The Secret to Selling What You’ve Built – Webinar by Laura and Sid
Hosted by: Laura Bernal Vergara and Sid Kathirvel
Date: Thursday, 3 September 2026 · 11:00 am to 12:00 pm BST
Location: Online, Google Meet
Booking via Luma
About the event
Your next customer is not your next examiner. They don’t need a fuller account of how you achieved the breakthrough. They need to know what it changes for them, and why that change is worth paying for.
You add another slide. You explain another feature. You leave another call without a commitment. As the pilots and funding conversations drag on, the question starts to shift from how to sell what you’ve built to how long you can afford to keep trying.
Scientific proof and a commercial proposition answer different questions. Showing that your technology works doesn’t establish whose problem it solves, what that problem costs them, or why they would pay to change it. Nor does it tell an investor why this could become a business worth backing.
Laura Bernal Vergara and I teamed up for this free deep tech sales webinar to address that gap. Our demand-side approach starts with what the buyer is trying to achieve, then works back to your proposition and first steps towards customers and investment. A reason to buy, not another explanation.
What you’ll learn
- Identify the progress your buyer is trying to make, so you can explain what they’re hiring your product to do rather than list its features.
- Separate the case for becoming a customer from the case for investing, without losing the commercial clarity both need.
- Draft a value proposition a non-specialist can understand and put it in front of a prospective buyer in the week ahead.
- Choose the first founder-led sales and go-to-market steps that put you in contact with people who have a reason to care.
- Map your first 90 days after securing investment and begin thinking through your route to exit.
Who it’s for
- You’re taking research out of a lab or PhD and need to turn its promise into a business someone will pay.
- You can explain your technology to a peer, but a prospective customer still can’t see why they would use it.
- You’re pursuing pilots or investment, yet conversations keep returning to what the technology does rather than what it changes.
- You suspect you’re answering the wrong buying question, but have never tested that with the people you hope will pay.
- You’ve spent months refining the product and pitch without securing the first commitments you need.
If your positioning is already clear, your message lands, you have recurring revenue-generating customers or you’ve secured the investment you were seeking, this webinar wasn’t designed for your stage.
About the speakers
Sid Kathirvel: I’m the Founder and Strategic Growth Partner at Unlock Growth, with 25+ years across brand strategy, growth marketing and e-commerce. I’m a Growth Mentor for Techscaler by CodeBase, Barclays Eagle Labs, Digital Boost and Edinburgh Innovations. Digital Boost named me Marketing Mentor of the Year 2024.
Laura Bernal Vergara: Laura is an independent consultant at Convergence Point UK, working in venture building and market research. She previously designed and ran the University of Edinburgh’s Venture Builder Incubator, helping PhD students and academics commercialise their research.