For B2B startups—or startups transitioning to B2B, as was my experience—this will undoubtedly happen: The Big Deal™️ will come along, and unfortunately, you wont close it because you are missing a certain feature or certification. Naturally, it will be tempting to build that feature or spend time and money to get certified.
But the trap of big deals is the concept that in a resource-constrained environment (like most startups), you shouldn't spend your resources building those features or going after that certification unless your business is predicated on big deals. If you're the type of SaaS company that makes most of its revenue from small deals, you need to take them into account when choosing how to prioritize projects—which seems obvious. But it isn’t always so obvious to deprioritize a feature you know a big, potential client wants.
If you consistently prioritize work that you believe will help you close big deals and neglect projects designed to help smaller customers use your product, you'll end up building a product that isn't working for your core audience.
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