Three days from now, thousands of European companies will finish their first energy audit. By January most of them will be holding a list of costed measures with no supplier attached to a single one.
That is a window, and someone's name will be on those measures by spring.
Before you decide whether it should be yours, answer three questions.
ABOUT YOUR BEST EUROPEAN PROSPECT, RIGHT NOW
1 Name the company. Not the sector. The legal entity.
2 Name the budget owner. Not the person who answers your emails.
3 Name the date that forces them to act. In their country, under their national law.
Most people get one. Some get two. If you got all three, you do not need me, and I mean that.
The first two are work. The third is not.
Naming the company and naming the person are research: public registers, consumption thresholds, annual reports, a few hours per account. Tedious and slow, but entirely within your control. If you could not answer them, that is a resourcing problem with a known solution.
The third question is where European pipelines actually die, and not because founders are careless. The answer is harder than it looks. A European directive obliges member states, not companies. Hungary and Romania have notified no transposing measures at all. On 1 October the Commission issued reasoned opinions to Greece, Spain, Italy and Malta for incomplete transposition. Germany's obligation stands regardless, because its national regime predates the recast.
So “the EU deadline is 11 October” is not an answer. It is the thing everyone selling into this market already believes, and several of them are about to find out it does not bind where they are selling.
And here is what the gap costs, in the order you usually feel it.
First, the sustainability lead loves it. They reply quickly and understand the technology faster than anyone else in the building. Six months later nothing has moved, because the person who signs has never heard your name.
Then the pilot goes well and produces a report. No purchase order follows, because nobody agreed at the start what would happen if it worked.
And then your board asks the question that has become the hardest one in climate tech: who has signed in Europe? Capital concentrated hard this year, with the largest rounds taking roughly 65% of all funding. “We have strong interest” does not survive that room.
You are not losing to better technology. You are losing to whoever was already in the room.
What closing that gap actually requires.
Forty or fifty specific companies above the threshold in one country, each verified rather than assumed. The job title that controls the budget at each. A message that references that company's own exposure rather than your product. That is roughly thirty hours of work and you could do it.
Then a reply from a procurement lead in Germany who has never heard of you. That one is not a work problem. It is a network problem, and more effort does not solve it.
The arithmetic nobody runs.
A senior commercial lead in Germany is a six-figure annual commitment, three months to recruit and six more to ramp. A year before you know whether the market responds at all. Another quarter of untargeted outreach costs you the quarter.
€4,000 is not a bet on me. It is what it costs to find out in six weeks what you would otherwise spend a year discovering.
THE MARKET-ENTRY SPRINT
Six weeks. I answer all three questions for your company, build the named account list, and write to those people personally under my name from Frankfurt. Three founding places at €4,000, then €6,500. Full scope at sustainmotion360.com/sprint
Reply with one line: what you sell, and which country. You get an answer within 24 hours, including a straight no if there is no fit.
Sunday is a date on a calendar. January is when someone's name goes on those measures. There is about a quarter between the two, and you do not need all of it. You need the first six weeks.
— André
Sources: Directive (EU) 2023/1791, Article 11 · European Commission, DG ENER, October 2026 infringements package, 1 October 2026, and June 2026 package, 4 June 2026 · Net Zero Insights, State of Climate Tech H1 2026, on funding concentration.