Fund India

Death by PoC (Proof of Concept):

I recently met a promising startup. Great tech. Strong use case.

They’ve been running multiple PoCs with major enterprises.

But there’s a problem:

No signed contracts. Just slow-moving maybes.

This happens more often than we admit. Why?

Because a PoC isn’t a win.

It’s just the beginning of a sales process—often with no clear owner, no path to scale, and no urgency.

Here’s how we can do better:

Startups:

 • Don’t accept a PoC without success metrics and a post-PoC decision timeline

 • Map who holds the budget and who controls rollout early

 • Don’t pilot for “learning.” Pilot for a contract

Enterprises:

 • Stop running pilots you don’t plan to scale (and I know you sometimes believe if it goes well, we will find a way to scale, but that attitude got so many startups bankrupted - get the internal buy-in and work on solving real problems)

 • Involve procurement before kickoff, not after results

 • Make it easier to say yes—or at least faster to say no!

Founders: What’s helped you convert PoCs into real revenue?

Operators: What makes you say “Let’s go” after a pilot?

Let’s break the PoC trap—for everyone’s benefit.