Launching Refiant: Taking a $6m-Backed AI and Energy Venture From Raise to First Customers
Fractional
Strategy

Taking a $6m-backed AI and energy venture from a funded idea to a live business, as fractional brand, strategy and design support.

Introduction

Refiant had just closed $6m from some of the biggest names in US venture. The business existed on paper, and now it needed to exist in the market, fast enough to bring in its first customers. The sector sat at the meeting point of AI, energy and climate: new territory, genuinely exciting, and hard to explain simply. Getting that story right mattered as much to future employees as it did to customers and investors.

We were brought in to take Refiant from a funded idea to a working, credible business. Not just the product, the whole thing: vision, brand, product, and the strategy to sell it. We worked closely with CEO Viroshan, CPO Mat and CTO Sid.

Our Approach

We started by properly understanding the market. AI meets climate and energy is a young space, so before anything got built or written, we needed a real grip on the industry, the sector, and where Refiant fit in it.

From there, the work moved in a deliberate order. First, articulate the big vision, get the story right before spending a pound on building or branding it. Then build the product itself. Then take it outward, brand, PR, the full go-to-market push, aimed squarely at the calibre of customer Refiant needed, names like Intel, Apple and NASDAQ. Fractional support ran underneath all of it, and kept running well past launch.

Timeline

(01)

Vision & Messaging

Month one. Workshops, iteration, and getting the key messages landing, with customers and investors both, before anything else moved.

(02)

Brand & Launch, PR

Months two and three. Built and launched the brand, backed by a proper PR push to announce Refiant to the market.

(03)

MVP Build & Go-to-Market

From month three onwards, in parallel: building and launching the MVP, refining onboarding and the wider product experience, reworking the sales deck and sharpening the strategy as real customer conversations came in.

(04)

Onboarding & Pilot

Onboarded the first customers, worked through the pilot phase, and kept iterating based on what was actually happening in the market.

(05)

FractionalSupport

Continued seed investment.arded the first customers, worked through the pilot phase, and kept iterating based on what was actually happening in the market.

Key Outcomes

(01)

Vision forming

Refiant went from funded idea to a live business in market, brand, product and story, all in place.

(02)

Launch

A full public launch, giving Refiant a credible, understandable identity in a sector most people hadn't heard of yet.

(03)

Brand & PR

A full public launch, giving Refiant a credible, understandable identity in a sector most people hadn't heard of yet.

(04)

First Customers

The groundwork supported ongoing conversations around seed investment, building on the credibility established at launch.

(04)

Hiring the team

The groundwork supported ongoing conversations around seed investment, building on the credibility established at launch.

(05)

Investment Conversations Underway

The groundwork supported ongoing conversations around seed investment, building on the credibility established at launch.

What our clients said

“We went from a funded idea to a business we could actually point to: a story, a brand, a product, in months, not years. That pace changed how investors and customers saw us.”

Viroshan, CEO at Refiant

“Getting the story right before we built anything felt like a risk at the time. It wasn't. It's the reason people outside the company understood what we were doing before we'd even launched.”

Mat, CPO at Refiant

Impact

AI meeting climate and energy wasn't a story anyone could tell off the shelf. It needed proper storytelling, articulated clearly enough that customers, investors and future employees alike could understand exactly what Refiant does and why it matters.

The real impact wasn't just getting Refiant to market. It was working out what kind of experience the business actually needed to deliver something useful for its clients, and building the vision, brand and product around that, rather than the other way round.

Work with us

If you're building something ambitious in artificial intelligence or energy we'd love to support you, get in touch to see how we can help.

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