Essay

The One Big Customer Trap

Sam McAfee · Startup Patterns (Medium) Free Intermediate

Before you say yes to the custom features nobody else wants, this essay makes you sit with the real risk: one account that pays a lot can quietly take over your roadmap and turn you into its in-house vendor. McAfee tells the story of a company that let one customer reach 80 percent of revenue, bent the product to that customer's demands, and collapsed when the customer's funding dried up. It is a starting point for weighing when a big customer's asks are worth it and when they are a trap dressed as a win.

  • A single dominant customer can mask the fact that you do not yet have real product-market fit, so the revenue feels like validation when it is actually dependence.
  • Every custom request pulls capacity away from the product you meant to build; if you lose that one customer, you lose the revenue and the roadmap you traded away for it.
  • Keep some engineering capacity reserved for work that serves the whole market, not just your biggest account, and be wary of open-ended custom scopes.
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It answers 3 questions

  1. How do I set a roadmap when half my revenue comes from one big customer who keeps asking for custom features?
  2. My biggest customer is asking for a custom price and features nobody else wants. Do I say yes?
  3. How do I know if this enterprise deal is a real repeatable market or a one-off custom project that will trap me?

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