Yes, it takes special fortitude to fight off the demands of your precious new mega-customer, be they a Cisco or whoever. Sometimes they'll really screw your product up if you let them. (Though sometimes also they'll give you those jewels of requirements that you really needed).
It's a sliding scale. You have to pander to them to some degree - there's no choice. But it takes grit to refuse to e.g. branch your core code or otherwise compromise your architectural integrity.
The problems are when the sales team does not appreciate the downstream costs of just letting this one patch in. And when you're a struggling startup, sometimes they're right and the social proof of the deal (and the revenue) make it a good choice to compromise your principles this once.
And sometimes you just screw your product up by not listening to what customers need, or by assuming that you know it better than them.
For now i refused to do custom branches, instead the product is made more and more configurable. And it's more successful approach so far than trying to maintain a separate version for every customer.
It's a sliding scale. You have to pander to them to some degree - there's no choice. But it takes grit to refuse to e.g. branch your core code or otherwise compromise your architectural integrity.
The problems are when the sales team does not appreciate the downstream costs of just letting this one patch in. And when you're a struggling startup, sometimes they're right and the social proof of the deal (and the revenue) make it a good choice to compromise your principles this once.