200k from one customer is amazing, there must be a lot of merit in your product If someone is willing to pay this. Sorry to state the obvious, is there more customers you could find like this?

What industry are you in? What industry are you trying to break into? Remember amazon wasn’t profitable until very recently. It could take a while to get profits but you should never give up unless you’re required or it’s an extremely dying market (like gopro).

Take a vacation. Give yourself time to recharge, get bored, and experience things that you feel could be better.

Consider trying to shorten the time to validate your idea. Before building the MVP you could try mocking up a fake business & run a real marketing campaign to test the waters. Just be explicit that the product doesn’t exist & people are signing up for a waitlist.

With $250k have you considered buying an existing startup to give yourselves something already moderately successful but with headroom to grow?

https://acquire.com/

The income from that could avoid having to get a 9-5 in a year and fund whatever passion project you think up next.

In the glass half department, I would say you are extremely fortunate (in my experience), that you still get along (well). The pressure cooker of startups is an excellent way to stress, if not destroy relationships.

It seems like you guys lack the experience in business development.
Most companies feels this at 3 year mark. Most companies exit plan is to sell because they lack the funds expertise and experience to grow the company. If you start another companies you will have to run into same issues and same predicament.

Finding focus and sticking with it is key. Something I’ve learned this past couple of years is how easy it is to get distracted and chase too many things at once, which dilutes the potency of your efforts.

• Focus on one problem that you’re solving through your offering (or some related ones all solved via the same solution)
• Focus on one channel at a time for generating sales (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, Google ads, partnerships). Avoid trying to build simultaneous followings on multiple social media platforms. Do one well, grow that audience and then use that audience to build audiences on other platforms once successful.
• Use the KISS principle (keep it simple, stupid). Don’t try and boil the ocean or do too many things at once. Don’t create complex products, services, and offers. The more simple the concept/idea, the better.
• Know what your target customer looks like and write it down (if B2B: (org size, location, sector, key org challenges, different personas (champion, buyer, decision-maker) etc., if B2C: key demographics/ideal persona profile)
• Do extensive research until you intimately understand your ideal customer (i.e. you should be an expert on the customers you’re serving and know them better than they know themselves), the struggles they’re having, the motivators, the needs, etc.
• You can do 1:1 outreach via social media and conduct interviews with your target customers/personas by coming at it from a position of curiosity, rather than a sales pitch. For example: “I’m founder of CompanyXYZ and I’m trying to better understand the challenges you’re having with X and how we can help you overcome them as quickly as possible”
• Create content focused on your key customers/personas with the aim of maximizing value for them. Educate them, help them better understand their own pain points and how they can be solved, give away lots of valuable information for free to show customers you’re not just showing up with your hand out, but you’re investing in them with valuable content.
• Create and test some high-value offers that focus on helping them achieve their ideal outcomes in the shortest amount of time possible to alleviate their pain points/bring them pleasure and give them almost no reason to say “no” as a result of the value you’re offering. Try different variations of time-boxed offers and/or limited supply/availability. Use landing pages to test ideas with your target audience via small ad buys on your sales channel of choice. Keep the landing pages simple with a key message and/or offer, measure your success via analytics, and invest more in the offers/messages that resonate best.
• Delight your customers, get testimonials/success stories about your products/services, be bold and ask for referrals from your happiest customers

In terms of how to overcome the burnout/stagnation piece, have you considered:

• Seeking another founder with a fresh view and new perspective on things
• Engaging an experienced business or performance coach/advisor to look at things objectively, gain an understanding of your business, and provide objective advice
• Taking a bit of time away to cool your brain off, gain fresh perspective (ideally in a setting that’s away from where you’ve been working/living during this business - a change in scenery has a cool way of igniting new ideas and perspective
• Pivoting the approach/offering you’re currently finding some success with rather than starting over completely - is there a win by simply changing the offer, pricing, approach, etc. here rather than the direction itself?
• Looking for inspiration from solid business podcasts (Masters of Scale is excellent, Huberman is also fantastic), books, videos, online courses

I know my comments aren’t 100% focused on the problem you discussed, but wanted to throw the ideas out there in hopes of sparking ideas/inspiration. If you and your partner have been the only ones looking at the business and business problems you’re facing, you could likely benefit from a fresh perspective. On a final note, if you look at the frustration and discomfort you’re feeling right now as a positive, in that the biggest wins and the greatest professional and personal growth comes through discomfort. Those negative feelings are your brains activating, developing new pathways and seeking solutions. There’s an exciting path on the other side of those feelings, regardless of the specific business outcomes.

I’m not selling anything directly or indirectly here and have no agenda other than knowing that it sucks to be a founder that feels like they’re stuck/against a wall. I’m actually mid-major pivot myself on my entrepreneurial journey and am loaded up on discomfort and excitement. Feel free to ping me if you’d like to do some brainstorming or just share war stories from the startup trenches. Totally up to you of course. I hope something I’ve said brings you some value and wish you all the best on your startup journey.

I was you about two years ago, almost down to the dollar amount of revenue. Same dependence on one enterprise customer, cofounder is my husband.

We took a vacation and talked at length about what we had left in the tank. Each of us. One of you may be more willing to give it another go than the other. Do you have investors? Employees? That will affect your decision too.

I wouldn’t blindly pivot without assessing your own mental state as it’s super easy to try out different ideas and burn yourself out on putting yourself out there as the non-technical founder selling different things over and over again (speaking from experience). Happy to chat more over dm.

Perhaps going back to the basics is the way.

Talk to users about their daily lives and find a unifying pain

Prototype a few solutions and gather feedback

Try to sell the most promising solution and keep learning from your users

Are you both in the roles that are best for you? Do you get energy from sales?

What is the business in? I might be able to help. Send me a DM, I’d like to hear more about it

You enjoy working with each other even through all the bad luck? Wow that’s kind of a superpower. I think you need to figure out how you manage to keep things going well between you and consider being life coaches or something like that. Keeping it together despite adversity is pretty cool.