Scaling a deep-tech company is an exercise in constant trade-offs. Should you focus on entering a new market, hiring talent, preparing for your next funding round or strengthening your regulatory capabilities?
There is rarely a single right answer. But one challenge often goes unnoticed: founders and the investors, corporations, mentors and policymakers around them do not always agree on what matters most.
That is one of the clearest insights developed by IESE Business School’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center as part of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Scaling Club’s Challenge Roadmaps, a series of reports examining ten common scaling challenges, from go-to-market strategy and fundraising to partnerships, talent and regulation. Across all of them, a consistent pattern appears: the greatest obstacles are not always operational. They often stem from different perspectives on what deserves attention.
1. Founders and stakeholders do not always look at the market through the same lens
For founders, go-to-market decisions often revolve around finding the right customers, sharpening the value proposition and building an effective sales engine.
Investors, corporate partners, mentors and policymakers tend to look further ahead. They place greater emphasis on competitive positioning, business-model resilience, production scalability and using performance metrics to guide decisions. ¹
A similar pattern appears during fundraising. While founders often focus on demonstrating the impact of their technology and preparing for future investment rounds, investors place greater weight on evidence such as customer acquisition costs, retention, team complementarity and company performance. ²
When scaleups seek a lead investor, another difference emerges. Companies tend to emphasize industry awards, future funding strategy, technology impact and transparent documentation, while stakeholders place greater importance on aligning expectations between founders and investors. ³
Neither perspective is wrong. They simply reflect different ways of assessing whether a company is ready to scale.
2. Boards can contribute more than founders sometimes expect
Many founders see boards primarily as a source of strategic advice, introductions and fundraising support.
Stakeholders expect boards to play a broader role. Beyond opening doors, they value independent guidance, support in identifying market trends, investor engagement and even contributions to intellectual-property strategy. ⁴
The question is not whether a company has a board, but whether it is making full use of the expertise that board members can bring.
3. Strong partnerships depend on governance as much as access
Partnerships are often viewed as opportunities to access customers, funding or new markets.
The roadmaps suggest that long-term success depends just as much on how those partnerships are managed. Stakeholders consistently assign greater importance to governance mechanisms such as joint steering committees, regular partnership reviews, transparent investment terms and structured knowledge sharing. ⁵
The same applies to European and institutional partnerships, where stakeholders see greater value in making use of EU funding instruments, advisory services, mobility programmes, EU-funded training and knowledge-exchange programmes than many scaleups currently do. ⁶
In ecosystem-building efforts, one of the clearest gaps concerns financial tools for engaging investors, which stakeholders rate more highly than companies do. ⁷
Building relationships is only the first step. Sustaining them requires deliberate structures and processes.
4. Organizational growth demands as much attention as business growth
Scaling changes what companies need from their people.
Stakeholders consistently place greater emphasis on career development, dual career paths, employee engagement, cultural adoption and reward programs than founders tend to do. ⁸
The same pattern emerges in diversity and inclusion. Investors and other stakeholders attach greater importance to diverse boards, diversity audits, feedback systems for inclusivity, the adaptation of diversity strategies and unconscious-bias training. ⁹
These are not simply HR initiatives. They become increasingly important as organizations grow in size and complexity.
5. Regulation is more than a compliance exercise
Many founders naturally focus on meeting regulatory requirements as they enter new markets.
Stakeholders tend to view regulation more strategically. They emphasize building legal capabilities, data protection, partnerships with public agencies, access to compliance-related grants, public-funding applications and public-funding networks. ¹⁰
In other words, regulatory capability is not simply about avoiding problems. It can become a source of competitive advantage.
6. Alignment matters more than agreement
Perhaps the most important lesson from the Challenge Roadmaps is not that one group has better priorities than another.
Founders and stakeholders evaluate scaling through different lenses because they play different roles in the company’s growth. Misalignment is therefore not necessarily a sign that someone is wrong. It is a signal that expectations may need to be discussed more openly.
The roadmaps provide a practical framework for doing exactly that. By helping companies compare their own priorities with those of investors, corporations, mentors and policymakers, they make these differences visible and therefore easier to address. ¹¹
Scaling will always involve difficult decisions. But companies that understand where perspectives diverge are often better equipped to have productive conversations, align expectations and make stronger decisions as they grow.
Author: David Ricardo Gonzales, Research Assistant at IESE’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center.