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Strategic Communications Advisory For Visionary Founders
Actionable
Takeaways
Target Early Adopters Strategically:
Steff revealed their approach to finding first customers by focusing on concrete producers who already marketed sustainable products and had previous startup partnerships. She explained, "We look for customers who are already marketing their material as environmentally less harmful, sustainable...and we checked that they had either partnered with startups before or they have done some innovative approach within their own operations."
Time Your Market Entry Carefully:
The team deliberately delayed broad marketing efforts until their product was market-ready. Steff shared, "It was always a big question for us, when should we really go out and become very vocal about what we are doing? Because we knew it would take some time and there's the risk then that you go out...but you're not ready. And until you get ready, you are kind of yesterday's news."
Balance Technical Transparency with Vision:
In a risk-averse industry, ecoLocked found success by carefully balancing technical transparency with maintaining excitement about their solution. Steff noted, "We kind of need to balance these conversations by obviously being open in what our product can and cannot do...without scaring them away or not getting them excited."
Invest in Education Before Sales:
For innovative products in traditional industries, education is crucial. ecoLocked invested in creating infographics, videos, and thought leadership content to help potential customers understand carbon removal and sustainability concepts. As Steff explained, "A lot of people are not very knowledgeable about sustainability, about carbon removal...This is a whole new topic that they have never been in touch with before."
Consider Funding Strategy Carefully:
Deep tech startups face unique fundraising challenges compared to digital products. Steff advised, "If you rise in deep tech, in climate tech...you need hardware. In our case, we needed a laboratory. This is a whole different story in terms of how quickly the hockey stick goes up and how much money you need early on."
Conversation
Highlights
Building Trust in Concrete: EcoLocked’s Unconventional Path to Market
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Steff Gerhart, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of EcoLocked, revealed how her team cracked one of climate tech’s hardest GTM challenges: selling innovation to an industry that actively resists it.
EcoLocked develops CO2-negative concrete admixes that turn buildings into carbon sinks. But the real story isn’t the technology—it’s how they convinced one of the world’s most conservative industries to take a chance on a startup.
The Market Reality Check
Most founders think identifying a massive problem guarantees product-market fit. Steff learned otherwise. “We talk truly to a large number and our direct customers are concrete producers. And obviously they are not known to be super innovative or always looking for new materials,” she explains.
The concrete industry isn’t just conservative—it’s structurally resistant to change. Materials must be proven, de-risked, and well-known. For a startup with a novel product, this creates an impossible paradox: you can’t prove your product works without customers, but you can’t get customers without proof.
EcoLocked’s solution was surgical market segmentation. They didn’t try to convert the entire industry. “We right away focus basically on subsections of that market. We look for customers who are already marketing their material as environmentally, you know, less harmful, sustainable,” Steff shares. They specifically sought companies that had either partnered with startups before or demonstrated innovative approaches internally.
This wasn’t about finding early adopters—it was about finding the only possible adopters.
Proximity as Strategy
In B2B SaaS, founders often scale remotely from day one. Climate tech hardware plays by different rules. EcoLocked’s first customer came from close to their operations, and that proximity was strategic, not coincidental.
“FaceTime in this industry is very important to build up trust, you know, that we are not just some crazy startup doing something weird,” Steff notes. They went directly into customer labs, tested with customer materials, and worked alongside their head of laboratory. “Making sure they can build up that trust, they can get the security that there’s something legit was really important.”
This physical presence solved a credibility problem that no pitch deck could address. When you’re asking someone to modify a building material that could affect structural integrity, Zoom calls don’t cut it.
The Marketing Strategy That Wasn’t
While most startups obsess over launch timing and marketing blitzes, EcoLocked did something counterintuitive: they stayed quiet. “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.
They identified a specific risk: premature visibility. “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.”
Instead, they worked with a handful of customers for two years, perfecting their product and approach. Only recently have they ramped up marketing efforts. This patience required saying no to press opportunities, conference invitations, and the dopamine hit of social media buzz—all in service of being genuinely ready when they did scale.
Balancing Transparency in a Risk-Averse Market
The concrete industry’s reputation—Steff acknowledges people call it “the concrete mafia”—stems from its tight-knit nature. Everyone knows everyone. Reputation is everything.
This created a tightrope walk for EcoLocked’s sales approach. “We really always try to find a good balance in transparency since we are working with a very risk averse market,” Steff says. Typically, a sustainability-focused CEO would get excited and connect them with the head of laboratory—”those guys are obviously technically extremely skilled, extremely experienced and very much focused on all the risks and what can go wrong.”
The challenge wasn’t just technical validation. It was educational. “A lot of people are not very knowledgeable about sustainability, about carbon removal. So this part in what exactly does our product do? How do we compensate the emission? What does that mean? This is a whole new topic that they have never been in touch with before.”
EcoLocked invested heavily in infographics, simple explainer videos, and thought leadership content. They appeared at industry conferences and panels, not primarily for lead generation but to establish legitimacy and educate the market on concepts like carbon removal and insetting.
Regional Expansion Over Global Sprawl
Despite receiving requests from the US, Canada, South America, and Asia, EcoLocked has remained focused on Central Europe, with select expansion into markets like the Netherlands, Italy, UK, France, Denmark, and Spain.
This discipline stems from supply chain realities. “Since we rely on a supply chain that right now we are focusing here on the kind of European part, that would be quite some effort to build up a new supply chain in that other market,” Steff explains. Rather than chase every opportunity, they’re concentrating efforts regionally. When they do enter a new region, it will be “with full force.”
This geographic constraint has forced clarity in their expansion strategy and prevented the resource dilution that kills many hardware startups.
The Investor Reality
Steff’s fundraising advice challenges the default VC path. “I’m meeting more and more founders who actually decide to bootstrap for a while. And so for us this never was really an option. But if you can do that, I think this is worthwhile, at least exploring that option.”
The reason is operational burden. “If you compare a startup that is bootstrap versus one that is doing the exact same thing but has investors, you have like at least two, three employees just managing the investors,” she notes. Investor relations, reporting, KPI tracking—it adds up to significant overhead.
For deep tech specifically, she warns that many investors claim climate tech interest but “shy away from that and in the end decide, you know, for that next digital tracking tool or whatever.” Her advice: establish early what you’re building and filter for investors willing to fund hardware and laboratories. “You can save a lot of time, probably 60, 70% of the investors go away and then you can really focus on the bunch that is willing to go that journey with you.”
Scaling Carbon Removal Through Construction
EcoLocked’s three-to-five-year vision centers on demonstrating they can handle biochar’s complexity and consistently introduce it into the construction value chain. Beyond their current Central European market, they’re targeting regional expansion to North America and the Middle East, plus market segment expansion—moving from premium to mass market as they bring down the green premium.
The ultimate goal transcends business metrics. As Steff frames it: “We really need scale, right? Because in the end, we are in this for the climate. We want to unlock the built environment as a carbon sink for this biochar industry.”
For founders building in conservative B2B markets, EcoLocked’s journey offers a blueprint: segment ruthlessly, earn trust through proximity, resist premature scaling, educate relentlessly, and choose investors who understand your actual business model. Sometimes the slowest path to market is the fastest path to scale.
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