Ethan Walker

When we launched our B2B SaaS, we were bootstrapped and desperate for revenue. So when a massive 1,000-person enterprise reached out and offered us a $5,000/month contract in our third month, we felt like we had won the lottery.

But there was a catch: they would only sign if we built specific features for them. They needed a custom compliance module, a specific integration with their legacy database, and white-labeling. We agreed, thinking the money would fund the rest of our growth.

For the next six months, we essentially became their outsourced dev agency.

• We paused all marketing and sales.

• We ignored our smaller SMB customers (who started churning).

• We dedicated 90% of our engineering time to building features that only one company in the world cared about.

A few months ago, we were in talks with a mid-sized company for a $500/month contract. Their team was swamped, so they asked if we could extend our standard 14-day trial to 30 days. Wanting to close the deal, I said yes.

A month later, they still hadn't onboarded their team, and asked for another 30 days. I agreed again because the deal was "so close."

By the time the 60-day trial ended, we had spent over 15 hours in support calls helping them set up, built two custom CSV imports for them, and basically acted as their dedicated onboarding team for free.

When the trial finally expired, the VP told me they decided not to move forward. His reasoning was baffling: "Because you kept extending the trial, it felt like there was no urgency to actually roll it out to the team. We just kept putting it on the back burner."

When you re starting a company, everything feels important.

Building more features.

Posting every day.
Networking.
Fundraising.
Perfecting the landing page.
Watching competitors.
Going to events.
Trying every new growth channel.