> I managed to cobble together a functional prototype of some analytics software we needed. It was fine until The key point is that you had something complete,

> I managed to cobble together a functional prototype of some analytics software we needed. It was fine until The key point is that you had something complete, it wasn't a vague idea. In some sense, your prototype was "a product". It wasn't adequate in many ways. I mention product because the "suits" are offering "I need someone to improve my product" terms while expecting "I need someone to build a product from my idea". There's a huge gap between "a decent social site" and the minimal facebook, and market research and bizdev don't address that gap.