Chip vendors spend millions on FAE teams to help customers win design-ins, but cannot scale concept-level engineering support to every opportunity. Model T delivers productized concept sprints under the vendor's brand — turning MDF budgets into measurable demand creation.
The global semiconductor distribution market reached $206 billion in 2024, with demand creation representing approximately 32% of distributor business — over $65 billion in engineering-influenced revenue. Semiconductor vendors invest heavily in Field Application Engineer (FAE) teams to support customers through design-in cycles. But the math does not work at scale: a typical FAE covers 30-50 accounts, spending 2-4 hours per customer per month. For complex design-ins requiring concept-level architecture, schematic review, and prototype support, FAE bandwidth is structurally insufficient.
The result is a demand creation gap. Vendors have reference designs and evaluation boards, but customers — especially mid-size OEMs with 20-150 engineers — need more than a reference design. They need someone to adapt the reference to their specific application, select complementary components, design the PCB, and deliver a working concept. This is 40-80 hours of engineering work that FAE teams cannot absorb and customers cannot staff.
Marketing Development Funds (MDF) budgets exist precisely for this kind of demand creation — but vendors lack a productized service to deploy them. MDF is spent on trade show booths, webinars, and co-branded collateral, with limited measurable impact on design-in conversion. A productized concept engineering service, delivered under the vendor's brand, would convert MDF into direct design-in pipeline.
Model T operates as a white-label demand creation engine for semiconductor vendors. Instead of identifying prospects for Promwad directly, the pipeline identifies the vendor's customers who need concept-level engineering support to complete a design-in. Concepts are delivered under the vendor's brand — the FAE team presents the work as a vendor-provided service, strengthening the customer relationship and accelerating design-in closure.
The service is funded through existing MDF budgets or co-funded with distributor partners. Each concept sprint covers application-specific architecture based on the vendor's silicon, schematic and PCB concept design, firmware bring-up on the vendor's development tools, and a clear path to production — all delivered in 2-3 weeks by Promwad's team of 100+ engineers with multi-vendor silicon expertise.
A mid-size semiconductor vendor specializing in connectivity and edge processing SoCs piloted Model T as a white-label demand creation service. The vendor's FAE team had identified 15+ customer accounts with design-in opportunities that were stalling due to concept-level engineering gaps — customers that had evaluated the vendor's silicon but lacked internal capacity to move from evaluation board to application-specific design. Model T delivered concept sprints for three pilot accounts: an industrial IoT gateway, a video processing edge device, and a medical monitoring system. Each concept was branded as a vendor-provided engineering service, presented by the FAE team, and included application-specific schematics, BOM, firmware bring-up, and development timeline. Two of three pilot accounts moved to active development projects within 60 days.
Client identity changed. Methodology and outcomes are real.
Promwad engineers work under NDA and deliver all concept materials in the vendor's brand templates. The FAE team presents the concept to the customer as a vendor-provided engineering service. The customer interacts with the vendor's FAE as primary contact. Promwad operates as a transparent back-end resource. All IP created during the concept sprint is assigned to the vendor or customer per the agreed terms.
Yes. MDF-funded demand creation is the primary commercial model. Each concept sprint starts from €15,000, which is well within typical MDF allocation ranges for strategic accounts. The key difference from traditional MDF spend (events, webinars, collateral) is measurability: each sprint produces a specific design-in outcome that can be tracked to revenue.
Promwad's multi-vendor expertise is a feature, not a bug. Real customer designs often combine silicon from multiple vendors. A concept that faithfully addresses the customer's full system need — even if it includes non-sponsor silicon — builds trust and increases the probability of the vendor winning the primary design-in. Model T concept sprints maximize the sponsor vendor's silicon content while remaining technically honest.
Promwad is ISO 9001:2015 certified with 4.8/5 on Clutch across 500+ completed projects. The 18-step, 6-stage concept sprint process is standardized and repeatable. Each sprint is delivered by a cross-functional team drawn from 100+ engineers, with peer review gates at architecture, schematic, and documentation stages.