Topic map / Customer acquisition and sales
Name who can approve, pay, and stop the launch. A small yes is not a sales motion.
Quesma’s retrospective is one company. Interest looked strong, and customers still did not take the adoption steps. The company later sold the technology and continued with support from its investors. That account is a reason to separate enthusiasm from the path to a paid deployment. It is not proof that every enterprise buys the same way.
For this customer, write the user, the internal sponsor, the budget owner, the security reviewer, the legal reviewer, and the person responsible for rollout. Next to each name, write the action they have actually agreed to take, the resources they must supply, and what a successful pilot changes. These are diagnostic questions. A logo, a pilot, or a small paid action does not by itself prove budget, authority, or a repeatable sale.
Question. Who owns the customer’s approval and launch dependencies, and what progress must occur before a pilot expands?
I have already signed, paid or lost access if the commitment is no longer only a plan.
A postmortem on our $2.5 million database gateway · Jacek Migdał, Quesma
A founder’s account of raising $2.5 million, staying in pilots, splitting with a cofounder, and selling the technology. He argues for a concrete customer action, not only verbal interest. His account is not a base rate.