Turning a promising technology into a sustainable business requires more than a strong product. Companies must validate real customer demand, translate technical capabilities into clear business value, and build processes that connect product development, sales, and operations.
In this interview, Igor Konopliastyi, COO at SPHotonix and Co-Founder of Quarkly, discusses how technology companies can move from early market validation to repeatable growth, manage complex B2B sales, and scale without losing flexibility.
When evaluating a new technology product, how do you determine whether it solves a market problem rather than simply demonstrating an impressive technical capability?
Igor Konopliastyi:
I believe the best starting point is the market, not the technology. Before investing significant time and resources into product development, it is essential to validate that the problem is real and important to potential customers. This means conducting custdev interviews, speaking to prospective users, understanding how they solve the problem today, and confirming that they would be willing to adopt or pay for a better solution.
Building a product first and only then looking for customers is a much riskier approach. A technology may impress its founders, employees, or early supporters, but that does not necessarily mean it addresses a genuine market need. Successful products are built around validated customer problems, not around technical capabilities alone. Customer feedback should guide product development from the earliest stages to ensure that the solution creates real value and has commercial potential.
Once the problem has been validated, how do you translate complex product functionality into a value proposition that business and technical decision-makers understand equally well?
Igor Konopliastyi:
I focus on outcomes rather than features. The core value proposition stays the same, but I tailor the message to the audience. Technical decision-makers want to understand how the product works, its reliability, security, and integration. Business decision-makers are more interested in commercial outcomes such as cost savings, efficiency, risk reduction, and ROI. The goal is to show how the technology solves the same business problem from each stakeholder’s perspective.
What signals tell you that a company has moved beyond isolated early customers and is ready to build a repeatable commercial model?
Igor Konopliastyi:
One of the strongest signals is positive unit economics. A company should not scale losses – it should scale profits. Before investing heavily in sales and marketing, each additional customer should generate positive operating contribution after covering the CAC and other operating costs.
The second important signal is organic repeatable sales. When existing early customers come back with additional orders or recommend the product to others without significant sales effort, it demonstrates that the product delivers real value.
The third signal is a standardized implementation process.
How should product, engineering, and business development teams divide responsibility when customer feedback begins influencing the product roadmap?
Igor Konopliastyi:
Each team should focus on what it does best. Business development should collect customer feedback and understand which requests have real commercial value. Engineering should estimate the technical complexity, cost, and implementation time. Product should make the final prioritisation, balancing customer demand, business impact, and technical effort.
One important rule is that not every customer request should end up on the roadmap. The product should evolve based on patterns across multiple customers rather than one-off requests from individual accounts.
In complex B2B sales, how do you balance customer requests for customisation with the need to maintain a scalable and consistent product?
Igor Konopliastyi:
It depends on both the type of product and the customer. For highly configurable enterprise platforms such as SAP or Oracle, customisation is often part of the product strategy. These platforms are used by some of the world’s largest organisations, including automotive manufacturers, banks, and global retailers, all of which have unique business processes. Rather than modifying the core product for each customer, SAP and Oracle provide open architectures, configuration tools, APIs, and extension frameworks that allow customers to adapt the solution to their specific requirements while keeping the core platform standardised.
For more standardised products, such as CRM or SaaS solutions, excessive customisation is usually avoided because it reduces scalability and increases maintenance costs. Instead, product teams prioritise features based on custdev interviews and the needs shared by multiple customers rather than individual requests.
Today, the software ecosystem is rich with specialised products that can be connected through APIs and integrations. In many cases, these integrations solve highly specific customer requirements without changing the core product. If a requirement is unique to a single organisation, customers often choose to build the functionality internally or through a partner integration rather than asking the vendor to incorporate it into the product roadmap.
Which operational processes should be formalised first as the company grows, and which areas should remain flexible for as long as possible?
Igor Konopliastyi:
The first processes to formalise should be those that are repetitive, operationally critical, and directly affect the company’s ability to scale. These typically include customer support, HR, recruitment, and finance operations, such as payroll, invoicing, expense management, payment approvals, budgeting, and financial controls. Standardising these processes improves efficiency, reduces operational risk, and ensures consistent execution as the organisation grows.
On the other hand, customer acquisition should remain as flexible as possible for as long as possible. Go-to-market strategies are evolving rapidly, particularly with the emergence of new technologies and AI-driven sales and marketing tools. Companies should continuously experiment with new channels, messaging, and sales approaches rather than locking themselves into rigid processes too early.
That said, the right balance depends on the business model. B2B sales processes are generally more structured and relationship-driven, whereas B2C customer acquisition tends to evolve much faster and benefits from greater flexibility and continuous experimentation.
Looking back at your experience as a COO and co-founder, what are the most common mistakes technology companies make when trying to turn early traction into sustainable growth?
Igor Konopliastyi:
One of the most common mistakes is trying to scale too early. Many technology companies start building multiple products or expanding into new markets before proving that their existing business is commercially sustainable. This often leads to a rapidly increasing burn rate without a clear path to profitability.
My motto is simple: “Scale profits, not losses.” Before accelerating growth, a company should demonstrate positive unit economics and a repeatable commercial model. Once you know that every additional customer creates value rather than destroys it, scaling becomes much less risky.
