Big platform company rejecting us a small dwarf — the small enterprise customer is confused

Have a patented solution that solves major pain point in several industries. However, there are other substitute products that compete, but atleast for now there is no equivalent for what we have (we expect copy cats later once the product takes off).

Now, we have a real challenge ahead : getting early adopters to this technology. We got one early adopter enterprise that believes and pushes this product for deployment. But the trick is, this enterprise customer is dependent on a big-platform company to integrate this solution/pilot.

The big company has two worries

1. They themsleves have invested in several technologies that will not necessarily get outdates, but see an additional investment in our solution competing with similar internal products.

2. customer experience; yes, our solution needs a little change in end-user behavior; but we tested even on a 5th grader and easy to use once the onboard.

Our challenges:

1. The relationship with platform guy is at best in-direct through this middle enterprise customer (which is good in one sense, we are in touch with end customer). As such we donot have much transparency into their approach and hear only from this enterprise prospect.

2. We do lack brand, and early referral enterprise customers — our marketing budget is limited

3. Forging partnership with such platform guys is also resource consuming, and we struggle to reach right decision makers

4. even if we approach this as one-time project mode enagagement with the big-platform, it will be cost-prohibhitive if we were to go alone. thinking of signing up similar prospects who are on the same platform, but not simple.

Yes, we are bootstrapping, staying away from VC/angel crap.

However, only open to intros to potential prospects and can share potential revenue with advisors/mentors–thats what ‘have right now.

Any insights, much appreciated. Thanks!