Scaling the Ladder — From SME Customers to Enterprise Adoption

When I started Mercury Dasha, I made a conscious decision to begin with independent designers and SMEs. Not because I didn’t dream of signing the big enterprise logos — I was sure that eventually our product would encompass them — but because I understood something fundamental about building a sustainable company: product–market fit is not a one-size-fits-all achievement.

Too often, I’ve seen founders leap into enterprise sales before they’ve proven their product in the real world. It’s a high-stakes gamble. Enterprise customers can bring prestige and big contract values, but they also come with complexity and procurement processes that can bury a young company — long sales cycles, multi-layered approvals, bespoke requests, and compliance requirements that can consume more engineering time than the product roadmap itself.

Starting with solo designers and SMEs was our way of earning our stripes and also learning rapidly. These customers move more quickly. They value agility. If we solved their problem, they’d not only adopt us, maybe they’d tell others about us. And if we didn’t? They’d tell us why, immediately and without sugarcoating it. That honesty was invaluable. It gave us a rapid feedback loop — we could release a feature on Monday, get feedback on Tuesday, and refine by Friday.

But I was never under the illusion that SMEs would be only user. They are and continue to be our training ground and our loyal advocates - because ultimately the creator is who we were born to serve. However for every startup, you need a multi-layered, long-term, user acquisition plan. Our vision was always to scale beyond, to serve the complex, multi-stakeholder environments of teams and larger brands that may need more bespoke enterprise solutions. The question was: how do we get from here to there without losing the advantages of being a nimble, creator-focused boot-strapped company? Scaling the ladder from SME customers to enterprise adoption required a new mindset and approach.

The Enterprise Mindset

Enterprise buyers are not simply bigger versions of SME customers. They operate differently. Their risk tolerance is lower, their decision-making is slower, and the stakes — for them — are higher. They have entire teams dedicated to procurement, legal review, security compliance, and IT integration.

In my life as a commercial tech and dispute resolution lawyer, I draft, negotiate and even litigate on contracts most startups only dream they could afford to draft and negotiate. But this lack of legal savvy and the linkage to commercial nous is to their detriment as contracts and documentation are the life-blood of enterprise success.

Most of the time, as a start-up, you have little bargaining power and even less money and time. In short you do the best deal you can without annoying the potential customer too much! But I have seen firsthand how those deals can fall apart - often before they are even signed — not because the product wasn’t good enough, but because the startup underestimated the buying process and the requirements and hurdles you need to jump - from detailed policies, to navigating employee stakeholder meetings before large-scale tech adoption. This was always difficult - but now with AI, its even more painful as everyone wants to make sure the AI they deploy is properly deployed with adequate controls.

At Mercury Dasha, my experience and insight shaped the way we approached go to market. And will serve us well when we are ready for the bigger deals. We won't wait for an enterprise prospect to ask for ISO compliance policies — we have been developing compliance in tandem with the product and considering AI regulations in parallel with every growth step. We didn’t hope our contracts would pass muster — we built them to meet the standards I knew would come under legal review. And when we are at a negotiating table I know what to press for and what we can allow flexibility on - so we can get a good deal done quickly - one that doesn't haunt us in years to come and ensure we have a long and fruitful relationship with our partners - crucially by making sure everyone has clarity on terms.

We won't rely on “we’ll integrate if you sign” promises — we have been developing an API strategy that would let us plug into a variety of enterprise systems without reinventing the wheel each time. We have considered scale as well as custom solutions - and we did the thinking before even approaching the enterprise level.

The Roadmap Shift

Shifting to enterprise thinkings for us means shifting the roadmap in three major ways:

Product capabilities — From single-user to team tools and collaboration capabilities to admin-level controls, audit and version logs, and compliance-ready features.

Infrastructure — From “good enough for SMEs” hosting to enterprise-grade security, documentation, scalable tech and uptime guarantees.

Customer, sales and onboarding model — From founder-led support to dedicated account managers and implementation specialists who could manage long-term relationships.

Each of these requires investment — in engineering, in process, in people. This is where sequencing became critical. We didn’t try to build all enterprise features at once. We layered them in parallel with ongoing SME growth, ensuring we didn’t stall revenue while preparing for larger deals.

Climbing the Ladder Deliberately

There’s a temptation to see this as a simple “move up-market” story, but it’s more nuanced than that. Moving from SME to enterprise isn’t a jump; it’s a climb. Each rung of the ladder — small business, mid-market, enterprise — has to be secure before you step up to the next one.

We’ve planned to be deliberate in our climb:

• Proving demand at the SME level.And really nailing our value prop, UI and feature set in our MVP.

• Expanding into mid-market companies that bridge the gap in buying complexity (multi-user and team access).

• Using those mid-market wins as case studies and proof points for enterprise sales conversations and bespoke solutions.

This approach reduces risk, builds credibility, and ensures that when we step fully into enterprise, we arrive prepared — not as a small company punching above its weight, but as a capable partner who can deliver at scale.

For an investor, this sequencing is the difference between gambling on ambition and backing a calculated growth strategy. We’re not chasing the biggest deal we can land. We’re building the capacity to serve them, repeatedly and profitably - and scale to a billion dollar company. It may look slower but we think its faster, ultimately.

I know this isn't the usual GTM strategy - investors always want you to chase the big companies and get the big cash in - but its a lot more difficult than it sounds. And maybe bigger isn't always better?

What are your thoughts?