Concept

The commercialtranslation gap

The commercial translation gap is the distance between what you’ve built and what the market wants to buy. You describe the science, the technology and the capability. Buyers decide on the problem, the outcome and the proof.

What it costs

Every symptom is the same gap, showing up in a different room.

For frontier tech, that isn’t an inconvenience. It sets how much you raise, who you win and how long your runway lasts.

Why it happens

Founders are trained to communicate with precision, to peers, collaborators and engineers. Investors, customers and governments decide in a different language, and most frontier tech companies have nobody in-house who speaks both.

“The skills that produce great science are not the skills that produce commercial momentum.”

Chris Murphy, Founder, Murphy & Company

Built to Bought™

Built to Bought™ scores the gap on five dimensions and closes it in order.

Built

  1. 01 Problem
  2. 02 Buyer
  3. 03 Difference
  4. 04 Proof
  5. 05 Adoption

Bought

In practice

A$11.3M Seed round

Four stakeholders gave four answers to what the company did. Repositioned as computational materials infrastructure, one line then carried through investor materials and government engagement.

Read case study

Round closed Zero to a closed raise

A rotating detonation ramjet, and a story that began inside the engineering. Reframed as propulsion for the hypersonic era, from zero to a closed raise.

Read case study

$350M Network sale

Solar, wind, batteries, microgrids, tariffs and certificates, left for the customer to assemble. Turned into a proposition businesses could act on, ahead of the network sale.

Read case study

Common questions

Product-market fit asks whether your product solves a real problem at the right price for the right customer. The commercial translation gap asks whether the market can recognise that. You can have the fit and still be stuck in the gap: a strong product that keeps losing on the story.

Often, yes. The gap shows up first in fundraising, when investors can’t quickly see what you’re building, why it matters and why now. If your raise is stalling on the story rather than the science, the gap is already costing you.

The first shift often comes as soon as the story is rewritten: investor and sales conversations get cleaner. Getting the market to repeat it takes longer, because the story has to travel through decks, tenders, partners and new hires. That’s why Built to Bought™ re-scores every 90 days.

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Recognise the gap in your own business?

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