From Pilot to Production
How to structure physical AI pilots so they convert into scaled enterprise contracts: why pilots stall, a five-pillar framework, a four-phase engagement plan, and a pre-pilot checklist.
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What we do
Strategic advisory for frontier technology.
Where hardware, software, and real-world operations intersect, we help founders navigate the decisions that define their business.
We work at three levels
The company
Where to play, what to build first, and how to resource the roadmap. The foundational choices that set your trajectory for years.
The market
Understanding who buys, who deploys, who funds, and who holds veto power. In frontier markets, these are rarely the same stakeholder—and closing the deal requires aligning all of them.
The function
Specialist guidance across go-to-market, product, and technology, ensuring your pricing aligns with your pitch and your pitch reflects the reality of your product.
Practice areas
Company-level strategy sets the direction. Functional expertise carries it into the market.
Company-level strategy
- 1
Strategy and diagnostics
Apply structured diagnostics and sector frameworks to pressure-test your plan before committing capital, headcount, or manufacturing capacity.
- 2
Technology and scaling
Pressure-test architecture, manufacturing readiness, and field reliability to scale from pilot to fleet, sharpening trade-offs while your engineering leaders own the build.
- 3
Financial planning
Structure milestone planning, burn management, and hardware unit economics into a model that supports diligence and maximizes runway.
- 4
Team formation
Provide co-founder introductions, executive hires, and critical technical or commercial expertise when timing is decisive.
Functional expertise
- 1
Go-to-market and first customers
Identify your beachhead market, structure pilots designed to convert, and design repeatable sales motions suited to complex enterprise and industrial cycles.
- 2
Pricing and business models
Direct sales, Hardware-as-a-Service, outcome-based, or hybrid models. We propose pricing architectures that fund growth and withstand procurement scrutiny.
- 3
Product and AI deployment
Chart the path from prototype to reliable production, clarify build-versus-partner trade-offs, and shape product teams built for real-world deployment.
- 4
Partnerships and ecosystem
Shape your approach to OEMs, system integrators, and channel partners so agreements accelerate your distribution rather than stall it.
White papers
Longer-form thinking on taking frontier technology to market, written for founders and the operators who work alongside them.
Hardware-as-a-Service, Honestly
When HaaS genuinely unlocks unit economics, and when it merely shifts capex onto your balance sheet: the price floor, the capital spread, a worked example for one robot, and an eight-point decision framework.
Download the white paperFactory Floor Up, Not Model Down
Why cloud-first AI breaks down on the factory floor, and how to build physical AI from the controller up: a six-layer stack, sector architectures, dual-track safety, and reference deployment patterns.
Download the white paperHave a hypothesis worth testing?
It begins with an introductory conversation. No pitch, no obligations—just an objective assessment of where your company stands and the clearest levers to move forward.
Or email hello@hypothesisconsultancy.com