When to Say NO to Big-Time Customers

I think one thing many, especially in software, founders deal with is that trade-off between, okay, I'm trying to get early customers and I can get this really, really great customer, but they want these 4 things. What point do I say, yes, I'll do some of those things, or do you just say, no, no, no, we're going to resist it, we control our own destiny and our own product roadmap? And that's not an easy trade-off. The way I've thought about it for all my software career is that it's okay to build features that help you get a group of customers that fits a certain pattern, but it's almost always suboptimal to try and solve for any individual customer, regardless of how large, regardless of it'll get you through the next month, next quarter. It's just not worth it. That's not what you're solving for. So you have to kind of stick to this like, okay, well, they're asking for these things. Let's talk to some other customers to see if Are they the only ones looking for it? Are they really looking for this kind of one-off thing? Is it really kind of aligned with where we think the product needs to be going? So you need to listen to your customers, but not always follow them or not always do what they're asking. That's a hard trade-off, especially in the early days when you're still trying to get that revenue machinery going.