We did pivot to add a more premium, high touch offering and it sold very well. Thats how we came to the second unhappy realization: Despite having what we considered a very nice TAM the industry didn't really want to be scaled. This meant that our clients who paid for our premium offering were very difficult to service and create value for.

Our business was in a sense connecting buyers with sellers for a fee, and there just weren't enough sellers to satisfy the industry of willing buyers eager to pay for value. A fine boutique business and a solid way to have a $12M/year company focusing on BIG DEALS. Not much of a play to scale with tech and profit by reducing costs and friction. Nobody cared about costs and friction was oddly desirable for our customers as it meant "we're in the game - things are happening!".

Had we not "raised money" and encumbered ourselves with investors we'd have continued operating. As it turned out, we more or less took on a bunch of debt to operate the same business we could have made with no tech at all.