You can’t build the future like you build an app
At first glance, all tech startups can seem alike. They're ambitious, innovative, and often chasing a big market opportunity. But beneath the surface, there are profound differences between what most people think of as “tech startups” and what we call Tough Tech.
Tough Tech companies don’t fit the typical startup mold. They aren’t built in a dorm room, launched on a cloud platform, or grown through rapid A/B testing. They originate in labs, require years of research and development, and aim to solve the kinds of problems software alone can’t touch — like climate change, food system resilience, next-gen therapeutics, and sourcing the critical rare-earth minerals that power our economy.
At The Engine, we’ve worked with hundreds of startups who are building technologies that will reshape industries, create new markets, and redefine how we live on this planet. And through that work, we’ve learned how important it is to distinguish between digital startups and Tough Tech ventures. This is not to diminish SaaS companies and app developers in any way, but instead to draw attention to the unique challenges Tough Tech ventures face in de-risking and scaling their transformative solutions.
What is Tough Tech — and what is it not?
Tough Tech is transformational technology that solves the world’s most important challenges through the convergence of breakthrough science, engineering, and entrepreneurship.
While digital startups often focus on improving existing systems — streamlining logistics, automating workflows, optimizing UX — Tough Tech companies are commercializing entirely new science and engineering breakthroughs. These are technologies that haven't been brought to market before, often requiring new manufacturing methods, regulatory frameworks, or supply chains to exist at all.
That means they operate on different timelines, face different risks, and demand different types of capital. A B2B SaaS startup might show traction in six months; a Tough Tech company may need six years to reach a pilot. Yet the scale and depth of their potential impact — in energy, health, security, and more — can bring disproportionately positive impact.
Here’s how the two compare at a glance:
| Tough Tech is not: | Tough Tech is: |
|---|---|
| Laptop-to-market in months | Lab-to-market in 5–10+ years |
| Built on existing tech, mostly software | Born from scientific and engineering breakthroughs |
| Incremental improvements to business models or UX | Entirely novel technologies that reshape industries and create new markets |
| ROI within 3-5 years | Profit horizons of 10–20 years |
| Low upfront costs and limited infrastructure needs | High upfront costs, demanding access to specialized labs and fabrication equipment |
| Easily MVP’d and tested | Technically risky and often not testable without major investment |
| Growth-first | Impact-first: focused on climate, health, infrastructure and national resilience |
What this means for builders and backers
Many of the benchmarks used in traditional tech companies aren’t appropriate for Tough Tech. Speed to MVP, short-term traction, capital efficiency and other indicators miss the bigger picture. You can’t accelerate fundamental science the same way you can a digital product, and you can’t expect a new category of climate technology to scale on a SaaS timeline.
Instead, these ventures need different kinds of support: longer timelines, deeper capital, flexible risk tolerance, and cross-sector collaboration. They also need an ecosystem that understands the journey from lab to market — because that journey is complex, nonlinear, and critical to our collective future.
Traditional venture capital comes in to support startups when they believe that there is a product that will deliver a return on their investment in 3-5 years. Tough Tech entrepreneurs need support earlier than that: when it’s still risky and unknown, when there isn't yet a market, there isn't yet a customer, but there is a technology that could change the world. They also need more patient capital, since the exit horizon is further out.
At The Engine, we want to support Tough Tech companies and the ecosystems that support them in the face of these dynamics.
The home for Tough Tech
The Engine was built by MIT with a single mission: to support and accelerate Tough Tech companies solving the world’s most challenging problems, as they move from research breakthroughs to commercial impact. That means redefining success not only by how fast a company grows, but by the value and impact it creates for the benefit of us all.
Tough Tech isn’t about disruption for disruption’s sake. It’s about building what the world actually needs — even if it takes a decade or more to get there. That’s not just a different type of startup. It’s a different type of commitment. And we believe it’s one worth making.
