The European Sales Cycle Problem: How 6-Month Decision Timelines Change Your PMF Definition

A seed-stage B2B SaaS founder in London had 12 enterprise prospects at 'very interested' after nine months — and zero signed contracts. His US investors said he had a sales problem. He didn't. He had a PMF-timeline mismatch. His model assumed 60-day enterprise sales cycles. His actual market — large financial services enterprises, procurement-governed — runs on four-to-six month decision timelines with legal, security, and compliance gates that cannot be compressed. The PMF was real. The product solved a genuine problem. The error was benchmarking commercial success against a timeline that didn't match institutional reality. European enterprise PMF tends to look like failure right up until the contracts arrive.