As Prolific North’s GRAFT tech event returned to Manchester, Polybox co-founder Rojin Yarahmadi lifted the lid on the pivots, pricing decisions and investor conversations behind building a Northern startup.
Newcastle-based Polybox may have started with one vision, but co-founder Rojin Yarahmadi told GRAFT 2026 that finding product-market fit meant being willing to let go of the original idea and pivot more than once.
Speaking during a lightning talk with Prolific North managing director Alexandra Balazs at Sister in Manchester today, Rojin offered a candid account of what it really takes to build a startup in the North, from reshaping the business model to learning how to sell and navigating difficult conversations with investors.
Polybox, a data analysis platform for marketers, helps bring together data from hundreds of sources into a single view for marketers and agencies.
The session formed part of the second annual GRAFT event, Prolific North’s tech gathering focused on scaling, innovating and connecting Northern tech leaders, founders, investors and policymakers.
Asked how the team knew it was time to shift direction rather than simply push harder on their first idea, Rojin said one of the biggest early lessons was understanding that an initial concept should not become part of a founder’s identity. “When we started, we felt like the idea is very important,” she said. “You have an idea on a Friday afternoon and just go for it, and that’s going to be your startup forever.
“But when we started working with other founders, they said no, we pivoted multiple times and sometimes it didn’t work well and we had to change. The more you stay on the initial idea you had and don’t get customer validation, the harder it is because you get connected to that idea and you feel like that idea is your identity.”
That realisation came when the company found the market simply was not responding to its original proposition. “We tried really hard to make the first idea work. It didn’t. Nobody was buying it. Some people were just trying to do us a favour really,” she said. “And then we realised, you know what, let’s try something else. We pivoted actually two to three times to make it work.”
As the company pivoted, customer validation and sales became inseparable from product development.
Rojin said: “If you have an idea, just get it out, try to find the right clients and ask them to use it and tell them: would you pay for it? If yes, how much would you pay for it? That’s very important because the market is really connected to sales and sometimes we don’t really look at it like that.”
One of the toughest parts of the journey, she admitted, was that neither founder came from a sales background. “We weren’t salespeople ourselves and we learned that we have to sell ourselves essentially as founders,” she said. “So we learned how to sell and we’ve seen that very horrible conversation where it’s like: this is good, we’ll come back to you. So we realised that, OK, we can’t sell this. And then when we did the pivot and realised, OK, now people are willing to pay for it, that was really interesting.”
She also spoke openly about the uncomfortable but necessary shift from giving the product away too freely to properly valuing what the company had built.
“I think selling was the hardest thing,” she said. “Not in terms of actually selling it, but being comfortable to show your product and say: would you pay for this? And if yes, actually we’re adding value to your business and that’s why we’re expecting you to pay this much.
“I remember we started getting discovery calls more and more and then I was like, yeah, you can try it for free, just use it for free, it’s fine, we can extend it for one more month. Then one of our advisors told us you should ask people to pay for it. If you are not willing to ask people to pay for it, why are you expecting others to actually do it?”
That change in mindset, she said, also helped the business identify whether it was speaking to the right customers in the first place.
“With that shift, we realised we were not selling to the right people. Then we went from ‘use it for free’ to ‘no, there is a time limit, you need to pay for it, and we are adding value to that’.”
Another theme of the conversation was what happens when a startup has already raised investment but then needs to change course. Rojin said Polybox learned quickly that investor relationships work best when founders are transparent, rather than trying to present a polished version of events.
“This is our first startup. We’ve never done this before and we’ve never had investment before,” she said. “When we raised our investment and had a board meeting with VCs and angels, initially we felt like high school students explaining, this is what we did in the past three months. But what we realised really quickly was that when they put their money in, they’re in this with you and they should be in this with you.”
She said one of the most useful structures introduced into board meetings was a simple framework: what excites us, and what keeps us up.
“On the first page of our board meeting we have what excites us and what keeps us up, and that’s where we start,” she said. “That means what keeps us up is indicators that we know: this client might turn, we might want to change the business style, or other things that we’re trying to put under the rug and feel like, no, let’s not say it to the investors. But we were very open and transparent at all times with our investors and that really helped because it opened up the question: how can you help us?”
For founders thinking about whether they are truly ready to raise, Rojin urged honesty. “Not all startups can get funding, and not all startups are worth getting funding,” she said. “Sometimes you go to an investment meeting and you feel like they don’t get it, they don’t understand the idea. But after the fifth or sixth meeting, you might want to look at your views.
“I’m not saying you need to take every single opinion seriously, but you need to see why they are saying it.”
She added that founders need to be able to answer some basic but essential questions before going out to investors: “Will your business model work? Will you ever make money out of it? Would anybody buy it?”
Reflecting on what she would tell herself a few years ago, Rojin said the biggest lesson had been humility. “Don’t be too naive to think you know stuff,” she said. “The more I go through this, the more I realise I don’t know things.
“It doesn’t mean we don’t know how to do things. I think this is what people get wrong. If I say I don’t know about this subject, that means I want to actually go and know how to do it.”
But she also warned that while advice is valuable, founders still have to make their own calls. “We were trying to learn from everybody and then so many opinions were coming in that we weren’t sure which one we should pick,” she said. “At the end of the day, you’re running a business and none of those advisors are. Take all of the advice, but make your own decisions so you can see the line.”
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