualification. Those investors wouldn’t have been good partners anyway for a company with a 15-year product development cycle.

Using Category Progress as Proof

Francesco benefits from progress being made across the entire private fusion industry. Every time a competitor demonstrates a technical milestone or raises significant capital, it validates the category and makes Renaissance Fusion’s sales conversations easier.

This dynamic is unusual for most competitive markets, where competitor success is bad news. But when you’re fighting category-level skepticism, competitor success is evidence that the category is viable. It expands the pool of investors willing to fund fusion companies and increases overall market belief that commercial fusion is achievable.

Francesco implicitly acknowledges this when describing the market shift toward believing fusion will work. That shift wasn’t created by Renaissance Fusion alone—it was created by collective progress across government and private fusion programs demonstrating that the fundamental science is sound and engineering challenges are solvable.

The Qualification Question

Francesco’s approach reveals a broader principle about handling category-level objections: they’re not obstacles to overcome but filters to deploy. The right question isn’t “how do I convince skeptics?” but “which stakeholders are already past the category skepticism and ready to evaluate company-specific factors?”

For Renaissance Fusion, this means targeting investors who understand deep tech timelines, believe in fusion’s viability, and are evaluating which fusion company to back. The objection “fusion has failed for 70 years” immediately identifies investors who aren’t in this target group.

This is why Francesco emphasizes finding investors “that actually care about the technology and the problem that we’re trying to solve, and not purely just, you know, returns on investments.” Investors who care about the technology have already moved past category skepticism. They believe fusion will work and want to back the winning team.

When Your Category Has Baggage

Francesco’s experience offers lessons for any founder building in a category with a bad reputation. Accept that category skepticism exists and use it as a qualification tool. Identify the market segments that have moved past category objections. Reframe conversations from “is this possible?” to “who will win?” Use transparency and timeline honesty to differentiate from the companies whose failures created the skepticism. Let competitor progress validate the category.

These principles don’t eliminate category skepticism, but they transform it from an immovable barrier into a productive filter that helps identify the right stakeholders to pursue.

As Francesco frames the ultimate opportunity: “I think climate change is definitely the defining challenge of our generation. And probably, I would say the technology that is going to be able to solve that is going to be fusion.”

For founders tackling defining challenges in skeptical categories, Francesco’s approach shows how to navigate objections at the category level while building momentum toward success.