Be honest about the kind of company you actually are.
When people talk about building a 0–1 product, they're usually picturing a startup. A small team, fast decisions, and a clean slate. There is an assumption that if you move quickly enough, clarity will follow.
That picture rarely holds inside an enterprise.
Enterprise teams often say they want to operate like a startup, especially when launching something new. But what actually happens is that corporate complexity shows up early. Stakeholders span departments. Teams are matrixed. Decisions touch brand, legal, marketing, engineering, and operations all at once. None of that is wrong. It's simply the reality of how large organizations work.
Where things tend to go sideways is when that reality is not acknowledged up front. One of the biggest lessons I have learned working on 0–1 products inside enterprise organizations is that success depends less on adopting startup rituals and more on being honest about the kind of company you actually are.
I have seen enterprise 0–1 efforts slow down not because teams lacked ambition or talent, but because decision-making was never clearly designed. Who owns product direction. Who needs to be consulted. Who actually makes the call. Without shared clarity, more and more people get looped in as the work progresses. Feedback arrives late. Momentum starts to stall. Energy shifts away from building the product and toward managing the process.
The work can still ship. But it often feels heavier than it needs to.
Some enterprises are able to peel off a small, focused team and protect it. The work is clearly sponsored at the executive level. Decision rights are defined early, and the team is empowered to move. That model can work well, but it requires real organizational commitment, not just good intentions. Other enterprises are structured differently. Decisions require broader buy-in. Alignment and storytelling are not side work; they are central to making progress. In those environments, 0–1 work can still succeed, but only if timelines, expectations, and team structures are designed to support that reality.
Problems arise when an organization wants startup outcomes without changing how it operates. Startup frameworks get applied to enterprise conditions. MVPs are scoped as if decisions will be fast and lightweight. Timelines assume minimal alignment. When that does not happen, frustration builds on all sides. The cost is not always failure. More often, the cost is friction, and drag on future innovation.
Teams spend time feeling misaligned instead of moving forward. Partners feel like they are constantly scrambling to accommodate new voices. Stakeholders feel overwhelmed by decisions they did not expect to be part of. Everyone is working hard, but not always on the work that matters most.
The fix doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does require intention. Before a 0–1 effort begins, enterprise teams need to have an honest conversation about how they actually operate. How decisions get made. Where authority lives. How much alignment will be required for the work to succeed. Whether this effort will be incubated or integrated into the broader organization.
Having that conversation early makes it possible to choose the right playbook. It helps set realistic timelines. It reduces unnecessary friction. Most importantly, it gives teams a shared understanding of how the work will move forward.
After working across startups and large enterprises, I don't believe there's a single right way to do 0–1 product work. What I do believe is that the work goes better when the approach matches the organization. Clarity does not slow teams down. It allows them to move with purpose.
