A field pilot is often the difference between a promising prototype and a purchase order. It is also where young hardware companies lose months: in legal review, in insurance questions, in waiting for site access, and on day one, when something small goes wrong in front of the people who will decide whether to buy.
This guide sets out the steps from the host’s side of the table, and how our Texas Proving Ground is designed to shorten them. It is general guidance for founders. It is not a promise of any pilot, host or result.
Step 1. Decide what the pilot must prove
Start with the number the host cares about: energy saved, uptime, maintenance hours, water recovered, a failure caught early. Agree how it will be measured, what the baseline is and over what period. Write the success criteria down before the equipment arrives.
If a pilot succeeds and nobody agreed what success meant, it was a demo.
Measure the baseline yourself, at the host’s site, before you install anything. A result compared with a datasheet or an industry average is easy to dispute. A result compared with the host’s own equipment, measured the same way, is hard to argue with.
Keep the scope small enough to finish. One site, one configuration and one or two metrics will teach you more than an ambitious plan that stalls halfway.
Step 2. Choose a host that looks like your buyer
The best host is a site that looks like the customers you want next. Our host types include electric cooperatives, municipal utilities, water districts, farms and agricultural cooperatives, independent test labs, universities, well sites, mines and mineral processing plants, and industrial and cooling sites.
Meet the people who would eventually buy, such as operations, engineering and procurement, not only the team that runs innovation. Ask early what a successful pilot would lead to. And remember that every host chooses which pilots to accept.
Ask, too, how the host buys. Many utilities and plants buy on annual budget cycles, through approved vendor lists and formal procurement. If a successful pilot ends a month after the budget closes, your first order may wait a year. Time the pilot so the result lands when a decision can be made.
Step 3. Know what the host will ask for
Before any equipment goes in, a host will want answers in five areas. Have them ready before the first meeting, ideally in a short pilot packet the host’s engineering, safety and legal teams can each read in a few minutes:
- Safety. Your installation and operating procedures, site training for your people, who is responsible on site, and how the equipment is shut down. Expect the host to set its own site rules, and to be able to stop a pilot for safety at any time.
- Insurance. Coverage you carry yourself, with the host named as an additional insured. Talk to a broker early; certificates and endorsements take longer than founders expect.
- Data. What your equipment records, where the data goes, and what the host receives and may use. Under our program, you own your product, your intellectual property and your product data.
- Confidentiality. What each side may say publicly. Many hosts will not allow their name in a case study without written consent, so do not plan a press release around one.
- Removal. How and when your equipment comes out, how the site is restored and who pays for it.
If your equipment connects to the grid or touches a regulated process, add a sixth: approvals. Pilots that need utility or state approvals can take much longer. Find out which approvals apply before you promise anyone a start date.
Step 4. Put it on paper, once
Without a framework, every pilot is a negotiation from scratch, and a first-time host’s legal team may take months on a contract it has never seen. Under a master pilot agreement, the host has already accepted the core terms. Each pilot then uses a short schedule covering:
- Scope, location and equipment.
- Start date, duration and success criteria from Step 1.
- Costs and any host fee.
- Contacts on both sides, and how issues are escalated.
- Removal, or the path to a first purchase if the pilot succeeds.
Under our program, the host gets no equity and no exclusivity, and is never obliged to buy. Our funds are not parties to pilot agreements and do not guarantee any company.
Step 5. Budget honestly
Count everything: equipment, shipping, installation and commissioning, insurance, monitoring, travel, host fees, removal and a contingency for the thing that will go wrong. In the Texas Proving Ground, you pay your pilot costs; we pay to run the program.
Step 6. Be ready on day one
The first day sets the tone for the whole pilot. A short readiness checklist:
- Test the unit at your own facility before it ships, using the same configuration you will install.
- Have installation drawings and procedures approved by the host in advance.
- Bring spare parts and the tools to swap them.
- Confirm remote monitoring works before the truck leaves.
- Name a field engineer who is on site for commissioning and reachable after.
- Agree an incident plan: who calls whom, and how fast.
- Capture the baseline measurement before your equipment goes in.
Step 7. Run it like a customer is watching
Because one is. Send a short weekly report: what ran, what did not, and how the data compares with the success criteria. Tell the host about problems before they find them. Log every change to the configuration, so the final result means what it says.
Step 8. Close it out
End with a written report against the criteria you agreed in Step 1. Then either remove the equipment as the schedule says, or open the conversation about a first purchase. If a pilot succeeds, the host may negotiate a first purchase, and it is never obliged to buy. This is also the moment when a performance warranty backed by an insurer can help a buyer say yes.
Where first pilots usually stall
The failures we see most often are not technical. They are avoidable:
- Success defined too late. The criteria are argued about after the data is in, when nobody can agree.
- Paperwork left to the end. Insurance certificates or site approvals requested the week before installation.
- One person on everything. The chief executive is also the field engineer, the account manager and the author of the weekly report.
- Scope that grows. A second site or a new feature is added halfway through, and the original question never gets a clean answer.
- No plan for after. Nobody asked what a purchase would require, such as vendor registration, standards testing or a service plan, until the pilot was over.
If you are building hardware inside one of our verticals and a field pilot is your next step, tell us what you are building. We answer on fit within five business days.
Dark Ice Ventures · Oct 8, 2026
This note is for information only and is not an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any security or fund interest.
