How We Started Working With Fortune 10 Enterprises

Today, Reducto powers document processing pipelines for hundreds of companies across different stages. One of those is a Fortune 10 enterprise that we've always admired.

We wanted to share the behind the scenes of that process from start to finish for founders breaking into enterprise sales.

From launch to enterprise contract

We were part of the W24 YC batch and had heard from every founder that we should launch early and repeatedly.

At the same time, we knew that the world didn’t need yet another PDF processing tool with mediocre accuracy so we spent a lot of time before the batch started to get Reducto to a state where we were confident it was better than alternatives we’d tested. We first launched Reducto in the first few weeks of the batch and were fortunate to receive hundreds of sign ups after teams tried documents in our playground.

One of those sign ups was a Fortune 10 enterprise that we're fortunate to have as a customer today. Our background is in research and product though, not enterprise sales, so we wanted to share the behind the scenes for the sales process for other founders in our shoes.

In total this process took 154 days, and included 20+ hours of meetings and a few hundred emails. Here's an overview of what it looked like:

1/ Our Launch (1 week)

We launched the first version of Reducto in early February and received a form submission on our website from someone at the company a few days later.

2/ Initial Meetings and Evaluations (6 weeks)

We quickly learned that enterprises have no problem with using a lot of time. We started with a 30 minute call with Person 1, eventually got a call scheduled with Person 1 and 2, which eventually led to a call with Person 1-4.

This continued until we eventually got to a 7 hour in person meeting with 13 people from the enterprise.

These meetings ended up being very time consuming for us but over time we learned that it was helpful to narrow the scope of what we claimed to do so that the discussions were more directed. We also spent a lot of this time building a relationship with Person 1, who ended up championing the deal through the finish line.

3/ Corp Dev Distractions (3 weeks)

At some point they decided they would prefer to acquire us instead of just buying a license. We had a lot of interest in Reducto and didn’t want to exit early, but they insisted on just exploring options so we took the meetings regardless.

In retrospect the bigger issue with this was not that we decided to reject the offer, but rather that it confused our sales process and made it hard for us to sell the product because the champion now wanted us to join his team instead.

4/ Continued Evaluations (2 weeks)

After it was clear that Reducto was more accurate than other vendors, our main competitor became their internal team that was building similar tools.

This was tricky to navigate because the internal version of their product was built with their context and some of the people evaluating were completely incentivized to have the deal not go through.

5/ Procurement (4 weeks)

The procurement process started off as something that seemed simple but was actually quite painful. We had a month-long series of calls where we would make some concessions as part of negotiating the price, have procurement vocalize agreement on the call, and then get an email a few days later saying the price couldn't be approved (but seemingly the concessions were still assumed going forward).

There are other people who are way more qualified to tell you about navigating procurement but the only thing that we cannot emphasize enough is that you should make it feel like a collaborative process with your champion.

6/ Repeated Delays (4 weeks)

Perhaps the most annoying part of the process was that after they were confident in our product, had agreed on price, terms, and a deployment date, the company took a very long time to actually finalize the agreement. We had delays for approvals, team offsites, people going on vacation etc.

At various points it felt like the deal was going to fall through and our champion told us directly that the internal product we were competing against was improving over the course of this.

7/ Final Deployment (2 weeks)

The last important step was actually getting the product in their hands. Due to their security requirements we had to make a fully air-gapped deployment of Reducto, which meant spending time at the office and offering white glove support through every step.

Learnings

We've learned a lot through this process and our subsequent enterprise deals, but a few learnings that really resonated for us:

1/ Launch early, but launch when it actually solves a problem for your customers

We got really lucky with our launch and generally agree with the sentiment around launching early. At the same time, though, our launch would not have been successful if the product wasn't valuable in a specific way.

Our core focus from the beginning has been providing the most accurate outputs possible. Our first launch had a lot of room for improvement with the playground UI and similar details, but we think it's very important that our core offering fixed errors that the prospect was seeing with other vendors.

2/ It's not over until it's over (which is never)

There were 3 different points where we got some form of verbal yes and felt like we had the deal secured and in retrospect there were still so many stages to go. A signed contract just leads to you needing to deliver at onboarding, and even after onboarding you need to keep nurturing the relationship so that they'll renew.

3/ Make the relationships personal

It's a lot easier to navigate corporate bureaucracy when someone at the company is invested in making the deal happen, and they'll want to make the deal happen if they're excited about working with you.

Closing Thoughts

Every deal is a bound to be a bit different but we hope this post is helpful as a tangible example for other founders in a similar situation. We really enjoy working with other founders at Reducto and would love to meet you if we can ever be helpful!