Haroon Inam is the CEO of DG Matrix, which just closed a $60M raise backed by ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to scale behind-the-meter power architecture for AI data centers. In this episode, he breaks down how a pre-scale startup wins deals measured in hundreds of megawatts, why channel partners became a balance sheet solution rather than just a distribution play, and the exact sequence he uses to move a nine-figure enterprise deal from disbelief to signed contract.

Topics Discussed:

Pivoting from fleet electrification to AI data center infrastructure after an inbound call from a major GPU manufacturer
Why utilities cannot solve AI data center power density and what "behind the meter" actually means for operators
Go-to-market structure: direct enterprise, EPC partnerships, and large conglomerate channel deals
The anatomy of a $50M to few-hundred-million dollar infrastructure deal
Using objection documentation as a structured closing motion
Bankability and insurability as enterprise sales blockers — and the white-label strategy to solve them
Managing 24/7 operations across shifts without burning the core team

Key GTM Insights:

Objection documentation is a closing system, not a soft skill. Most enterprise sales teams treat objection handling as something that happens in the room. Haroon runs it as a structured process: capture every objection, leave without reacting, return with methodical solutions. The deal follows the solved objections. This is particularly relevant when selling unproven technology into risk-averse infrastructure buyers who need to justify the decision internally. "My way of closing deals, Brett, is very simple. I close deals by objection handling. So when you listen to the objections from the customers, just note them down, don't freak out and come back and methodically solve those things in a solid fashion. And if there's a need, you'll get the order."
The most common enterprise objection isn't price — it's scale proof. When buyers see the product, the reaction is positive. The blocker is deployment history. Buyers want to know if a startup can reliably deliver at gigawatt scale when it has only deployed at megawatt scale. DG Matrix's answer is pedigree transfer: aerospace-grade power electronics for Boeing aircraft and military programs. When you lack field scale, you redirect to adjacent evidence of engineering rigor in equally high-stakes environments. "We might have deployed a couple of megawatts, but we're not there yet. So then the objection is how do we know you'll be able to scale? ...We have to show them the pedigree of our screening that we do in the supply chain."
Channel partners solve a balance sheet problem, not just a reach problem. The original GTM thesis was standard: go direct for enterprise, use channel for SMB. What surfaced in practice was that large buyers will not place nine-figure orders with a startup whose balance sheet can't absorb them — regardless of product quality. ABB and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are now investors, and the strategic value is that they can carry orders on their books while providing global deployment and service infrastructure. "A lot of large customers have large orders to give and we won't have a balance sheet that'll allow us to take an order like that, not in their eyes. So we then have to adjust where we find channel partners to carry the orders on their books."

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Topics DiscussedKey GTM Insights

The crawl-walk-run sequence DG Matrix uses to convert disbelieving enterprise buyers into nine-figure contracts | Haroon Inam