Standing on the Shoulders of ‘Yes Men’ -- What losing a big-ticket client taught me about SaaS and the mixed messages of corporate innovation

By Andrew Lenti, Managing Director at Presto PDCA

This article isn’t about pointing fingers. It’s about calling out a system that too often rewards indecision, buries transparency, and punishes the very partners it claims to empower.

I sat on this story for a while. But as we prepare to launch a new AI-driven feature built precisely to cut through the noise and restore clarity in project work, the time felt right to share it.

Here’s the story of what happened—and how it shaped everything we’ve built since.

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.” – Charles Darwin

In 2022, our team made a strategic pivot: we moved away from high-touch enterprise consulting and committed to scaling our SaaS platform for small and mid-sized companies. The goal? Automate onboarding, training, billing, and support, reducing reliance on human relationships—especially those shaped by corporate politics.

This wasn’t a cynical move. It was born from a painful truth: betting on corporate “innovation” teams and their internal champions can be a risky proposition. In the absence of transparency and trust, many large organizations remain too sluggish, too politicized, and too prone to misalignment between layers of management.

Despite clear KPIs and solid delivery, a project can unravel overnight. That’s exactly what happened to us. We were in the second year of a five-year contract with a large European client. Feedback had been glowing—from the COO, from users, even from their external Big 4 consultant who partnered with us to draft a joint case study. Steering Committee reports were consistently green.

Then one day, we stumbled upon a press release: the client had signed a major deal with a well-known Nasdaq-listed competitor. No warning. No heads-up. When we later asked about it, the response was vague. That’s when the dynamics shifted.

A director—previously uninvolved—entered the picture with a request for a new contract, doubling the original scope. But instead of open collaboration, we were pulled into a bureaucratic loop of delays, rejections, and gaslighting…

👉 Keep reading the full story here: [Article Link]