Startup I worked for is approached by a large multinational corporation for a demo project, something that if integrated with their logistics could bring us a ton of money and raise our exposure. The initial outlay from the multinational was only $50k but the size of the promised follow-on contract would really validate our out-sized Series A round that had been raised years before. About half of the engineers were pulled off of their normal work of gradually improving the product and the API to build this crash project. It was a really hard slog but the team pulled through and delivered something great, but it took around two months and the end product was very specifically tailored to that client and not generally useful for the rest of our customers.
Our team presented the final product, thinking we were about to kick the door down and be showered with a fat contract . . . as I understood it the rep from the multinational ended up not having any purchasing authority, he was an ambitious ladder-climber trying out a long shot with a little leftover budget he had. He had commissioned the whole project unsolicited from his managers and when he tried to skip up the chain with his genius plan he was shot down pretty hard and we never heard from him again. Meanwhile the normal work for the rest of our tiny but paying customers was stacking up and we had half the team demoralized and fatigued. Alas.
Startup I worked for is approached by a large multinational corporation for a demo project, something that if integrated with their logistics could bring us a ton of money and raise our exposure. The initial outlay from the multinational was only $50k but the size of the promised follow-on contract would really validate our out-sized Series A round that had been raised years before. About half of the engineers were pulled off of their normal work of gradually improving the product and the API to build this crash project. It was a really hard slog but the team pulled through and delivered something great, but it took around two months and the end product was very specifically tailored to that client and not generally useful for the rest of our customers.
Our team presented the final product, thinking we were about to kick the door down and be showered with a fat contract . . . as I understood it the rep from the multinational ended up not having any purchasing authority, he was an ambitious ladder-climber trying out a long shot with a little leftover budget he had. He had commissioned the whole project unsolicited from his managers and when he tried to skip up the chain with his genius plan he was shot down pretty hard and we never heard from him again. Meanwhile the normal work for the rest of our tiny but paying customers was stacking up and we had half the team demoralized and fatigued. Alas.