Building and Winding Down Vantage

Spirent saw an opportunity in a new market segment adjacent to its core telecom testing business. The hypothesis was that the same observability and automation capabilities that served telecom operators could serve enterprise network operations teams. The internal resistance was unanimous—R&D leadership didn't believe the commercial thesis, and the sales organization had no relationships in the target segment. But the strategic logic was compelling enough that I got the mandate to build and prove (or disprove) the thesis.

- Built the Vantage product program from zero with a small, focused team - Designed the architecture to leverage existing Spirent platform capabilities while targeting enterprise use cases - Secured a year-long deployment with a tier-two operator to prove the engineering thesis in production - Established clear success criteria: technical validation, customer adoption, and commercial pipeline - Ran regular reviews with the VP of R&D to maintain alignment and prepare for the go/no-go decision

The hardest part of zero-to-one work isn't building—it's knowing when to stop. Vantage proved that the engineering thesis was sound: the product worked, the architecture scaled, and the operator deployment validated the technical approach. But the commercial thesis didn't hold. The enterprise segment required a different GTM motion than Spirent had, and building that motion would have required investment that couldn't be justified. Making the wind-down call jointly with the VP of R&D meant the organization learned from the experiment rather than burying it. Good judgment includes knowing when to stop.