From Demo to Enterprise Deal: How Credal Closed Checker Without a Product

Most founders believe they need a polished product before approaching enterprise customers. In a recent Category Visionaries episode, Credal founder Ravin Thambapillai revealed how they landed their first major enterprise deal with Checker by leading with a pilot – even though they didn’t have a working product when discussions began.

The Initial Connection

The opportunity emerged from a creative cold email. As Ravin recalls: “I emailed the CISO of Checker and on his LinkedIn, like, he kind of mentioned that he spoke Klingon.” The response revealed perfect timing: “It’s funny that you should mention this… we’re actually thinking about building this exact thing in house ourselves right now, but I think we’d sort of prefer to buy it from someone.”

The Scramble

There was just one challenge – they had no product to show. “Then Jack and I panicked because we didn’t even have a demo for this product at that point and we like scrambled to create a demo,” Ravin remembers. Despite this, they moved quickly: “We met with the checker team, like literally the next day because they were actually pretty urgent about it.”

Expanding Stakeholder Buy-in

Instead of just meeting the CISO, they got broader organizational exposure: “We met with Michael, the CISO, as well as a few other people from around the business.” This wider engagement proved crucial as “it was just really clear that they wanted to get this done.”

Structuring the Pilot

Rather than try to fake a finished product, they were transparent about their development timeline and structured a pilot accordingly. “We ended up signing like a three month pilot agreement with the idea being that over the course of those three months, we’d like actually build the product,” Ravin explains.

This approach offered several advantages:

1. It gave Credal paid development time
2. It ensured the product would match customer needs
3. It reduced risk for both parties
4. It created a clear path to conversion

Converting to Full Contract

The pilot’s success led to a major deal: “At the end of that three month period, it converted to like a really awesome six figure enterprise deal.” This validation proved transformative. As Ravin notes: “That was kind of, I think, when we realized, ok, we had something valuable here. We had something people wanted and something that people really wanted to pay for.”

Key Risk Mitigation Strategies

1. Move Fast on Interest When Checker mentioned considering building in-house, Credal immediately positioned themselves as a faster alternative.
2. Get Multiple Stakeholders Involved By engaging beyond just the CISO, they built broader organizational support and reduced dependency on a single champion.
3. Use Pilots as Development Partnerships Rather than pretend to have a finished product, they structured the pilot as a collaborative development period.
4. Focus on Customer Problems Instead of selling features, they focused on solving the specific security challenges Checker was facing.

Today, Credal processes “over a million LLM queries every month” and signs “a new household name business every two or three months.” Their experience shows that enterprise customers will engage early – even without a finished product – if you can demonstrate clear understanding of their problems and a credible path to solving them.

For technical founders selling to enterprises, the lesson is clear: don’t wait for a perfect product. If you can find a customer with urgent needs and structure a pilot that reduces their risk while giving you paid development time, you can close major deals even in the earliest stages.