How chasing one big client almost killed 18 months of innovation
“And we ended up almost becoming like an agency for them and not focusing on what the market needed.”
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And we ended up almost becoming like an agency for them and not focusing on what the market needed. So it was just like, keep them happy, and it will keep the lights on. And it was a real issue. We almost lost well, we lost probably a year and a half of innovation doing that. So is that sort of what you experienced as kind of, like, working towards, you know, a big corporate, you know, what their, you know, priorities were versus what you've maybe instinctively thought the market needed and then and then it not materializing and sort of losing the way slightly?
Yeah. Look. Absolutely. I think the the big challenge we face is we were trying to build a consumer proposition
About this clip
Matt Chandler discusses the dangerous trap of becoming too dependent on a large corporate client, effectively turning into their agency rather than building for the broader market. He explains how this client-pleasing approach cost his company a year and a half of valuable innovation time and caused them to lose focus on what the market actually needed.
Why this clip
This captures a common but rarely discussed founder mistake that many can relate to - the temptation to over-serve big clients at the expense of broader market needs.
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