Welcome back to Deep Tech Catalyst! Today, I sit down with Matthew Williams, founder and CEO of IONATE. We explored his entrepreneurial journey in the energy field, from validating customer needs to securing capital for successive hardware milestones, navigating utility purchasing decisions, and preparing for commercial scale.
Conversation Highlights
00:45 - Introduction
02:30 - What industry experience reveals before you build
05:51 - They see the value. Why won’t they buy?
08:31 - Who actually buys after the pilot?
11:00 - From benchtop prototypes to Series A
13:49 - What makes an investor right for your stage?
17:17 - The interview question that reveals an engineer’s passion
19:27 - IONATE’s next chapter
About the Guest
Mechatronic engineer, systems design leader, author of numerous patents – Matthew has a unique insight on how to build the most efficient power systems. Driven to enable the energy transition at the infrastructure-level, he has been working on innovative power flow control technologies for the last decade. He is the founder and CEO of deep technology innovator, IONATE, where he and his team build the hardware-software backbone for smart grids.
BEYOND THE CONVERSATION
Strategic Insights from the Episode
One of the most interesting questions I took away from this conversation was how founders can position a company for where an industry is heading, even when customers may take years to adopt the product they are building.
Industrial markets have their own rhythms. It’s a pattern that comes up repeatedly in our interviews on Deep Tech Catalyst: engineering progress, customer priorities, funding requirements, and organizational capabilities evolve at different speeds.
Navigating these dynamics requires founders to make consequential decisions, often with incomplete information and limited resources.
Our discussion uncovered several interesting connections between understanding customer behavior, managing technical uncertainty, allocating capital, and assembling the right people around an ambitious engineering project.
I found myself reflecting on how seemingly ordinary decisions made early in a company’s development can have significant consequences for its ability to reach the market years later.
Below, I’ve collected my strategic notes from the conversation, sharing the lessons, observations, and questions I found most valuable for Deep Tech founders, investors, and operators.
Enjoy the read!
Value doesn’t mean they’ll buy.
Customers may recognize the potential of a technology without feeling any urgency to adopt it. For industrial buyers, replacing or modifying an existing system introduces operational uncertainty, particularly when that system is still performing adequately. A promising solution may therefore generate genuine interest without creating immediate purchasing demand. This distinction matters when interpreting early market validation. Positive feedback can confirm that a problem is understood, but it does not necessarily establish that customers are ready to invest in a solution. Founders need to understand what might change that calculation, whether it is growing operational pressure, shifting requirements, or the increasing limitations of existing infrastructure. In Deep Tech, anticipating a market need can be valuable, but timing remains a critical part of commercialization.
Industry experience can reveal problems before demand emerges.
