Guest Post By Mark M.J. Scott President of Northern Pixels Inc.
In the deep tech sector, where innovation thrives on long development timelines, many founders overlook X / Twitter’s potential to amplify their brand and connect with key audiences, particularly investors. Despite the potential of social media, many deep tech founders underutilize it, missing out on opportunities to enhance their brand presence and commercialization efforts. For the remainder of this article, I will refer to Twitter by its newly adopted brand name, “X.”
The Challenge
Deep tech founders often struggle with marketing and commercialization, and their underperformance on X is a clear indication of this gap. Marketing is essential for startups, providing critical awareness and boosting valuations when executed well. Audience targeting is fundamental, and for deep tech founders, investors are a key audience due to lengthy product development cycles. Importantly, many tech investors use X as their primary social media platform, making visibility and presence there vital for success.
Unfortunately, X is filled with inactive accounts of founders who launched accounts but lost momentum. Many founder accounts that remain feature a piecemeal cadence of tedious predictable posts. This lack of founder engagement can hinder a startup’s ability to attract investment and build a stronger brand. However, there is a path to success that requires discipline and personality – startup founders, from my experience, have an abundance of both. The advice provided in this article can hopefully help channel founder energy in the right direction.
The Recommended Approach: Personality, Product & Proof (3P)
Personality
First and foremost, you are an individual with your own personality, life, family, and interests. Sharing posts on topics you are passionate about brings your brand to life. It could be anything from food, wine, travel, music, cars, bicycling, surfing… You will be surprised by the crossover of business, investors, media, partners, and the technology community that may share your personal passions. I start with personality because it is the easiest way to onboard founders to begin using X in a disciplined way—it’s fun.
A practical way to improve frequent a frequent post topic with personality. Most deep tech founders travel the world speaking at conferences. The typical X post is a low-quality photo of the founder at the podium—low effort and not engaging. Instead, consider posts about your experiences in the city connected to one or more of your passions: visiting a historical area, exploring a music store, or having a chance lunch with another founder discussing families and sports. Bringing humanity to your brand and mission will change how the world sees you and accelerate creating vital connections with investors, partners and clients.
Product
Connecting your product story, value proposition, and unique differentiators to your social strategy is crucial. Highlight the team making it happen—promote their genius, individual expertise, and how collaboration drives inspiration. Share the progress of your product, whether you are ahead or behind, and why. Even if you’re behind, it can be positioned as overcoming a larger opportunity with greater differentiation and stronger barriers to entry. Focus less on data and more on meaning. What does the achievement mean, and how will it impact existing or future clients? Don’t forget the ecosystem—most startup founders fail to shine here. Your product is part of a business ecosystem, including software, hardware, professional services, integration partners, and component suppliers. Get feedback from passionate ecosystem partners.
Proof of Product-Market Fit
This is a vital part of your strategy because, regardless of your stage, you will be looking for advocates that support your vision and see the value you will deliver. While your voice has authority, established media, thought leaders, and clients in your target industries have a much stronger impact when they passionately discuss your technology. Focus on key trends, events, and stories related to industry challenges your solution will help overcome. Highlight your participation as a thought leader on panels, sharing the context of why you were invited along with other esteemed guests. Showcase media exposure related to your solution and advocate/client support. Advocacy is the foundation of startup success—leveraging the established reputation of others is paramount to brand building and credibility. If you’re not working with prospective clients even before your commercial stage, you’re doing it wrong. Feature their videos, quotes, and frustrations about the challenges they face and their hopes of overcoming them. If your product is in the market, show how your solution resolves compelling challenges. Case studies and client advocacy can be achieved creatively, even with Global 500 brands that have firm rules against perceived endorsements — a seasoned commercial team will outline a plan to capture and leverage these established voices to propel your brand.
In Summary
Your X strategy needs to be connected to a larger brand and corporate strategy—don’t wing it. Social media is one component of a comprehensive strategy that accelerates you on a path to success. That acceleration happens when the message is synchronized and impactful. Disjointed messages that confuse add drag to your organization, slowing you down and making you less scalable. However, done right, you will build valuable awareness with target audiences, directly impacting your valuation.
About the author:
Mark M.J. Scott is President of Northern Pixels Inc., the world’s only marketing firm owned and operated by experienced deep tech / advanced tech startup marketing leaders, all of whom have successfully commercialized and exited via acquisition. Mark has played a leadership role in growing multiple deep tech successes, including a cryptography company acquired by AppDirect, an Optics company acquired by Toyota and a pioneering Enterprise Low Code Application Platform, TrueContext, acquired by Battery Ventures in 2024. Mark was recently hired by the Quebec, Canada Government’s Quantum Innovation Zone, $435M-funded, to devise a commercial strategy to bolster start-up success. Mark can be found on X / Twitter: https://x.com/MarkMJScott
