Space Tech GTM Lessons for Every B2B Founder: What CisLunar Industries’ Journey Reveals About Hard Tech Go-to-Market
Your product timeline is brutal. Your market barely exists. Your ideal customer profile is theoretical. VCs keep passing because your commercialization is too far out. You’re starting to wonder if you picked an impossible problem.
Welcome to hard tech GTM. It’s where Gary Calnan has lived since founding CisLunar Industries in 2017.
In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Gary shared how his company navigated one of the most extreme GTM challenges imaginable: selling technology to recycle space debris into materials for manufacturing. The primary market is a decade away. The customers are mostly government agencies. The technology requires developing components that don’t exist off-the-shelf.
If CisLunar can figure out GTM for this, there are lessons for every B2B founder facing long timelines, uncertain markets, and complex technology. Here’s what space tech reveals about surviving the hard parts of bringing innovation to market.
Lesson 1: Survival Isn’t About Having the Perfect Strategy—It’s About Having Multiple Paths Forward
CisLunar started with a clear vision: become the steel mills of space. That vision hasn’t changed. What changed was their willingness to pursue multiple revenue streams simultaneously.
“Some of it is just about figuring out how to survive those moments in time. Structure your company with optionality so you have more than one way to move forward where you’re not dependent upon continuing to raise so you can keep burning capital,” Gary explains.
They built a power converter for their furnace, discovered broader applications, and turned that into near-term revenue. They pursued government contracts while building commercial products. They took contract engineering work when cash was tight.
For B2B founders: if your primary GTM path has a long timeline, what adjacent paths could generate revenue sooner?
Lesson 2: Transparency Compounds Faster Than Secrecy
Gary rejected stealth mode from day one. “We decided not to go stealth from the very beginning,” he states. “We made a decision early on that we were small and we didn’t have our own pile of wealth to use to build a business. So we had to go out and tell the story and try to find partners that we could work with.”
That openness led to their most important discoveries. A collaborator spotted power converter applications they hadn’t considered. Conference attendance led to government contracts. Visibility let investors track their traction over time.
The universal principle: in emerging categories, market feedback improves your product faster than internal brainstorming.
Lesson 3: Government Contracts Aren’t Just for Defense Companies
Many tech founders leave non-dilutive funding on the table because government contracting seems intimidating. Gary’s take? “Most intelligent people running businesses…can figure out how to navigate if you want to.”
CisLunar has won contracts from NASA, Space Force, DARPA, the ISS National Lab, and Colorado—all providing capital that didn’t dilute equity. The SBIR process exists across every government department.
The barrier is psychological more than practical. And agencies are more founder-friendly than you expect: “They’re trying to be adaptable to the industry as it is, and take advantage of the benefits of entrepreneurship. And they’ve moved pretty fast, and they’ve been very helpful and collaborative with us.”
Lesson 4: In Emerging Markets, Flexibility Beats Optimization
Standard startup advice says focus ruthlessly. But Gary deliberately resisted: “We always try to approach what we’re building to maintain as much flexibility as how it could be applied as possible. We didn’t say, like, what’s our killer app? It’s going to be large antennas in space or whatever. We don’t know because it’s such a new market.”
By building modular components—”almost like Lego bricks”—CisLunar could pivot when opportunities emerged.
The transferable insight: in genuinely emerging markets, premature optimization is guessing disguised as strategy. Maintain architectural flexibility while pursuing specific opportunities.
Lesson 5: Match Your Capital Strategy to Your Actual Timeline
CisLunar faced a brutal reality: “One of the big challenges we’ve had with your typical investor, VC investor, is that our time horizon to get to commercial viability for metal processing is not your typical five to seven years. And that just doesn’t fit with the turnaround time that most VCs typically say they need.”
Rather than forcing an unrealistic timeline, they found capital sources that matched their reality: government contracts for R&D, commercial products for near-term revenue, strategic partnerships for capabilities they couldn’t build.
They survived by being honest about their timeline and structuring accordingly.
Lesson 6: The Best Product Strategy Might Be the One You Discover
CisLunar didn’t plan to become a power systems company. They built a power converter because they needed one. An external perspective spotted its broader value. Now it’s their primary revenue driver.
This reveals something important: sometimes your most valuable insight comes from outside your team. The collaborator who spots an unexpected application. The customer who suggests an adjacent use case.
But those discoveries only happen if you’re open to them. Gary’s advice: “Making contact with the market is always better to refine your idea and…be willing to be flexible and open to changing paths.”
The Meta-Lesson: Hard Tech GTM Is About Intellectual Honesty
CisLunar’s journey ultimately comes down to intellectual honesty about what they knew versus what they were guessing. When Gary says “We don’t know because it’s such a new market,” he’s not making excuses—he’s accurately assessing reality.
That honesty shaped every decision: maintain flexibility because we don’t know which application will matter most. Stay transparent because we need external perspectives. Pursue multiple revenue streams because betting on one timeline is too risky. Take government contracts because we need capital that doesn’t require proving commercial traction we don’t have yet.
For B2B founders in any sector, especially those building truly innovative technology: the hardest part of GTM isn’t figuring out the tactics. It’s being honest about your actual situation, not the situation you wish you had.
If you can figure out GTM for recycling space debris, you can figure out GTM for anything. The principles remain the same: survive long enough to learn what works, stay flexible enough to pivot when opportunities emerge, and be honest enough about uncertainty to avoid premature optimization.
Sometimes the most sophisticated strategy is admitting you don’t know—and building so you can find out.
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