Occam's razor: The CEO was the sales team (good!) but wasn't able to do early stage enterprise sales It's _very_ easy for a manager at an enterprise to pay $50

Occam's razor: The CEO was the sales team (good!) but wasn't able to do early stage enterprise sales It's _very_ easy for a manager at an enterprise to pay $50K+ for some software / consulting project, and often not too hard to go to $200K+ (may take an extra signoff). So not being able to get a paying design partner rings alarm bells about the perceived value and request for fair compensation. Whether that's the product or seller, both are on the CEO before any code needs to get written. Enterprise is 'cushy' enough that it's great for startups, but it takes an enterprise team, enterprise advisors, or an idea+market so amazing that it succeeds without those. My bet in this case is advisors, esp. for CEO, could have helped turn these earnest efforts into at least a company running on enough revenue they could fold on their terms vs no runway. (It took me years to start thinking this way.)