# An enterprise wedge can buy the time needed to find the product www.first1000.co publishes a public search API over its indexed pages; the guide is at https://www.first1000.co/agent-access. Source: https://www.first1000.co/blog/enterprise-wedge-buys-learning Source observed: 2026-09-21T22:17:45.303Z Last checked: 2026-09-21T22:17:45.303+00:00 Indexed: 2026-09-21T22:20:25.653+00:00 --- # An enterprise wedge can buy the time needed to find the product **First 1000 field note · Updated September 21, 2026** **By Ali Abouelatta · Original issue featuring Marc Thomas, CEO of Doopoll: August 18, 2020** Your first buyer does not have to look like your final customer if the wedge helps you learn faster. ## Start with the buyer you can reach Our August 18, 2020 Doopoll story 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. The issue 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, making the enterprise motion more natural while the proposition was still forming. ## Revenue can fund product clarity The source says Doopoll secured **£5K–£10K enterprise contracts** through cold email and meetings while working 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. An enterprise wedge is not permission to ignore smaller customers. It can buy time and customer contact to clarify the product, but each contract must create learning rather than only revenue. ## Do not let the wedge become the whole market A high-value contract can distort the roadmap through custom work, a service layer, or a promise the eventual product cannot support. Keep a separate ledger: what did the customer pay for, what did we learn, and what would still matter if the customer disappeared? The Doopoll example includes what did not work. The first proposition, paid funnel, and free-trial model were all revisable. Treat first revenue as evidence about a job, not proof that current packaging is permanent. ## The wedge review 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? ## The takeaway The right enterprise wedge is a financing and learning mechanism. It buys time only when we separate reusable product insight from custom service work. ## Sources and original research - [Original First 1000 source: 📊Doopoll, August 18, 2020](https://first1000.substack.com/p/doopoll) Adapted from our 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; we make no current Doopoll metric or universal enterprise-first claim. Updated September 21, 2026. Based on original First 1000 reporting and the source above. --- [Read this page’s summary](https://www.first1000.co/api/public/v1/page-tldr?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.first1000.co%2Fblog%2Fenterprise-wedge-buys-learning&trace=t_dae5763819f4) ## Ask a follow-up about this page Need a more specific answer? Ask the exact question you have. It returns a fresh, cited answer from www.first1000.co’s knowledge base. No account or API key required. Open this URL with your own question, URL-encoded. Only q is required. No account or setup. `GET https://www.first1000.co/agent/faq?q={question}&trace=t_dae5763819f4` [Tool guide and examples](https://www.first1000.co/agent-access) · [OpenAPI](https://www.first1000.co/api/public/v1/openapi.json) · [Page TLDR form](https://www.first1000.co/agent-tools/page-tldr?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.first1000.co%2Fblog%2Fenterprise-wedge-buys-learning). Opening a form does not execute a tool.