5 Critical GTM Lessons from Wingspan’s Evolution: When to Pivot and How to Win Enterprise Customers
Every founder knows the agonizing decision of whether to stay the course or pivot. In a recent episode of Category Visionaries, Anthony Mironov, CEO of Wingspan, shared candid insights about navigating this challenge while building a payroll platform for contingent workers. His experience offers valuable lessons for founders facing similar strategic inflection points.
- Recognize and Act on Pivot Signals Early
The hardest part of pivoting isn’t the decision itself—it’s the timing. Wingspan initially built a direct-to-consumer platform for freelancers, but scaling proved challenging. “First of all, we didn’t make the change fast enough. Looking back at it, I probably would have changed the focus a little bit earlier,” Anthony admits. This candid acknowledgment highlights a common founder trap: waiting too long to act on market signals indicating the need for strategic change.
- Don’t Underestimate the Organizational Impact of Pivots
Technical founders often focus on product modifications during pivots, overlooking the broader organizational changes required. Anthony learned this firsthand: “I didn’t really understand how much of an organizational change that is going from, you know, a self-serve signup process online to, you know, learning how to do B2B sales.” The shift demanded entirely new skill sets and processes, from sales development to enterprise customer success.
- Superior Technology Isn’t Enough—Position for Customer Problems
Early-stage companies often overemphasize technical excellence at the expense of market positioning. As Anthony explains, “We were really focused on building the technology to make this work… But at the end of the day, customers don’t really care about that.” This realization led Wingspan to shift focus from technical capabilities to solving specific customer problems in lifecycle management of contingent work.
- Make Strategic Category Decisions
Rather than competing in crowded existing categories, Wingspan chose to create a new one. “We’ve debated whether it’s category expansion versus category creation… We decided to really hone in on this lifecycle management of contingent work as the category that we are developed over time,” Anthony shares. This decision helped them avoid direct competition with established players while building a unique market position.
- Turn Customer Success into a Growth Engine
Wingspan discovered that customer advocacy could become a powerful growth driver in enterprise sales. “We oftentimes hear some workers won’t work with a company if they’re not on wingspan,” Anthony notes. This dynamic created a virtuous cycle where customer success drove both retention and new customer acquisition. “They’re happy to share their success stories because at the end of the day, they’re making their workers more successful,” he explains.
The Broader Impact
These lessons highlight a crucial truth about building enterprise software companies: success often comes from making hard strategic choices early and executing them decisively. Wingspan’s experience shows that while product excellence is necessary, it’s insufficient without the right go-to-market strategy and organizational capabilities.
For founders navigating similar transitions, the key takeaway is clear: building a successful enterprise software company requires more than just great technology. It demands careful attention to timing, positioning, and organizational development. As Anthony concludes about their vision: “We think that we could fill that need for this massively growing workforce for professional services and really a unified platform built on a really unique contractor graph that removes all of the administrative complexity of working for yourself.”
The journey from B2C startup to enterprise platform is never straightforward, but Wingspan’s experience provides a valuable roadmap for founders facing similar challenges in their own companies.
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