We’ll Take the First Risk: Why the Customer Sits on a Pedestal at OBI
- Mayukh Goswami
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
The Poster Child for Customer Obsession Since 1999. Our Obeisance to Him.
Quote: “What matters to me is: do we provide the best customer service. Internet, shminternet. That doesn’t matter.”
There is a question we hear in different forms at the beginning of a relationship.
“How much do I need to pay before we start?”
It sounds like a pricing question. Quite often, it is not.
Sometimes it comes from a founder who has already paid an advance somewhere else and then spent months chasing updates. Sometimes it comes from somebody who has watched a neat estimate become a larger team, a longer timeline and a growing invoice. Sometimes there is no bad experience at all, only the natural anxiety of handing an unfinished idea to people you have just met.
Behind the question is another one.
Who takes the first risk?
Our answer has become one of the simplest expressions of how we think about customers at OBI.
We trust you first.
We do not ask for a dime in advance. We agree on a sprint, what success should look like, and we get to work. Payment becomes due after successful delivery. Our model gives the customer a delivery every two weeks, room to iterate and pivot, and ownership and control of the intellectual property.
Our Capability Matrix puts it more starkly: “Zero Risk. 100% Control.” It also describes OBI as “A Thinking Team with No Spoon Feeding,” with pay-on-delivery, no budget creep, unlimited iterations and pivots, and additional time borne by us when delivery runs beyond what was mutually agreed. To us, this is what putting the customer on a pedestal means.
Not flattery. Not obedience. Not “the customer is always right.”
The customer’s ego is not on the pedestal.
The customer’s interest is.
That distinction matters because product building is full of moments when the easiest thing to do is say yes. Yes to another feature. Yes to a larger team. Yes to a deadline we do not quite believe. Yes to something that sounds exciting in a meeting but adds little to the product.
A thinking team must sometimes say no.
If we believe a feature is premature, we should say so. If there is a cheaper way to test the same assumption, we should suggest it. If a decision will slow the product down, our responsibility is not to nod politely and send an invoice.
Respect sometimes requires disagreement.
But disagreement must not become control.
One of the shlokas of the Bhagavad Gita we return to is 18.63:
इति ते ज्ञानमाख्यातं गुह्याद्गुह्यतरं मया।विमृश्यैतदशेषेण यथेच्छसि तथा कुरु।।१८.६३।।
English translation: Thus this knowledge, more secret than the secret, has been declared to you by Me. Reflect on it fully, and then act as you wish.
That last movement stays with us.
Krishna does not withhold counsel from Arjuna. He gives him the teaching, asks him to reflect fully, and still leaves the choice with Arjuna.
There is a lesson there for how we want to work with a customer.
We should bring judgment. We should challenge. We should explain why. We should make our recommendation clear enough to be useful. Then the customer decides.
The product is theirs. The consequences are theirs. The agency must remain theirs.
This is also why commercial structure matters. Psychology changes when somebody feels trapped. A customer who has already paid heavily up front can start protecting the money already spent instead of making the decision the product now needs. A contract can quietly become an enemy of learning.
Product development does not behave like a railway timetable. Users surprise you. Assumptions collapse. What seemed essential becomes unnecessary. What looked like a minor detail turns out to be the whole product.
Freedom to pivot is not generosity from a supplier. It is respect for reality.
The Bhagavad Gita gives us another discipline in 2.47:
कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन।मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भूर्मा ते सङ्गोऽस्त्वकर्मणि।।२.४७।।
English translation: Your right is to action alone, never to its fruits. Do not make the fruits of action your motive, and do not become attached to inaction.
We do not read this as an argument against profit. A business has to earn. People have to be paid. Good work needs a healthy enterprise behind it.
The question is what comes first in the mind.
If the invoice becomes the first objective, it starts bending behaviour. More people can look attractive because more people can be billed. A longer build can become commercially convenient. A complicated answer can pay better than a simple one.
We would rather have revenue follow useful work.
Delivery before invoice is one way we force that discipline on ourselves.
The Katha Upanishad, 1.2.2, draws a distinction between shreya, what is truly beneficial, and preya, what is immediately pleasant:
श्रेयश्च प्रेयश्च मनुष्यमेतःतौ सम्परीत्य विविनक्ति धीरः।श्रेयो हि धीरोऽभि प्रेयसो वृणीतेप्रेयो मन्दो योगक्षेमाद्वृणीते।।१.२.२।।
English translation: The good and the pleasant both approach a person. Having considered them, the discerning distinguish between the two. The wise choose the good over the pleasant, while the undiscerning choose the pleasant for the sake of acquisition and preservation.
This is not a distant philosophical problem. It appears in ordinary product decisions every week.
Protecting this month’s margin may be pleasant. Absorbing an estimation miss may be better.
Adding billable people may be pleasant. Using intelligent tools to make a smaller team more productive, then passing the time and cost advantage to the customer, may be better.
Saying yes to everything may keep a meeting comfortable. Saying, “We think you are about to spend money on the wrong thing,” may serve the customer better.
Our Capability Matrix was written around that instinct. Care and culture sit at the foundation. The team is expected to use tools to increase human productivity rather than simply throw people at problems, and to pass the resulting cost and time arbitrage to the customer.
Warren Buffett gave us a very different language for the same instinct.
Years ago, we wrote about customer delight, Integrity, Intelligence and Empathy, and the possibility that protecting trust can cause short-term financial pain. We ended that piece with a line we still believe:
“Happy to Lose Money but not a Shred of our Reputation.”
Reputation sounds noble when it costs nothing.
You find out whether you believe in it when the estimate was wrong, when a sprint takes longer, when another iteration is needed, or when the cheaper solution for the customer also means less revenue for you.
That is when the principle has a price.
Snaphomz is a live AI-powered real estate product built around the messy, emotional and expensive process of finding and buying a home. Its current experience includes natural-language property discovery and AI-assisted tools around homes, disclosures and financing decisions. We have put our own sweat, time, judgment and reputation into that journey.
There is a humility that comes only from building something people actually use.
Specifications do not roll their eyes. Users do.
A document can preserve an assumption for six months. A real customer can destroy it in six seconds.
Once you have lived through that enough times, you become less precious about the original plan and more respectful of iteration. You also become more careful with somebody else’s money.
Legacy Assured has made that responsibility even more tangible. The product deals with information people may need to leave for their families, including financial relationships, insurance, documents, digital profiles and nominated next of kin. Its live product is built around privacy, encryption and user control.
This is not casual data.
It sits close to family, mortality, money and trust.
A founder who is willing to publicly place their own name and product beside the people who built with them tells us something. We do not need to manufacture a testimonial around it. The association itself carries weight.
Perhaps that brings us to one of the gentlest instructions in the Taittiriya Upanishad, 1.11.2:
देवपितृकार्याभ्यां न प्रमदितव्यम्।मातृदेवो भव। पितृदेवो भव।आचार्यदेवो भव। अतिथिदेवो भव।
English translation: Do not neglect your duties toward the deities and ancestors. Regard your mother as divine, your father as divine, your teacher as divine, and your guest as divine.
We use Atithi Devo Bhava carefully.
We are not saying “the customer is God.” That would turn a sacred teaching into an advertising line.
What stays with us is the discipline of hospitality. Somebody has entered your care carrying something precious. That fact places a duty on the host.
A founder often arrives at OBI carrying an idea that is still fragile. Maybe it represents savings. Maybe reputation. Maybe a problem they have thought about for years. Maybe a second chance after somebody else got it wrong. We should feel the weight of that.
They should not have to finance our learning curve. They should not need to watch us every hour simply to feel safe. They should be free to change their mind when the product teaches them something. And they should be able to expect the truth from us, including when the truth is inconvenient.
Trust works strangely. The harder a supplier asks for it, the less meaningful the request can sound.
So we prefer to put something down first.
Our sprint. Our effort. Our judgment. Our reputation.
Then the customer can decide whether we earned the right to continue.
That is the relationship we want, not dependency, but freedom followed by repeated voluntary choice.
So when we say the customer sits on a pedestal, we are reminding ourselves whose consequences are greater.
It is their money. Their time. Their name. Their opportunity. Their leap of faith.
Our duty is to put our work, intelligence and reputation on the line before asking them to do the same.
The pedestal is not there so we can flatter the customer.
It is there so we never forget what they are risking. Hare Krishna 🙏
p.s. Drafted with assistance from OpenAI and the Jeff Bezos video courtesy CNBC.
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