How to Explain a Technical Product Without Oversimplifying It

David Henstrom is chief executive of Unibio, a Danish company that makes protein by fermenting methane. He came to it after nearly 27 years building businesses inside Cargill. In our interview with David Henstrom of Unibio, published in March 2024, he explained what drew him to the company. "Traditional fermentation, like beer, uses a sugar source, which requires intensive land usage. The Unibio process uses a pristine source of carbon, which is methane or biomethane." That is a useful simplification. It names the feedstock, sets it against a comparison anyone can picture and gives a reason to care. It also leaves a question open, and the interviewer asked it. "Could you explain the source of the gas used in your processes, specifically whether it involves venting gas from natural sources?" Henstrom's answer split by site. "In our demonstration facility here in Denmark, we use 100% biogas." Then, "In other places, we'll use natural gas off the grid." The phrase "pristine source of carbon" was carrying a distinction that changes a buyer's conclusion, and it took the interviewer's question to bring the mechanism into the open. Henstrom was answering live, and he tied the split to "the area of the world we are in, the timing, and the stage of progression of the natural gas and biogas infrastructure."

A scientist and a procurement lead can hear the same accurate description of a fermentation process and leave with different levels of understanding. The scientist can infer the product properties, production logic and scaling implications. The procurement lead may still be unable to say what is being bought, what it replaces or why changing supplier is worth the effort. Unibio's earlier story had that gap. When the company came to us, it reached scientists and lost the investors, feed producers and partners who needed to understand the product, as our Unibio case study sets out. Technical communication becomes useful when it preserves the science and changes the route through it.

Expertise changes what feels obvious

Technical founders have spent years inside the mechanism. Process detail feels like the most honest place to begin, and important commercial implications can feel too obvious to state. Camerer, Loewenstein and Weber described a related problem as the curse of knowledge. In their experiments, better-informed people had difficulty predicting how less-informed people would judge the same situation. For a technical company the implication is practical. The author has to build transitions an expert no longer notices are missing.

Investors read the result as a signal about the company. In our interview with Jan Lozek of Future Energy Ventures, published in October 2024, Lozek put it bluntly. "If you don't get it, it's usually not a good technology or solution." In our interview with Danny Brown of MaC Venture Capital, published in August 2024, Brown described the founder his fund looks for. "They can delve into the complexities of their idea but express it simply." Each is describing his own fund's habit, and both read an unclear explanation as a weakness in the thing being explained.

Start with the reader's decision and vary the depth

The same product deserves different routes for different readers because the live decision changes. A feed producer considering a trial needs the application, specification, implementation and evidence that bear on that decision. An investor judging the technical moat needs more of the mechanism and scale-up logic. A regulator needs the evidence and definitions that belong to the applicable pathway. The useful order usually begins with the situation the reader recognises, then the constraint inside it, then the product and the change it creates. Our piece on technology and product stories sets out why the product usually leads. For a new category, a familiar comparison can open the route. Our piece on how climate-tech companies explain new categories follows that through DNAir, which reads environmental DNA (eDNA) from air.

A technical explanation then needs at least three depths. The first tells an informed non-specialist what the product is, who it is for and what changes. The second places the evidence beside the claims that need support. The third gives expert readers the mechanism, methods, specifications and limits they require for diligence. Those depths can sit on one website or across a deck and data room, and the claim stays the same at every depth. Progressive depth makes the explanation shorter for the commercial reader while keeping the technical route open.

Mechanism earns space when it answers a live question

Mechanism becomes valuable when the reader asks how a performance level is reached, why the approach is difficult to copy, what changes at scale, or where a safety or environmental property comes from. At that point the process answers a question the reader already has and can be paired with the evidence that supports it. Henstrom's feedstock answer arrived that way. The interviewer had a concern about where the gas came from, and the plant-by-plant answer met it. When the mechanism arrives earlier, the audience carries technical detail without knowing which judgement it should affect, and more detail feels like more complexity even when every sentence is accurate.

Keep every distinction that changes the conclusion

Simplification becomes damaging when it removes a boundary that changes the decision. The Unibio exchange shows how quietly that can happen. The phrase "methane or biomethane" is accurate, and a feed buyer with an emissions target reads it as one fact. The answer by site turns it into two, biogas at the Danish demonstration plant and grid natural gas elsewhere, depending on local infrastructure. A buyer comparing suppliers on carbon footprint needs that split, and an explanation that drops it has become shorter by becoming less true for that buyer. The fix keeps the plain sentence and adds the distinction beside it, stated by site, so the reader can apply it to the plant that would supply them.

The same boundaries recur across climate and science companies. Detection and abundance are different measurements. Pilot performance and commercial-scale performance sit at different stages. A modelled outcome and a measured outcome carry different weight, and a letter of intent carries a different commercial status from recognised revenue. Each pair can be collapsed into one friendly phrase, and each collapse changes what a careful reader would decide.

The language should preserve those differences. The IPCC's guidance note on uncertainty gives its authors calibrated terms for how confident a finding is, and the same discipline carries over to a product. Readers should be able to distinguish a firm result from an interpretation, an active test and a future possibility. A claim ladder makes that visible by separating what the evidence directly supports, what it suggests with stated limits, what the team is testing next and what could become possible if the next evidence holds. Proof should also sit near the doubt it answers. A performance claim belongs beside its test conditions, and a statement about commercial interest should distinguish a paid customer, a pilot, a memorandum and a pipeline. The deeper method can live one step away, with the evidence class visible where the claim first appears.

Brighter Future will not shorten an explanation by removing a distinction the evidence depends on, and we will not keep a line the evidence cannot yet carry. We wrote DNAir's speech for the final of a 2025 startup competition with its founders, and they kept every claim inside the evidence. Our DNAir case study records the work.

Test the playback for lost distinctions

Give the explanation to an intelligent reader outside the field and ask them to play it back in their own words. Most teams check whether the reader understood. The more useful check is narrower. Lay the playback beside the original and look for any distinction that changes the decision and has dropped out on the way, a stage, a measurement type, a commercial status or a condition that applies at one site and not another. If a reader repeats that Unibio runs on a pristine source of carbon and stops there, the plant-by-plant answer has gone, and that reader will carry a conclusion into the next meeting that the evidence does not support. Where a distinction drops out, the transition before it is missing, and that is the place to rewrite.

When a team needs one explanation that holds for its scientists and its buyers, our science communication work produces the explainer, the diagrams and the evidence notes from the team's own material.

Sources and further reading

• David Henstrom, Unibio, founder interview
• Unibio case study
• Jan Lozek, Future Energy Ventures, investor interview
• Danny Brown, MaC Venture Capital, investor interview
• DNAir case study
• The Curse of Knowledge in Economic Settings, An Experimental Analysis, Camerer, Loewenstein and Weber, Journal of Political Economy, 1989
• Guidance Note on Consistent Treatment of Uncertainties, IPCC, 2010