🤖 #19: Vivian's Deeptech Insider: Unlocking Your First Champions

Hello and welcome to #19 edition of the fortnightly Vivian’s Deeptech Insider.

In our last newsletter, we wrapped up the frameworks for Clarity discussing the Power of “No”. This issue, we shift our focus to the second of the 4Cs → Champions. As you navigate the complexities of deeptech & healthtech innovation, identifying and leveraging the right champions is essential for success:

1. Complexity → Clarity
   Founders need to translate complex technical problems into business challenges that resonate with non-technical stakeholders. I’ll help you clearly communicate the significance of your solution, making sure everyone understands the problem you’re solving and why it matters.

2. Clarity → Champions
   It’s about more than identifying a problem—it’s about pinpointing your early adopters, refining market positioning, and clearly articulating the problem and customer definition to showcase potential to investors.

3. Champions → Communication
   Deeptech products can be hard to explain. I’ll help translate technical milestones into core features, benefits, and customer impact, ensuring they’re clear and compelling to investors and customers alike.

4. Communication → Clients
   I’ll provide guidance on tracking progress, communicating growth metrics, and updating stakeholders on the product's evolution to demonstrate how scientific advancements translate into tangible value.

Deeptech/Healthtech startups often face unique challenges when it comes to identifying the right customers. Unlike traditional startups, you might find yourself in one of three situations:

1. Creating a new market (category creation).

2. Replacing an existing solution with a disruptive innovation.

3. Operating in highly technical fields where conveying the value of your product to non-technical stakeholders can be a real struggle.

Since Deeptech/Healthtech often innovates ahead of demand, identifying early adopters and positioning your product properly is critical. In this first edition, we’ll explore how to identify and engage your early adopters using Customer Discovery, User Personas, and the Early Adopter Blueprint. The insights you uncover through these frameworks will be essential for effectively marketing to the right audience.

Let’s dive in!

Framework #1: Customer Discovery (Jobs-to-Be-Done - JTBD)

Why It Matters:

Understanding the Jobs-to-Be-Done (JTBD) framework is crucial for identifying early adopters. Instead of simply asking, "Who is our customer?" JTBD shifts the focus to, "What job is our customer hiring our product to do?" This perspective helps uncover the real pain points and needs your product solves. While JTBD is widely used by Product Managers, I firmly believe it’s the founder’s responsibility to gain this clarity—because without it, it's impossible to gauge whether your startup truly has potential.

What You’ll Do:

1. Map the Jobs: Start by defining the primary jobs your target customers are using products to solve. Break down these jobs into:

   • Functional Jobs: What practical task are they trying to complete?

   • Emotional Jobs: How do they feel while completing this task? What emotional needs are they trying to fulfil?

   • Social Jobs: Is there a social or community aspect that the job ties into?

2. Evaluate the Fit: Ask yourself how your product solves these jobs better than existing solutions. Does your product make the job easier, faster, or more affordable? Does it reduce customer pain or frustration?

Example:

• Primary Job: A medical researcher needs to analyse large datasets for drug trials.

• Functional Job: Accurately process and analyse clinical data.

• Emotional Job: Reduce stress, save time, and gain confidence in research outcomes.

• Social Job: Share credible findings with peers and contribute to medical advancements.

• How Your Product Solves This Job: Our AI-powered data tool automates complex analysis with high accuracy, allowing researchers to focus on insights rather than manual data processing.

Framework #2: User Personas

Why It Matters:

User personas help you deepen your understanding of who your early adopters are. You’ll move beyond general demographics and dive into behavioural and psychographic factors to create rich, actionable profiles. The more you can build this persona profile, the more clarity you have to find the right audience and test your initial assumptions. When you’ve identified Champions and ready to scale to find more clients, you’ll be coming back to flesh the profile(s) out even further which

What You’ll Do:

1. Create Detailed Personas: Build profiles based on both behavioural data (e.g., what customers do) and psychographics (e.g., what drives their decisions).

2. Segment by Willingness to Adopt: Focus on personas who are early adopters, meaning they’re willing to take the leap on unproven technology.

3. Include Decision-Makers and End Users: Often, in Deeptech and Healthtech your decision-makers and end users will be different groups. It's important to capture both and understand how each group perceives the value of your solution.

Template for User Personas:

• Persona Name: (Give them a name or title)

• Demographics: Age, role, location, industry, etc.

• Psychographics: What are their values, goals, and motivations?

• Pain Points: What specific problems do they face that your solution can solve?

• Behaviours: What actions do they take related to your product or service? (e.g., research habits, tools they use, decision-making process).

• Buying Motivation: What would make them choose your solution over others?

• Decision-Maker or End User?: Are they the person making the purchase decision or using the product daily?

• Adoption Willingness: How ready are they to adopt a new solution?

Example Persona:

• Persona Name: Sarah, Clinical Researcher

• Demographics: 35 years old, PhD in biomedicine, works in R&D division at Novo Nordisk (pharmaceutical company).

• Psychographics: Values efficiency and accuracy; motivated by advancements in medical research.

• Pain Points: Struggles with slow and inaccurate data processing for clinical trials.

• Behaviors: Reads medical journals, attends industry conferences, and engages with research software.

• Buying Motivation: Needs a tool that accelerates data analysis without sacrificing precision.

• Decision-Maker or End User?: Decision-maker.

• Adoption Willingness: High—actively searching for a more reliable solution.

Framework #3: Early Adopter Blueprint

Why It Matters:

The Early Adopter Blueprint helps you identify customers who are already experiencing the pain your product addresses, actively searching for solutions, and are ready to make the leap into new technologies. Understanding these traits helps you focus your efforts on the right customers. While these are assumptions for now, the more clearly you define them in the template, the easier it will be to identify and validate them in later stages—something we’ll dive into in future newsletters.

What You’ll Do:

1. Identify Pain Points: Look for customers who are already feeling the pain of the problem you’re solving. They should be able to articulate the frustration they experience with current solutions.

2. Search for Active Seekers: These customers should be actively seeking solutions—whether through online searches, attending events, or networking with others in their field.

3. Evaluate Budget and Resources: Ensure that your early adopters have the budget and the resources to make a purchase or adopt your product early on.

Template for Early Adopter Blueprint:

• Pain Points: What are the specific frustrations or challenges your target customers are facing?

• Active Seeking: Are they actively looking for a solution, or is there an indication they’re open to new solutions?

• Budget: Do they have the budget to implement your product right away?

• Adoption Criteria: What would make them choose your product over others?

Example Early Adopter:

• Pain Points: Sarah is frustrated with slow, manual data analysis that delays research timelines and increases the risk of errors in clinical trials. She often spends hours cleaning and processing raw datasets, which takes time away from deeper research and insights. Existing tools are either too complex, require extensive training, or lack the accuracy she needs.

• Active Seeking: Sarah is actively looking for a better solution. She has attended recent medical AI conferences, engaged in discussions about data automation in research forums, and is exploring AI-powered analytics tools. She frequently searches for "AI in clinical research" and "automated data analysis for drug trials."

• Budget: Her R&D department has allocated funds for new technology solutions to improve research efficiency. She has approval authority for smaller purchases ($10-25k) and can influence larger budget decisions if a tool proves valuable.

• Adoption Criteria: She needs a solution that significantly speeds up data analysis without compromising accuracy. The tool must integrate smoothly with existing research workflows, require minimal onboarding, and be compliant with industry regulations (such as FDA and EMA guidelines).

By using these frameworks, you'll document all your assumptions, giving you clarity on how to identify your early adopters. When you test these assumptions later and some prove incorrect, you'll know exactly which template to adjust and how that impacts your offering. This process helps you understand their pain points and ensures your product is positioned to meet their most urgent needs.

Next steps (I’ll also save all the templates in my vault, so you can bookmark the page and return to it whenever you need):

• Complete the JTBD framework to uncover the jobs your customers need done.

• Create your User Personas based on the behaviours, motivations, and willingness to adopt your product.

• Use the Early Adopter Blueprint to identify and target customers who are ready to act.

Stay tuned for our next edition, where we’ll help you refine your messaging and positioning to speak directly to these early adopters and effectively communicate your product’s value.

To continued clarity and success,
Vivian

📞 Schedule a Call

Need help refining your early adopter strategy or building your customer personas? I’ve got you covered!

👉 Hit REPLY to this email and DM me "CHAMPION" to schedule a call with me.

Jobs with Deeptech investors:

• 2026 Summer Analysts - Bessemer Venture Partners (VC), New York, USA

• Senior Associate - Primary Venture Partners (VC), New York, USA

• Investment Principal - Partners Capital (VC), San Francisco, USA

• Investment Principal - M12 (CVC), San Francisco, USA

• MBA Intern - Flybridge (VC), New York, USA

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