Lacking market comparables, Nexla priced its initial enterprise deals by first understanding the customer's internal cost to solve the same problem. They then proposed a price that was a clear fraction—like one-fifth or one-tenth—of that internal cost, making the ROI immediately obvious and justifiable for the buyer.
In initial meetings with enterprise prospects, Nexla's founder didn't pitch a solution. He focused entirely on validating the problem. By asking, "Do you see this problem as well?" he framed the conversation as a collaborative exploration, which disarmed prospects and led to more honest, insightful discussions.
Most SaaS startups begin with SMBs for faster sales cycles. Nexla did the opposite, targeting complex enterprise problems from day one. This forced them to build a deeply capable platform that could later be simplified for smaller customers, rather than trying to scale up an SMB solution.
When engineering teams claimed they could build a solution themselves, Nexla's founder agreed. He then reframed the problem not as a one-time technical challenge, but as an endless, repetitive maintenance task that was not a "career growing trajectory" for talented engineers, making the "buy" decision a strategic move for the engineering manager.
To find enterprise champions with no track record, Nexla's founder looked for signals of an "early adopter mindset." This included identifying employees who had recorded case studies with other startups or were publicly passionate about innovation on platforms like LinkedIn, indicating a willingness to bet on new technology.
A powerful piece of advice from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang encourages a cycle of impact. First, find a way to work on the most crucial projects ("get on the critical path"). Once your involvement becomes a bottleneck, your next job is to enable others and remove yourself ("get off it") to tackle the next challenge.
To win their first enterprise deal, Nexla's co-founder live-coded a solution to a specific data problem during the sales meeting with Instacart. This "magical moment" demonstrated their agility and technical depth in a way no slide deck could, immediately building trust and differentiating them from slower, incumbent processes.
After a premature growth spurt failed, Nexla's founders reset by taking no salaries and implementing a strict rule: new team members were only added when new customer revenue could justify the cost. This forced discipline led them to become cash-flow positive with multi-seven-figure revenue before their Series A.