If I could copy your “problem statement” and paste it into five other pitch decks without changing a word, you do not have a breakthrough case.

You have a market description.

And the EIC does not fund markets.

It funds structurally underserved gaps.

This distinction is subtle – and decisive.

What Actually Changes the Tone in Jury Discussions

When I sat in EIC jury rooms, industry size never decided the outcome.

We saw billion-euro TAMs every day.
We saw double-digit growth rates every day.

Those numbers did not differentiate anyone.

What shifted the discussion was something else entirely:

• A clearly demonstrated structural failure.
• A visible trade-off incumbents could not resolve.
• A mechanism that removed that trade-off.

If that logic was present, the room moved from:

“Interesting company.”

to

“This changes the rules.”

If it was not, the proposal remained incremental — regardless of market size.

Market Size Is Comfort. Structural Failure Is Conviction.

Many founders believe growth rates and macro trends prove breakthrough.

They prove relevance.

They do not prove structural necessity.

The unspoken evaluator question is always:

If this problem is so large, why has it not already been adequately solved?

“Because it’s complex” is not enough.
“Because solutions are inefficient” is not enough.

What convinces evaluators is structural logic such as:

• The current architecture makes X impossible.
• The regulatory framework locks incumbents into Y.
• The incentive structure prevents optimization.
• Physical or computational limits cap performance.

In other words:

The failure must be embedded in the system — not in the execution quality of competitors.

If incumbents simply “haven’t done it well,” your innovation is improvement.

If incumbents cannot solve it within their model, you may have breakthrough character.

Dissatisfaction vs. Structural Underservice

Many proposals confuse dissatisfaction with systemic failure.

“We are faster.”
“We are more accurate.”
“We use AI.”

That is positioning. It is not paradigm shift.

Breakthrough character appears when you demonstrate:

1. An unavoidable trade-off in current solutions (Accuracy vs. speed. Cost vs. performance. Scalability vs. precision.)
2. Why that trade-off cannot be resolved within the existing paradigm.
3. How your architecture removes that constraint at the root.

If you optimize within the same logic, you are incremental.

If you change the logic itself, you approach breakthrough.

The “Must Switch” Test

One implicit question always surfaces in high-level evaluation:

Would a rational user have to switch if this works as described?

Or is this simply “better if convenient”?

A breakthrough value proposition creates a must-switch dynamic because:

• It removes a structural constraint.
• It unlocks previously unattainable outcomes.
• It changes economic viability.
• It redistributes risk in a meaningful way.

If adoption is optional, the innovation is incremental.

If adoption makes the old approach irrational, the proposal becomes transformational.

This is the difference between “nice to have” and “structurally necessary.”

Causality Over Adjectives

Strong proposals rely on causal logic, not superlatives.

Not:

“This is a disruptive AI-driven platform.”

But:

“Because we replace static modelling with adaptive architecture, the system no longer depends on X, which eliminates Y failure mode, resulting in Z measurable outcome.”

That chain matters.

When causality is explicit, evaluators can defend a high score.

When it is vague, hesitation dominates.

And in a high-risk instrument, hesitation rarely resolves in your favor.

The Real Threshold

The EIC funds projects that combine:

Ambitious innovation + Structurally underserved need +Credible causal mechanism

If your “problem” reads like an industry overview, you are still describing the surface.

If your value proposition exposes a systemic blind spot that incumbents cannot close within their model — and you prove it with clear causal logic — you are approaching the breakthrough threshold.

If you want to critically test whether your value proposition demonstrates a structurally underserved need, or simply describes a large market, contact Silicon Capital Partners.