An enterprise wedge can buy the time needed to find the product

Start with the buyer you can reach

The Doopoll story, published August 18, 2020, begins with a four-day MVP that was not ready for a polished launch. The team took it to a coworking space, invited people into a room during lunch, and watched them use it. That is a better first loop than polishing a funnel in private.

The issue then describes two early commercial paths: smaller customers paying roughly £40–£120 and enterprise customers paying around £10K. Marc Thomas, Doopoll’s CEO, said the team had more experience selling services, so the enterprise motion was more natural while the proposition was still taking shape.

Revenue can fund product clarity

The source says Doopoll secured £5K–£10K enterprise contracts through cold email and meetings while the team worked through mistakes: positioning around multilingual support when customers cared more about easy setup, paid acquisition on an unoptimized funnel, and a free-trial model that later changed to freemium.

This is the useful boundary. An enterprise wedge is not permission to ignore the small customer. It is a way to buy enough time and customer contact to understand what the product should become. The contract must create learning, not just revenue.

Do not let the wedge become the whole market

A high-value contract can distort the roadmap. The buyer may pay for custom work, a service layer, or a promise that the eventual product cannot support. Keep a separate ledger: what did this customer pay for, what did the team learn, and what would still matter if the customer disappeared?

The Doopoll example is useful because the source includes what did not work. The first proposition, the paid funnel and the free-trial model were all revisable. Treat the first revenue as evidence about a job, not proof that the current packaging is permanent.

The wedge review

Ask:

1. Which reachable buyer has an expensive version of the problem?
2. What can this customer teach us that a smaller sale cannot?
3. Which contract work is reusable product learning and which is service debt?
4. What would make us change the proposition or business model?
5. When do we test the product with the customer we ultimately want?

Sources and original research

• Original First 1000 source: 📊Doopoll, August 18, 2020

Adapted from my original Doopoll issue featuring Marc Thomas, published August 18, 2020. The four-day MVP, live customer observation, historical price bands, enterprise contracts and first-1,000 timeline are source-reported; no current Doopoll metrics or universal enterprise-first rule is claimed.