I worked at a startup where the CEO and CTO burned literally millions of engineers' time running around in circles trying to get to 'yes' with potential leads (

I worked at a startup where the CEO and CTO burned literally millions of engineers' time running around in circles trying to get to 'yes' with potential leads (I'm an electrical engineer and this was an energy storage company). Leads would throw out lots of vague reasons why they couldn't say 'yes' (usually because they were too polite / guarded to say the real reason), CEO/CTO would promise to resolve all of them, and then send the engineering team on a wild goose chase of trying to develop new features or new products that didn't make any sense. But really, it was usually a regulatory problem and they couldn't buy the product even if it sprouted golden unicorns from its AC bus because their regulator just wouldn't authorize non-essential equipment. So I like this advice a lot. If someone is not going to buy the product I want to know as soon as possible. Your product direction shouldn't consist of the last 5 things potential leads told you while giving you a soft 'no', especially when you're building a product that takes months to years of testing and validation and failure analysis and certification before it can go to market.