Huyen Vu on Scaling a Deep-Tech Business Across Borders

Deep-tech companies do not scale like ordinary businesses. The product is complex. The customer is technical. The cost of getting it wrong can be high.

For Huyen Vu, CEO and President of OPTOMAN Inc., international growth starts with a practical question. Can a company make its expertise easier to access without weakening the standards that made it valuable?

“In deep tech, you are not only scaling a product,” Vu says. “You are scaling confidence. Customers need to believe that the same technical standard will follow them across borders.”

OPTOMAN was founded in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2017 and manufactures custom IBS-coated laser optics for high-power and ultrafast laser systems. With a U.S. office in Folsom, California, the company is now bringing that specialist capability closer to customers in one of the world’s most active advanced technology markets.

Start with the Customer’s Risk

Many companies think about expansion in terms of territory. Where is the biggest market? Where are the most buyers? Where can sales grow fastest?

Those questions matter, but deep-tech customers are rarely buying on opportunity alone. They are buying to reduce risk.

A customer buying a specialist component may be trying to keep a project on schedule, prove a system can perform under real conditions, or avoid a failure that could take months to fix. The decision is technical, commercial, and emotional at the same time.

“You have to understand how your customer makes decisions,” Vu says. “Who needs to trust the product? Who owns the risk? Who needs the technical answer before the purchase can move forward? Scaling starts there.”

Make Distance Less Expensive

International expansion often looks like a sales move. For OPTOMAN, the U.S. office is also a support move.

Distance can make small problems more expensive. A customer may need to talk through performance requirements, testing conditions, or how a component will behave inside a specific system. When those conversations take too long, projects lose momentum.

“The U.S. market moves quickly, and customers expect their suppliers to move with them,” Vu says. “Having a local presence helps us support those customers more directly while giving them access to the same IBS-coated high-power optics OPTOMAN is known for worldwide.”

The goal is not to create a separate version of the business in the United States. OPTOMAN’s engineering and coating expertise remain rooted in Lithuania. The U.S. presence gives customers a closer route into that expertise.

Protect the Standard

Every market has its own rhythm. Some customers expect faster replies. Others need more documentation, earlier technical input, or closer project support.

A company should adapt to those expectations. But the core standard cannot become flexible.

“Every market has its own rhythm,” Vu says. “But the standard cannot change. If the quality changes from one region to another, you are not scaling. You are fragmenting.”

For OPTOMAN, consistency is part of the brand. Customers need to know that the same quality expectations apply whether the first conversation takes place in Europe or the United States.

Keep Technical Expertise Close

As companies grow, customer conversations can drift away from the technical teams. In simpler markets, that may work. In deep tech, it creates risk.

A standard proposal cannot always answer the question a customer really has. They may need to understand trade-offs, performance limits, or whether a specification should change before a component is made.

Vu believes the technical conversation has to stay close to the customer relationship.

“In deep tech, the customer relationship cannot be separated from the technical conversation,” he says. “The faster you bring the right expertise into the room, the faster you build trust.”

That does not mean every call needs a senior engineer. It means the sales, support, and technical teams need to work as one system, especially as the company expands across borders.

Turn Knowledge Into Process

In the early stages of a deep-tech company, expertise often sits with a small group of people. That can be a strength. It makes the business agile and gives customers direct access to the people who know the technology best.

Later, it can become a constraint.

If knowledge stays informal, growth becomes fragile. New teams take longer to onboard. Customer answers become inconsistent. Quality depends too much on who happens to be involved.

“Deep-tech companies often think their advantage is only in the science,” Vu says. “The science matters, but the process around the science matters too. If knowledge stays inside a few people’s heads, it becomes hard to scale.”

For OPTOMAN, scaling means putting structure around technical work without making it generic. Documentation, quality systems, and repeatable processes help the company apply specialist expertise across more customers and markets.

Stay Narrow Enough to Be Trusted

Growth often pushes specialist companies to broaden. New markets bring new requests. Customers ask for adjacent services. Competitors may look stronger because they offer more.

But in deep tech, focus can be the advantage. As McKinsey has noted, Europe’s deep-tech opportunity depends not only on scientific strength, but on turning specialist technologies into scalable businesses.

OPTOMAN’s position is built around custom IBS-coated laser optics. That clarity helps customers understand what the company is built to solve and where its expertise is strongest.

“Scaling internationally is not about becoming less specialized,” Vu says. “It is about bringing your specialization closer to the customers who need it most.”

Prove the Expertise Can Travel

OPTOMAN now has 6 IBS coating machines, 72 highly skilled employees, and a growing presence beyond Lithuania. Its stated vision is to become the number-one choice manufacturer of laser optics worldwide.

For Vu, that ambition is not only about capacity or visibility. It depends on whether the company can stay close to the science, the customer, and the standards behind the work.

Deep-tech growth is not just about entering new markets. It is about proving that expertise can travel.

OPTOMAN is betting that the next stage of international growth will belong to specialists who can cross borders without losing their edge.