A startup can have strong product-market fit and still be impossible for a large enterprise to buy from.
Greg Lawton, CEO and Co-Founder of Nodes & Links calls the missing condition company commercial fit: becoming a supplier that can pass security, legal, procurement and operational scrutiny.
In this EUVC episode, Greg draws on his experience running major defence programmes at BAE Systems and selling auditable AI for complex capital projects.
His lesson for technical founders is clear: enterprise revenue follows organisational milestones, not a successful product demonstration.
A wanted product can still be an unbuyable company
Complex organisations are built for stability. Their processes slow change because a poor supplier decision can create operational disruption, security vulnerabilities or legal exposure.
Product-market fit is therefore only the first hurdle. The company may also need suitable insurance, legal support, security credentials, recovery procedures and policies covering areas such as bribery and modern slavery. Depending on the customer, ISO or SOC certification may be required.
“Your company must look and be like the kind of company that these organisations do business with.”
Before forecasting enterprise revenue, ask:
Can we answer a security review with evidence?
Are our contracts, insurance and data policies ready for scrutiny?
Can we support the customer at the scale implied by the deal?
Which procurement requirement could stop us today?
User enthusiasm cannot compensate for a decisive “no” from security or procurement.
Track milestones before revenue
Greg divides the journey into three achievements: prove the product works, prove the company can be procured and prove the customer can deploy it successfully at scale.
“It’s not a revenue game. It’s a milestone attainment game.”
A customer may decide relatively early that it wants the capability. The remaining months can be spent navigating governance, security, legal review and procurement.
Instead of counting every pilot as expected revenue, track four stages:
Problem acceptance: Does the customer agree that the problem matters?
Capability acceptance: Do users and managers believe the product solves it?
Supplier acceptance: Can IT, security, legal and procurement approve the company?
Scale acceptance: Can the product move beyond one team?
A deal has not cleared a stage until the people responsible for it have agreed.
Map every necessary yes and possible no
Enterprise sales rarely depends on one buyer. Nodes & Links typically needs support from users, management, the budget holder, IT, security and procurement. Each group evaluates a different form of value or risk.
“You have to get a whole bunch of yeses and you have to not get a whole bunch of nos.”
For every stakeholder, identify what they need to approve, what risk they own, what evidence they trust and what could make them reject the purchase.
Pay particular attention to people who can stop the deal without appearing in early conversations. Months of user support can be outweighed by one unresolved objection.
Design pilots for expansion
A low-value pilot may still trigger much of the governance required for a larger deployment. The startup then absorbs the cost of enterprise procurement without creating meaningful contract value.
Greg qualifies this point: smaller tier-two or tier-three businesses may buy faster. The problem is most acute when selling small pilots to major global organisations.
Before accepting a pilot, ask:
Who can authorise a wider deployment?
Will it pass the reviews required for scale?
What outcome will matter to the budget holder?
Could legal or security restrictions trap it inside one team?
Is the potential contract worth the procurement effort?
“Pilot contracts mean nothing.”
A useful pilot proves a route to scale, not only that one team likes the product.
Make legitimacy your advantage
Once a company learns to meet enterprise requirements, the barriers that slowed its first deals can protect it from competitors.
“One man’s barrier to entry is another man’s barrier to competition.”
That advantage depends on legitimacy. Nodes & Links focuses on informed conversations with a small number of suitable buyers rather than generating thousands of weak leads.
The same principle shapes hiring. Greg wants salespeople who can manage long-term relationships, communicate value and walk away when there is no meaningful fit.
“We hire for people who truly understand the job and we teach them the sector.”
A useful interview test is to ask candidates how they mapped a complex buying decision, preserved trust through a long procurement process or advised a prospect not to buy.
Auditability is part of commercial fit
Nodes & Links provides scheduling decision intelligence for major capital projects where unreliable outputs could affect contracts, safety or decisions worth hundreds of millions.
Greg says the company has encoded recognised data science algorithms and built an AI layer that orchestrates them without generating the underlying numbers. The result can be traced through an audit trail.
For founders selling AI into risk-sensitive environments, the test is whether the system can show its working:
Can each material output be traced to its inputs and method?
Can a professional reviewer challenge or reproduce it?
Which parts of the system are probabilistic?
Will the customer’s guardrails still allow it to scale?
Auditability gives users, legal teams and procurement the confidence required to buy.
Replace the revenue forecast with a gate review
At the next pipeline review, take the three largest enterprise opportunities and identify the next unresolved gate for each. Name the stakeholder who controls it, the evidence they require and the person responsible for securing approval.
You will quickly see which deals are awaiting a purchasing decision and which still depend on your company becoming ready to procure.
Listen to the full conversation for Greg Lawton’s practical guidance on building company commercial fit, navigating enterprise procurement and designing auditable AI for risk-sensitive organisations.
