Crossing the POC Valley - by Trista Li - Deploy 95

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Crossing the POC Valley<br>Part 6: the three timelines that determine whether you make it

Trista Li<br>May 26, 2026

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This is the final part of a six-part series on selling technology with a physical footprint into legacy industries. Part 1 introduced the POC Valley. Part 2 covered the qualification test before committing. Part 3 discussed navigating through. Part 4 examined the POC economics. Part 5 unpacked pricing architecture.<br>I’ve spent five parts writing about what happens inside the valley. One question kept circling: What does it actually look like when a company crosses? To close the series, I talked to Eric Klein.<br>Eric Klein spent twenty years shipping products at Apple, Bungie, Palm, Real Networks, Sun Microsystems, and Nokia before his engineers started coming to him to fund their companies. He helped co-found Lemnos, one of the few hardware-focused venture firms old enough to have watched companies go from bench prototype to production line. He now invests through his own early-stage venture fund and studio, Mucking with Gravity.

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The Three Timelines That Have to Align

To cross the POC Valley, three timelines must align: TRL timeline: How long until your technology is production-ready; Customer’s production timeline: When they need you to be integrated into their cycle; and Capital timeline: How long does your runway last until you see payment.<br>When these timelines don’t align, you get stuck burning capital without forward progress, or chasing revenue that pulls you off course. Eric calls it the onion problem; each layer operates on its own schedule.<br>“You’re trying to figure out through the POC what they need to see, and when, to keep either intermediate funding milestones going or to move it from a POC to LOI or an MOU or a full contract… And then overlaying that, what does the VC want to see to gate more money, in case the customer isn’t funding all of this development?”

The following sections show where each timeline breaks and what it costs.

1.You’re Probably at TRL 3

Founders overestimate their TRL by 2–3 levels. A working prototype isn’t a repeatable product.<br>"A lot of founders feel like their proof of concept is much closer to market readiness than it is from a technology perspective. They're like, oh my gosh, I'm already a 6 and getting to 8 is no problem."

They're usually at 3.<br>"The biggest misestimation is either that they believe their TRL is farther along than they are, or that their ability to go from one snowflake to ten reproducible units that do the same thing it's harder than it looks."

A snowflake unit proves the technology, but doesn’t prove you can do it again somewhere else. AI hardware companies typically take 3–7 years to reach mass production. Pure SaaS gets there in 3–6 months.

Source: NASA TRL scale; hardware timelines from Deploy 95 interviews (2025).<br>When your TRL is wrong, the whole deal timeline is wrong.<br>“Being honest and having third parties who are not friends and family really review where you are when you begin to cross the POC Valley is incredibly important.”

2. Their Cycle, Not Yours

Your customer’s production cycle is fixed. If your TRL timeline doesn’t fit their window, they move on.<br>If your technology integrates into your customer’s production process, your deployment window is tied to their build cycle. Different industries run on different schedules: warehouse and 3PL (6-15 months), auto Tier 1 suppliers (36-60 months), aerospace (48-96 months), and defence (96+ months).

Source: OEM development timelines from public reporting.<br>“If the TRL level is 3 or 4 but it’s on an eighteen-month cycle, you’ve got to climb from TRL 3 to TRL 7 or 8 in eighteen months. But if what you showed them is a snowflake, you’re at a disconnect from the very beginning.”

Founders chase the shorter cycle because they’re faster to revenue, and easier to show the VC progress. But if your TRL timeline is 36 months and the customer's cycle is 18, they'll move on before you're ready. The right customer is the one whose clock matches yours.

3. The Bridge Round You Didn’t Plan For

TRL optimism leads to undercapitalization. You’ll need a bridge round before payment arrives, and you’ll raise it from a weak position.<br>When TRL optimism carries into your fundraise (lower ask, shorter timeline), you end up needing a bridge before the product is ready. You’re raising again from a weak position, mid-valley, with nothing concrete to show.<br>“I’m in a call this week with a team where they showed me their initial hardware budget, and I said, I think you’re off by a significant digit and probably six to 12 months.”

VCs expect quarterly progress. In industrial AI, meaningful milestones arrive on the customer’s schedule. So founders chase NRE. It’s revenue, but it pulls engineering in multiple directions and your TRL stops advancing. You’re funded but stuck.<br>“In that window the only revenue...