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Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Objection documentation is a closing system, not a soft skill.
Most enterprise sales teams treat objection handling as something that happens in the room. Haroon runs it as a structured process: capture every objection, leave without reacting, return with methodical solutions. The deal follows the solved objections. This is particularly relevant when selling unproven technology into risk-averse infrastructure buyers who need to justify the decision internally. "My way of closing deals, Brett, is very simple. I close deals by objection handling. So when you listen to the objections from the customers, just note them down, don't freak out and come back and methodically solve those things in a solid fashion. And if there's a need, you'll get the order."
The most common enterprise objection isn't price — it's scale proof.
When buyers see the product, the reaction is positive. The blocker is deployment history. Buyers want to know if a startup can reliably deliver at gigawatt scale when it has only deployed at megawatt scale. DG Matrix's answer is pedigree transfer: aerospace-grade power electronics for Boeing aircraft and military programs. When you lack field scale, you redirect to adjacent evidence of engineering rigor in equally high-stakes environments. "We might have deployed a couple of megawatts, but we're not there yet. So then the objection is how do we know you'll be able to scale? ...We have to show them the pedigree of our screening that we do in the supply chain."
Channel partners solve a balance sheet problem, not just a reach problem.
The original GTM thesis was standard: go direct for enterprise, use channel for SMB. What surfaced in practice was that large buyers will not place nine-figure orders with a startup whose balance sheet can't absorb them — regardless of product quality. ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now investors, and the strategic value is that they can carry orders on their books while providing global deployment and service infrastructure. "A lot of large customers have large orders to give and we won't have a balance sheet that'll allow us to take an order like that, not in their eyes. So we then have to adjust where we find channel partners to carry the orders on their books."
Bankability and insurability are GTM problems, not finance problems.
In infrastructure sales, deals stall not because the buyer isn't sold, but because the product can't get financed or insured at scale. DG Matrix is solving this through white-label agreements with large international conglomerates and working with VCs who have prior experience structuring deals with the right insurers and banks. Cybersecurity architecture is part of this — it must be designed in from day zero. "To have all the documentation in place, make sure you have your cyber security thought out from day zero. Because if you're supplying something for energy security, you can't have third party actors hack into it."
The crawl-walk-run deal sequence is non-negotiable at this deal size.
A hundred-million-dollar deal does not begin with a purchase order. It begins with disbelief. Haroon outlines the full sequence required before a buyer will commit: demonstrate the product, prove the team, show clean legal structure, present a technical and commercial risk mitigation framework, run a pilot, then build a ramp plan together. The follow-on deal is determined entirely by how fast field issues get resolved in the first one. "You have to have a framework of technical and commercial risk mitigation that they can accept. And with all those things on the table, then you work through, let's do the pilots, let's do a crawl, walk, run, and let's make sure that we can go through how we ramp up after that with you."
Conversation
Highlights
DG Matrix: How a $60M Infrastructure Startup Discovered Its Channel Strategy Was Really a Balance Sheet Problem
A buyer sits across the table from Haroon Inam. They’ve seen the product. They’re impressed. The technology works. The team is credible. And then the question comes: “Have you deployed a gigawatt anywhere?”
The answer is no.
That moment — the gap between product conviction and enterprise trust — is the central tension DG Matrix has been navigating since it pivoted from fleet electrification to AI data center power infrastructure. Haroon is CEO of a company that just closed a $60M raise backed by ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, with a pipeline of deals ranging from $50M to a few hundred million dollars each. But getting here required dismantling almost every assumption they started with about how to sell.
In a recent episode of Unicorn Builders, Haroon shared the decisions, failures, and frameworks behind DG Matrix’s go-to-market evolution.
The Pivot That Wasn’t a Clean Break
DG Matrix built its core behind-the-meter power architecture for fleet electrification. They spent years courting customers, running pilots, and building a pipeline with nine-figure deals on the table. Then a major GPU manufacturer called. Had DG Matrix thought about adapting the architecture for data centers? That was nearly two years before this conversation. Today, data centers represent 80 to 90% of the company’s focus.
But Haroon made a deliberate choice not to kill the original market: “We classified that as a general electrification market and we’re not going to abandon our customers. It may be smaller volume right now, but we believe over time it’s going to grow.”
The decision reflects a specific constraint: DG Matrix built a platform that serves both markets without modification. Abandoning early customers to chase a larger opportunity would have destroyed the reference base they’d need when data center buyers asked for proof of deployment history.
When the Channel Strategy Broke
The initial go-to-market logic was standard: go direct for large enterprise, use channel partners for smaller customers. It broke in practice — not because of reach, but because of balance sheet.
“A lot of large customers have large orders to give and we won’t have a balance sheet that’ll allow us to take an order like that, not in their eyes. So we then have to adjust where we find channel partners to carry the orders on their books.”
Most early-stage enterprise startups treat channel partners as a distribution mechanism. DG Matrix discovered they’re also a financial instrument. A buyer placing a nine-figure infrastructure order needs to know the vendor can absorb it. A startup with a strong product but a thin balance sheet fails that test regardless of what the product does.
The structural fix: bring the channel partners onto the cap table before using them for distribution. ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now investors. “They have gangs of PhDs and engineers to vet this out, but they also have global fleets of people to deploy this everywhere and to service it everywhere.” Credibility, deployment infrastructure, and financial weight — one move.
The Objection-Log Closing System
With deal sizes this large, conventional sales motion breaks down. Haroon runs a different system entirely.
“My way of closing deals, Brett, is very simple. I close deals by objection handling. So when you listen to the objections from the customers, just note them down, don’t freak out and come back and methodically solve those things in a solid fashion. And if there’s a need, you’ll get the order.”
The discipline is in the sequencing. Most salespeople handle objections in the room — reactively, often unconvincingly. Haroon’s approach separates the listening from the solving. You leave with the objections documented. You return with methodical answers. The deal follows the solved problems.
The most common objection DG Matrix faces isn’t price. It’s scale proof. Buyers want to know if a company that hasn’t yet deployed at gigawatt scale can reliably get there. The answer can’t be a promise — it has to be evidence. When you lack field evidence at scale, the counter is pedigree transfer: aerospace-grade power electronics for Boeing aircraft and military programs. Adjacent proof from equally high-stakes environments.
Bankability Is a Sales Problem, Not a Finance Problem
One GTM blocker that rarely shows up in sales playbooks: insurability. In infrastructure deals, buyers need to know the product can be financed and insured at scale before they commit. This isn’t a procurement formality — it’s a hard gate.
DG Matrix is solving it through three levers: white-label agreements with large international conglomerates, VCs who have prior experience structuring deals with specialized insurers and banks, and cybersecurity architecture designed in from the beginning. “To have all the documentation in place, make sure you have your cyber security thought out from day zero. Because if you’re supplying something for energy security, you can’t have third party actors hack into it.”
For any startup selling into regulated or high-stakes infrastructure markets, bankability and insurability need to be part of the GTM motion from day one — not retrofitted after a deal stalls.
What the Crawl-Walk-Run Sequence Actually Requires
A nine-figure infrastructure deal doesn’t begin with a signed contract. It begins with disbelief. “It’s mostly starts off in a way like do you really have this?”
The sequence to move a buyer from skepticism to commitment requires five things layered in order: product demonstration, team credibility, financing proof, clean legal structure, and a technical and commercial risk mitigation framework the buyer can accept. Only after all five are on the table does the pilot conversation begin.
“You also have to have an excellent process for solving field issues in a very fast fashion. And if you don’t, you’re not going to get follow on deals.”
The pilot isn’t a proof of concept. It’s an audition for the follow-on order. Speed of issue resolution during the pilot is the actual product being evaluated — and everything that comes after depends on it.
DG Matrix is targeting $1B in revenue in four to seven years. The pipeline is real. The GTM infrastructure that makes it executable — channel-as-balance-sheet, objection-log closing, bankability-first design — was built through failures that forced each lesson into the system.
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