How do you get funding for a connected product?

A board needs to hear what the investment unlocks for the business. The technology case is the easy part and rarely the deciding one. Boards and CFOs are choosing between competing uses of capital, so the proposals that win name the business outcome, the first version that proves it, and how the spend is staged.

Boards fund business outcomes

At Very Technology, we spend a lot of time helping CTOs prepare for this conversation. Jessica Begley, Vice Chair of our board, has sat on both sides of it. Here is her framing of what someone looking for funding actually has to prove:

“For anyone, including CTOs, when they go to talk to the rest of their executive committees and their boards, the thing they actually need to prove is not the technology value, but the business value. What is the business going to get out of this investment?”

The room is rarely asking whether the platform will work. It is asking what the company gets if it does, and what it gives up by funding this instead of something else.

Capital is more expensive than it used to be

The bar has moved. As Jessica puts it, “we all know capital continues to get more expensive. So any CapEx project really needs to prove its worth and its value to a company.”

That shapes the shape of the ask. She continues: “companies, especially boards have to choose their path with where they’re making investments. You can’t spend on everything. So if the spend is going to go into this new technology, what is that going to unlock for us?”

A proposal that answers the unlock question in business terms competes well. A proposal that leads with architecture asks the board to do that translation themselves.

Find the first version that carries real value

The hardest approval is the first one, and the reason is structural. Jessica names it directly: “Zero to one is the hardest because you don’t have proven value yet.”

The way through is to make the first ask smaller and sharper. At Very, we work with you to identify the minimum features that still add business value, the ones that move a number your board already watches.

What we have seen in every company is that proving the value once changes what comes after it. As Jessica puts it, “once you prove your value, they’re willing to invest more.”

This is a different exercise from scoping an MVP by engineering effort. The question is which capabilities move a number the board already watches, and what the smallest build is that moves it.

Timeline belongs in the same conversation: when you need a proof of concept, when a first version has to exist, when a beta goes out, and when it launches. Each of those dates carries budget and expectation with it.

Phase the spend so each stage earns the next

The last piece is how the money is committed. Jessica describes how we structure it at Very:

“When we scope out, we love to provide a ROM, that rough order of magnitude, but then take that and break it into individual statements of work so that we can show the phased approach, so that we’re not just building and thinking how we’re going to build all of this at once. But how are we going to build sequentially so we continue to prove value and also continue to build off of momentum?”

A rough order of magnitude tells the board the size of the whole picture. Breaking it into sequenced statements of work means they approve a stage at a time, and each stage arrives with evidence from the one before it. That turns a single large decision into a series of smaller ones, which is a far easier thing to say yes to.

Common questions

What is a rough order of magnitude?

An early estimate of what a full program is likely to cost and how long it is likely to take, produced before detailed scoping. It gives the board the shape of the commitment without pretending to a precision nobody has yet.

How long should the first phase be?

Long enough to produce something the business can evaluate and short enough that the board sees a result before the next approval. In practice that usually means weeks to a few months, with a deliverable that demonstrates the business outcome rather than the technical foundation underneath it.

What if the board approves the first phase but not the roadmap?

That is the structure working as intended. The first phase is meant to earn the second. If it produces the result it promised, the conversation about what comes next starts from evidence instead of a forecast.

If you are building the case for a connected platform and want help shaping the first phase and the sequence behind it, we can work through it with you. Start a conversation