Satya says it depends on the size of the customer — selling to another startup is a different ball game from selling to a public company or a bank. Because they knew they'd work with larger institutions, they built with security and long-term scalability in mind and got compliance done from the very first couple of weeks.
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Satya contrasts the approaches: with another startup "you just go knock their door" and ask if they'll use it, but a public company or a bank is quite different. Since Socratix AI knew it would be working with larger institutions — fintechs, banks, credit unions and marketplaces — they decided to build the product "with security and long-term scalability in mind" and started getting compliance done from the very first couple of weeks. On deal structure — paid pilots, design partnerships, testing on production data or backtesting on historical data — his rule is to do "whatever gets your customer to use your product." If you're confident enough in the problem and the product, they'll keep buying, so you should optimize for the long term, not the short term.