[stevenminhhh]

I think there is a fine line between iteratively developing your product as a whole and leaning it completely toward your biggest customers. It might not be ideal to turn your product development team into a software solution team that trying to meet every customers' needs.

> These are in general good ideas that we'd like to build anyway in time.

Meaning these features are already somewhere in your product roadmap. How about just share your future development plan and give them access to professional customer support? Anything further than that like shifting development effort to their needs completely just feel wrong in a product point of view. Sell your most valuable features, not your dev team.

> Are there alternatives means of partnering with customers that would give us the resources to develop faster without loosing our focus on the overall product and commitment to quality over deadlines?

This might be highly unrelated due to different business model, but for my previous startup I stuck in the same boat for a while. Eventually, I made part of my product open-source, build a community of fans that love the product. Afterward, the development support and contribution from the community is enough to keep the product going.