Between 2017 and 2019, I co-founded and ran CPK Systems — a B2B SaaS company selling statistical process control software to metal packaging factories. We had customers across Europe, Oceania, and the USA. The team was five people. I wore every hat.
The product itself was interesting: we took a legacy desktop application for quality assurance and rebuilt it as a modern web platform, then added an IoT layer that pulled machine data directly from manufacturing lines to detect defects before they became waste.
What I learned had less to do with technology and more to do with selling to industries that don’t move fast. Manufacturing QA teams are conservative for good reasons — a bad software update can shut down a production line. Trust is earned slowly and lost instantly.
The experience gave me a deep appreciation for domain expertise, the importance of being in the room with your users, and the reality that most B2B products succeed or fail based on onboarding, not features.