4 ms·

Competing with BigCo

48 points by kawera 9y ago

jarym 9y ago
Article started off well and nothing seemed to be wrong with it except it was quite long and couldn’t keep me engaged until the end. Sorry - honest feedback!
- Fnoord 9y ago
  To be fair it does say on top: 25 min read (feature of Medium).
  - heliodor 9y ago
    OP is onto something. While there's nothing wrong with a long article, structure becomes important. The argument structure, choice of headlines, first sentence of each paragraph, paragraph length, etc, make all the difference between keeping your readers engaged or losing them partway.
AstralStorm 9y ago
Quite trite. The problem is that as a start-up you won't be able to command much of any enterprise unless you're specifically in the business of long term support plans. (And no one will believe you are.) This is how "filling the seam" fails. Making a truly best product rewrites a comparable marketing effort. Where disruption actually happened is with new areas with clout to back it up or entirely new fields. Amazon had sales clout, MS had already sold its BASIC to enterprise (a new product you couldn't get anywhere else) before the Windows and Office hits. To IBM too. Apple made a quite cheap and fully functional microcomputer when it was a fledgling field. Later expanded the portfolio using accumulated clout. Google made a great internet search engine. They used clout accumulated by that to push more complex services like GMail or platforms like Android. (YouTube was a buy.) I would like to see some examples to the contrary. The blog lacks a lot of concrete examples.
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  Yes this exactly. We were a consumer facing company that moved into supporting enterprise and saw this firsthand. At the beginning our potential clients would go with a sub-par product because they were really buying the support, network, relationship etc... of an existing vendor of theirs who was doing a poor version of what we do. After years in the industry people start to trust you and they buy your product cause they know you. Start small is always the best approach.

48 points by kawera 9y ago

Article started off well and nothing seemed to be wrong with it except it was quite long and couldn’t keep me engaged until the end. Sorry - honest feedback!

Fnoord 9y ago
To be fair it does say on top: 25 min read (feature of Medium).
- heliodor 9y ago
  OP is onto something. While there's nothing wrong with a long article, structure becomes important. The argument structure, choice of headlines, first sentence of each paragraph, paragraph length, etc, make all the difference between keeping your readers engaged or losing them partway.

AstralStorm 9y ago

Quite trite. The problem is that as a start-up you won't be able to command much of any enterprise unless you're specifically in the business of long term support plans. (And no one will believe you are.) This is how "filling the seam" fails. Making a truly best product rewrites a comparable marketing effort. Where disruption actually happened is with new areas with clout to back it up or entirely new fields. Amazon had sales clout, MS had already sold its BASIC to enterprise (a new product you couldn't get anywhere else) before the Windows and Office hits. To IBM too. Apple made a quite cheap and fully functional microcomputer when it was a fledgling field. Later expanded the portfolio using accumulated clout. Google made a great internet search engine. They used clout accumulated by that to push more complex services like GMail or platforms like Android. (YouTube was a buy.) I would like to see some examples to the contrary. The blog lacks a lot of concrete examples.

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Yes this exactly. We were a consumer facing company that moved into supporting enterprise and saw this firsthand. At the beginning our potential clients would go with a sub-par product because they were really buying the support, network, relationship etc... of an existing vendor of theirs who was doing a poor version of what we do. After years in the industry people start to trust you and they buy your product cause they know you. Start small is always the best approach.