Hardware’s Hard Truth: Why Climate Tech Startups Keep Missing Product Market Fit and How to Fix It

For founders, investors, and industry leaders, this article is both a cautionary tale and a practical roadmap: a way to finally break hardware’s product-market-fit (PMF) curse and build the next generation of climate tech companies that endure.

Another month, another Chapter 7 (liquidation). This time, EO Charging, a UK-based fleet EV charging company that was expanding into the U.S., building a team that included former Proterra employees.

For those of us who have spent our careers in the trenches of climate tech and electrification, watching promising hardware companies collapse is familiar. But is it inevitable?

I’ve built and marketed products inside companies like Ambient Corporation, Gridco Systems, and FreeWire Technologies - and watched the demise of many others. Time and again, the pattern repeats: brilliant engineering, experienced sales teams, massive capital expenditures, enthusiastic early customers - and yet no true product-market fit. These companies didn’t fail because the technology didn’t work.

That pattern is what prompted this exploration. Why is PMF so elusive for hardware startups? Why do so many promising companies collapse before they scale? And more importantly - what can the next generation of founders do differently?

This year-end retrospective examines the structural reasons hardware companies struggle with PMF and lays out a pragmatic framework for finding it. Anchored in Todd Jackson’s four-level PMF model (nascent → developing → strong → extreme) - this article argues that hardware founders must think far more like software founders: sell before you build, validate the customer’s burning pain, and iterate relentlessly on the persona, problem, promise, and product before scaling.

With perspectives from operators and advisors across the ecosystem - including CEOs of rising companies like Dragon Wings and Electric Era - this article explores what successful teams are getting right, from customer-driven design constraints to economically grounded business models.

Hardware startups can no longer afford to treat PMF as a “build it and they will come” exercise. Instead, they must adopt a SaaS-style obsession with one fundamental question:

What customer problem are we solving - and how urgently do they need it solved?

A Framework for PMF

Todd Jackson, a Partner at early-stage venture firm First Round Capital and former product leader at Dropbox, Twitter, Facebook, and Google, shared his PMF framework on Lenny’s Podcast - hosted by product and growth expert Lenny Rachitsky - that immediately hit home for me: A Framework for Finding Product-Market Fit.

Jackson said, “Finding product market fit is the single most important thing that your startup does in the first three years.” PMF isn’t binary, Jackson added - it’s a sequence of 4 progressive levels that build on each other. Each level has a primary focus (satisfaction, demand, efficiency) and benchmarks that indicate whether a company has truly reached it.

4 levels of PMF:

1. Nascent

Main focus: Satisfaction

Goal: Find the first 3-5 customers with a real, urgent problem and deliver a solution that truly satisfies them.

What that looks like:

• You’re still discovering who exactly your right customers are
• Satisfaction is most important - you want customers to feel that the product is indispensable
• Demand is manual and comes from your own network (not systematic outreach)

Benchmarks:

• <5 paying customers
• Non-repeatable sales process
• Each customer may need very different solutions
• You need to interview ~20 prospects to find one real early customer

Timeline: 12-18 months focused on finding the right problem + validated solution

2. Developing

Main focus: Demand growth

Goal: Grow from ~5 to ~25 customers and find repeatable demand channels

What that looks like:

• Demand becomes more systematic, not relying solely on network introductions
• You’re figuring out who buys and how they buy (messaging, channels, pricing)
• You might test cold outreach, content, events, partnerships

Benchmarks:

• Clear repeatable demand signals emerging (shorter sales cycles, customers recognizing the problem without heavy education, successful sales beyond the founder’s network, organic referrals, reduced pricing resistance, and predictable, though imperfect), conversion rates. At this stage, demand is no longer accidental - it is generated through repeatable channels
• Early metrics to monitor (e.g., sales conversion, customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback)

Timeline: Up to ~12 months (many teams stall here)

3. Strong

Main focus: Efficiency + demand

Goal: Reach ~25–100+ customers with scalable, repeatable growth and start optimizing overall efficiency

What that looks like:

• Leads start coming inbound (word-of-mouth, referrals, content traction)
• You know your core personas and their problem deeply
• Sales and onboarding become more efficient and predictable

Benchmarks:

• Clear repeatability in sales and marketing channels
• Customer acquisition starts costing proportionally less
• Strong retention and net revenue retention (NRR) trends

Timeline: ~2+ years, as scaling complexity increases

4. Extreme

Main focus: Satisfaction + demand + efficiency + expansion

Goal: Reach wide market demand (100+ customers) that your team can serve efficiently and repeatably - and start expanding your total addressable market (TAM)

What that looks like:

• You’ve unlocked satisfaction, demand, and efficiency at scale
• The company may become category-defining in its niche (brand momentum)
• Now focus can shift to new segments, products, or global expansion

Benchmarks:

• Strong brand recognition
• Very efficient growth economics
• Repeatable sales playbooks across various markets

Timeline: Total journey to extreme PMF is ~4-6 years in many B2B startups 

Expert Perspective: PMF in Climate & Energy

Insights from Jenya Kirshtein, Product Management Principal, EnergyPad

Product-market fit in climate and energy rarely looks like fast software traction. Long sales cycles, pilots, hardware constraints, and regulatory timelines distort early signals - making it easy for founders to misread progress.

According to Jenya Kirshtein, Product Management Principal at EnergyPad, early PMF starts with external validation of the problem, not just enthusiasm for a solution. Credible competitors raising capital, customers actively evaluating alternatives, or industry experts acknowledging the problem all indicate that a market exists - even before revenue appears.

“Before revenue, I look for external validation of the problem - not just excitement about the solution.”

She cautions founders against mistaking polite interest for traction. Real signal only shows up when customers commit effort or resources, such as scheduling follow-ups, agreeing to pilots, or paying something - anything - to move forward.

To validate demand, Kirshtein advises starting narrow, leveraging personal networks and industry relationships rather than broad outreach. Targeted trade shows can be especially high-leverage, enabling rapid customer conversations that test messaging and surface real pain points. Importantly, a fully built MVP is often unnecessary; prototypes or lightweight demos are usually sufficient early on.

“Anything short of a follow-up, a pilot, or payment is usually politeness, not real interest.”

Once early PMF signals appear, focus should shift to repeatability and differentiation. Early investments should formalize go-to-market processes, prioritize near-term product usability, and clarify why the company stands out. The moat doesn’t need to be permanent yet — but founders must be able to explain why customers choose them today, and how that advantage can grow over time.

Expert Perspective: From PMF to Productized Hardware

Insights from Michael Keer, Founder & Managing Partner, Product Realization Group

For hardware and energy companies, PMF alone does not guarantee success. According to Michael Keer, Founder & Managing Partner, Product Realization Group the teams that successfully move from prototype to productization are those that validate both PMF and technical feasibility before scaling execution. In capital-intensive energy systems, proving the business case first - then demonstrating the technology can reliably deliver - dramatically improves outcomes.

“Businesses that escape perpetual development validate product–market fit and technological feasibility before investing heavily in execution.”

Keer emphasizes that companies often try to accelerate too early. Formal product requirements (PRD) should only be locked once PMF is validated, with Design for Manufacturing (DFM) applied progressively across development phases - not treated as a late-stage handoff. Teams that rush this transition frequently experience schedule slippage, cost overruns, feature creep, and excessive engineering changes, all of which erode margins and momentum.

In complex, integrated systems - such as battery platforms or containerized solar solutions - supply chain strategy must be treated as an extension of the business, not an afterthought. Early identification of sourcing risk, proactive regulatory planning, and rigorous validation testing are essential, particularly given safety and compliance requirements. Clean, well-controlled product data becomes foundational as products move toward scale.

“For hardware companies with long sales cycles, the most trustworthy PMF signals come from customer behavior - when customers commit internal engineering or operational resources.”

When sales cycles are long, Keer looks beyond pipeline metrics for PMF validation. The most trustworthy signals come from customer behavior, such as customers committing internal engineering resources, adapting their operations, or engaging in test and beta systems. These actions indicate real demand - not just interest.

Ultimately, Keer notes, hardware companies lose the most time and margin during New Product Introduction (NPI) when requirements are unclear and execution becomes reactive. Teams that succeed align engineering, manufacturing, and go to market (GTM) around a clear market need, disciplined processes, and a single source of truth for product data - enabling a smoother transition from prototype to volume production.

Expert Perspective: PMF Signals in Complex, Multi-Stakeholder B2B Products

Insights from Alaine Portnoy, Sr. Manager, Content Marketing, PTC

In complex B2B products - especially those sold across engineering, operations, quality, and supply chain teams - PMF shows up less in metrics dashboards and more in customer behavior and internal advocacy. From her vantage point at Arena by PTC, Alaine Portnoy Sr. Manager, Content Marketing, points to a subtle but powerful shift: customers begin talking about how the product fits into their workflows without needing the vendor to explain it.

As PMF strengthens, customers don’t just renew - they engage. They volunteer for roadmap discussions, participate in case studies, and expand use cases organically. Even more telling is when multiple stakeholders across departments begin advocating for the platform internally. That cross-functional pull is a strong indicator the product is solving real, shared pain points - not just serving a single champion.

“When customers start discussing how the product fits into their workflows without us needing to explain its purpose, it’s a strong signal we’re delivering real value.”

Across personas, the pain points that create the strongest market pull tend to be systemic rather than feature-specific. In the product lifecycle management (PLM) / quality management system (QMS) space, siloed product information managed through spreadsheets continues to be one of the most persistent problems. For global teams and outsourced manufacturers, the lack of cross-functional workflows for bills of materials, engineering change, documentation, and quality management introduces risk into NPI, compliance, and supply chain resilience - risks that have only been amplified by recent disruptions such as tariffs and geopolitical instability.

To surface early PMF signals, Portnoy emphasizes tight alignment between content marketing, product, and sales. Competitive intelligence, customer feedback loops, search behavior, and sales conversations all serve as early indicators of emerging pain points. Monitoring shifts in interest - such as rising search volume around supply chain disruption or sustainable product development - helps teams spot where the market is moving before it fully shows up in pipeline data.

Content itself plays a role in PMF validation. Practical, educational resources that help customers learn how to simplify complex workflows - customer stories, best-practice articles, webinars, and expert panels - help distributed buying teams build shared understanding and consensus. Content that demonstrates real business impact, without excessive marketing gloss, supports both evaluation and internal alignment.

For early-stage companies navigating PMF with technical, multi-stakeholder audiences, Alaine’s advice is to stay sharply focused. Deeply understand your ideal customer profile and how your product fits into real workflows - but resist the urge to solve everything at once.

“Your product isn’t meant to solve all of your customers’ problems. Stay focused on your expertise and don’t fall victim to scope creep.”

CEO Perspective: Finding the Real Economic Buyer

Lessons from Electric Era

One of the most difficult - and defining - PMF inflection points for climate hardware companies is identifying the true economic buyer. Electric Era CEO & Founder Quincy Edmund Lee’s (former client) evolution from a consumer-focused EV charging experience to a retailer-centric platform offers a clear example of how PMF sharpens over time.

From the beginning, Electric Era believed that delivering an exceptional EV driver experience was essential - and that belief hasn’t changed. What did change was a deeper understanding of the durable economics of charging. As electricity prices rise and ultra-fast charging speeds become increasingly commoditized, long-term station profitability depends on more than charging margins alone. It depends on how EV charging integrates into broader retail economics and omnichannel customer engagement.

The insight that clarified PMF for Electric Era was recognizing that gas and convenience retailers are operating at the intersection of shrinking fuel demand, challenging charging economics, and intensifying competition for customer loyalty. In traditional fuel retail, the majority of profit already comes from in-store purchases, not fuel itself. EV charging - with its longer dwell times - amplifies that dynamic. This made it clear that retailers had an acute, monetizable problem: how to turn EV charging into incremental retail value.

That realization reshaped Electric Era’s product and business model. RetailEdge was designed to benefit both drivers and retailers, but with retail economics as the scaling lever. Design choices - from placing sleek charging kiosks prominently in the forecourt to extending loyalty and retail media programs into the parking lot (reminiscent of Volta) reflect a shift toward treating EV charging as part of a seamless shopper journey. AI followed the same principle. Rather than adding AI as a feature, Electric Era focused HaloAI on concrete use cases: driver assistance, faster issue resolution, and personalized engagement - all deeply integrated with vehicle, station, payment, and retailer data.

What retailers value most, the team learned, is not just data - but integration and orchestration across systems. Solutions that create new silos are viewed skeptically. Platforms that fit naturally into existing workflows and ecosystems earn trust and adoption.

For founders navigating early PMF, Electric Era’s experience highlights a common trap: confusing the end user with the economic buyer. Both matter, but they derive value differently. An exceptional end-user experience may be the foundation, but scalable PMF emerges when the economic buyer can clearly capture value - and justify the investment internally.

“For EV stations to be profitable long-term, they need to deliver more than gross margins on charging - they need to deliver retail value through a seamless shopper experience.”

Finally, Electric Era emphasizes the importance of building for market-driven demand rather than relying on incentives. By focusing on value creation first, incentives become accelerants - not crutches - allowing customers to scale faster while keeping the underlying economics sound.

CEO Perspective: Designing for Urgency, Not Curiosity

Lessons from Dragon Wings Solar Generators

One of the clearest signals of PMF in capital-intensive energy markets is whether a product is designed around customer urgency rather than technological possibility. For Ryan Wartena, PhD, CEO & Founder of Southern Beams Builds, Inc, the development of Dragon Wings solar generators illustrates how defining the right constraints upfront can accelerate PMF instead of slowing innovation.

From the outset, Dragon Wings was designed around practical, customer-driven targets: rapid deployment, mobility, diesel-competitive economics, and full system integration in a standard shipping container. These constraints weren’t arbitrary - they reflected how commercial & industrial (C&I) customers already procure and deploy power. In the 30 kW to 1 MW+ range, the biggest failure mode isn’t energy performance; it’s time. Interconnection delays, permitting, civil works, and multi-vendor integration routinely stretch projects into multi-year timelines, pushing customers back to diesel simply because it can be deployed quickly.

By making speed of deployment, mobility, and full integration non-negotiable, the Dragon Wings team created a clear PMF filter. If a solution couldn’t be delivered on a truck, deployed in hours (and really faster than that, added Wartena), and generate power immediately without site engineering, it didn’t solve the customer’s real problem - regardless of how elegant the technology was. That discipline enabled early validation: when customers saw a self-contained system that could scale modularly without redesign, the response wasn’t polite interest, but urgency.

Crucially, Dragon Wings was positioned as a direct alternative to diesel generators - a category customers already understand, budget for, and urgently need. Aligning with an existing category avoided the trap of inventing a new market before buyers were ready. Customers weren’t being asked to change how they buy power; they were offered a faster, cleaner, and lower-operating-cost way to deploy it.

Demand validation also surfaced in counterintuitive ways. Enthusiasm alone proved meaningless. The strongest signals came from customers already constrained by deployment timelines - those with budgets allocated for diesel rentals or temporary power who needed certainty in 30–60 days. These buyers weren’t purchasing technology; they were purchasing time certainty. Not over-engineering early further strengthened validation, allowing the team to put a credible system in front of customers quickly and learn what actually mattered. The feedback was consistent: reliability, deployment speed, and simplicity outweighed peak efficiency or bespoke configurations.

“In capital-intensive energy markets, the strongest demand signal isn’t enthusiasm - it’s urgency around deployment constraints.”

Mobility itself became a demand test. When customer conversations moved from single-site return on investment (ROI) to questions about how many locations a single system could serve over time, it became clear the product was being evaluated as an operational asset - not a one-off project. In complex energy markets, that shift is often the clearest indication that PMF is taking hold.

Ultimately, Dragon Wings’ early PMF trajectory was shaped by aligning product design with how customers already experience constraints - grid delays, permitting risk, fuel logistics, and downtime - and delivering a solution that fits inside those realities rather than fighting them.

When PMF Stalls: Revisit the 4 Ps

Todd Jackson’s diagnostic framework

When PMF isn’t progressing, Todd Jackson suggests revisiting four variables founders can actually change: Persona, Problem, Promise, and Product. PMF stalls not because teams lack effort, but because one of these elements is misaligned.

Persona
Define a real economic buyer, not a generic role. You should understand how this person is measured, what success looks like in their job, and whether they have the authority and budget to pay. This comes from direct, ongoing conversations with people - not assumptions.

Problem
Focus on problems customers are already trying to solve. The strongest signal isn’t enthusiasm, but behavior: follow-up meetings, requests for materials, introductions, pilots, or payment. Customers who have tried - and failed - to build a solution themselves are often the most motivated buyers.

Promise
Your value proposition must be clear and specific. Customers should quickly recognize themselves and their problem in your pitch and be able to repeat it back in their own words. If the promise needs heavy explanation, it’s not sharp enough.

Product
The product must credibly deliver on the promise at the right level of fidelity for your stage. Early on, that may be a prototype or demo - not a fully built system. Misalignment here often signals an earlier P needs revisiting.

Bottom line
PMF improves when your product clearly delivers on a promise that solves an urgent problem for a well-defined persona.

Conclusion: PMF Is About Urgency, Not Admiration

Across every interview, framework, and case study in this article, one theme emerges clearly: PMF is not about how impressive the technology is - it’s about how urgently customers need it.

Todd Jackson’s four-level PMF framework provides the scaffolding: satisfaction before demand, demand before efficiency, and efficiency before expansion. But the expert and CEO perspectives bring that framework to life in hardware-specific terms. Jenya Kirshtein reminds us that early PMF signals are behavioral, not verbal. Michael Keer shows how PMF must be validated before productization - not after. Alaine Portnoy highlights how real PMF in complex B2B products shows up as internal advocacy and workflow adoption, not just renewals.

Electric Era and Dragon Winds are still early, and turning early PMF into mainstream scale will come only with time and revenue. What’s notable today are the leading indicators - customer urgency, economic alignment, and repeatable demand - that suggest they are moving in the right direction.

The lesson for hardware founders is uncomfortable but liberating: PMF cannot be engineered into existence after the fact. It must be discovered early, tested ruthlessly, and validated through customer behavior long before scale. That means resisting premature optimization, narrowing the persona, anchoring to existing buying categories, and treating urgency - not enthusiasm - as the ultimate signal.

Climate tech doesn’t suffer from a lack of innovation. It suffers from a lack of discipline around who the product is really for, what problem it truly solves, and how much pain it removes.

The companies that endure won’t be the ones with the most ambitious visions. They’ll be the ones that listen hardest, move fastest toward real demand, and build exactly what customers are already trying to buy.