Instead of guarding prototypes, build a library of high-fidelity, interactive demos and give sales and customer success teams free reign to show them to customers. This democratizes the feedback process, accelerates validation, and eliminates the engineering burden of creating one-off sales demos.

WWT proactively invites vendors to share early code under NDA. Their teams, backed by real-world customer experience, test the products rigorously, providing invaluable feedback for improvement. This elevates their role from a simple reseller to a strategic development partner for vendors.

Instead of pushing for quick, high-margin sales or meeting vendor quotas, Worldwide Technology focused on multi-year relationships and solving core business problems. This customer-first, long-game approach was foundational to their growth from a few hundred million to a multi-billion dollar giant.

While many focus on physical infrastructure like liquid cooling, CoreWeave's true differentiator is its proprietary software stack. This software manages the entire data center, from power to GPUs, using predictive analytics to gracefully handle component failures and maximize performance for customers' critical AI jobs.

Verkada sold its entire cloud platform not on a daily feature, but on the 'magic' of texting a live camera link. This simple action showcased the platform's modern capabilities in a way legacy systems couldn't, creating an unforgettable 'aha' moment that made the entire value proposition click for buyers.

A key competitive advantage wasn't just the user network, but the sophisticated internal tools built for the operations team. Investing early in a flexible, 'drag-and-drop' system for creating complex AI training tasks allowed them to pivot quickly and meet diverse client needs, a capability competitors lacked.

Moving from a science-focused research phase to building physical technology demonstrators is critical. The sooner a deep tech company does this, the faster it uncovers new real-world challenges, creates tangible proof for investors and customers, and fosters a culture of building, not just researching.

To win their first enterprise deal, Nexla's co-founder live-coded a solution to a specific data problem during the sales meeting with Instacart. This "magical moment" demonstrated their agility and technical depth in a way no slide deck could, immediately building trust and differentiating them from slower, incumbent processes.

The value of an AI router like OpenRouter is abstracting away the non-technical friction of adopting new models: new vendor setup, billing relationships, and data policy reviews. This deletes organizational "brain damage" and lets engineers test new models instantly.