I’m going to tell you something from the other side… A few jobs ago, I worked for a struggling startup that was trying to pivot and we had one large customer t

I’m going to tell you something from the other side… A few jobs ago, I worked for a struggling startup that was trying to pivot and we had one large customer that kept the lights on. I was over the project that kept the lights on and survived every round of layoffs. The customer was hesitant about giving a small struggling startup money and made us put our code in escrow that they would have access to under certain conditions. The startup failed, they got the code and the company that acquired us for scraps added an addendum to my severance agreement that released me from my non compete and allowed me to have access to my work laptops and work for the client. A few years later I was the dev lead at another company and I found the perfect SaaS product for our needs. But the CTO wasn’t comfortable basing our entire project around a one man startup. I suggested an escrow agreement, the lawyers got involved and we signed the contract and we were now 80% of his business. I’m not suggesting you so an escrow. I am saying that many businesses aren’t going to trust a no name one person startup until you have some referenceable clients, provide an easy migration path if you go tits up and they know you aren’t a fly by night company. Personally, I’m in the camp of “no one ever got fired for buying $WellKnownIndustryStandardProduct” But I don’t have too much actionable advice when it comes to top of the funnel sales. I’m a “post sales architect” as part of my job. The next step below sales.