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I appreciate your feedback. My question above is not about the mechanics of deploying commercial scientific software (it certainly somewhat varies between field

by ablekh 6y ago

I appreciate your feedback. My question above is not about the mechanics of deploying commercial scientific software (it certainly somewhat varies between fields and organizations, though common themes and methods are pretty standard). It is about the procurement processes within national labs ecosystem. That is, about governmental gating / filters "in front of" vendors' go-to-market strategy and processes (RFPs, pilots etc.). Re: more details - I'm not working in computational chemistry per se, but in the adjacent and closely related, as you understand, field of materials science and engineering. Will be happy to discuss my plans (within limits - currently very early and in stealth) through direct channels. You can connect with me on LinkedIn or shoot me an e-mail (see above).

lmeyerov 6y ago
We do visual GPU graph tech close to core national lab missions (sec, fraud, misinfo, genetics, social, ...) so are in a similar boat. While I love the folks doing related work at PNNL (and am inspired!), I also recognize, done wrong, we can be existentially threatening to internal groups building related things. Instead of aggressively persuing contracts and spending effort getting into nasty politics, we let the users come to us: we are there when the internal tools groups rather do other stuff vs do the multi-year investment. We are now focusing a lot more on enabling researchers to find and try us on public cloud / the web -- this road takes literally years longer for reaching those teams, but these are government labs, so that's the default assumption to begin with. (Likewise, not the cornerstone of our revenue.) Years later, folks are starting to write RFPs using us. As a scientist, I love the community, and respect that we should assist it appropriately.
- ablekh 6y ago
  Thank you for sharing your thoughts. If I understood you correctly (the text's meaning appears somewhat fuzzy), your go-to-market strategy is to first collaborate (and/or consult?) - perhaps, through your "PoCs and Rapid Prototyping" services - and then allow users to "pull" your capabilities and core service into their labs. Right? Having said that, I haven't seen any science-focused channels, resources or offers on your website ...
  - lmeyerov 6y ago
    I do not advocate a go to market that prioritizes these markets. We started more with enterprise/federal data architects, which involved a different go to market - not self serve on a website. We (and our broader market) are now at point where it is easier for us to launch self-serve and help adjacent roles. Stay tuned :) This fits better with national labs market too afaict. We already quite heavily discount on-prem for edu etc, and I expect we will see that carry through here: bottom-up early cloud use -> discounted on-prem. As budgets are mostly hw or small, and follow slow grant/annual cycles, hard to see going another way. Two market trends relevant: -- Federal: without quite special circumstances, can easily take 3+ years for a new fed sales team to pay for itself -- Edu: small budgets to begin with Better to target fast happy-to-spend teams and as tech/sales/product gets easy, easier to help adjacent markets. Got burned whenever we didn't :)
    - ablekh 6y ago
      I appreciate your additional insights. Will take time to parse it in detail. Just to clarify, my planned go-to-market strategy is hybrid (white-glove, typical for complex B2B solutions, and self-serve), since my target users - researchers and engineers - are from several major sectors (in the order of current priority): large-to-medium enterprises, national labs, small companies, academia (both research and education) - the last two are of ~ equal priority. Currently, I'm not too concerned about structuring the exact mix as well as tactical details of this strategy implementation - first, I need to validate my core ideas (from scientific and technological perspectives, not from the market validation perspective) and build a decent enough (for B2B enterprise) MVP. Easier said than done ... Oh well. :-)

by ablekh 6y ago

lmeyerov 6y ago

We do visual GPU graph tech close to core national lab missions (sec, fraud, misinfo, genetics, social, ...) so are in a similar boat. While I love the folks doing related work at PNNL (and am inspired!), I also recognize, done wrong, we can be existentially threatening to internal groups building related things. Instead of aggressively persuing contracts and spending effort getting into nasty politics, we let the users come to us: we are there when the internal tools groups rather do other stuff vs do the multi-year investment. We are now focusing a lot more on enabling researchers to find and try us on public cloud / the web -- this road takes literally years longer for reaching those teams, but these are government labs, so that's the default assumption to begin with. (Likewise, not the cornerstone of our revenue.) Years later, folks are starting to write RFPs using us. As a scientist, I love the community, and respect that we should assist it appropriately.

ablekh 6y ago
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. If I understood you correctly (the text's meaning appears somewhat fuzzy), your go-to-market strategy is to first collaborate (and/or consult?) - perhaps, through your "PoCs and Rapid Prototyping" services - and then allow users to "pull" your capabilities and core service into their labs. Right? Having said that, I haven't seen any science-focused channels, resources or offers on your website ...
- lmeyerov 6y ago
  I do not advocate a go to market that prioritizes these markets. We started more with enterprise/federal data architects, which involved a different go to market - not self serve on a website. We (and our broader market) are now at point where it is easier for us to launch self-serve and help adjacent roles. Stay tuned :) This fits better with national labs market too afaict. We already quite heavily discount on-prem for edu etc, and I expect we will see that carry through here: bottom-up early cloud use -> discounted on-prem. As budgets are mostly hw or small, and follow slow grant/annual cycles, hard to see going another way. Two market trends relevant: -- Federal: without quite special circumstances, can easily take 3+ years for a new fed sales team to pay for itself -- Edu: small budgets to begin with Better to target fast happy-to-spend teams and as tech/sales/product gets easy, easier to help adjacent markets. Got burned whenever we didn't :)
  - ablekh 6y ago
    I appreciate your additional insights. Will take time to parse it in detail. Just to clarify, my planned go-to-market strategy is hybrid (white-glove, typical for complex B2B solutions, and self-serve), since my target users - researchers and engineers - are from several major sectors (in the order of current priority): large-to-medium enterprises, national labs, small companies, academia (both research and education) - the last two are of ~ equal priority. Currently, I'm not too concerned about structuring the exact mix as well as tactical details of this strategy implementation - first, I need to validate my core ideas (from scientific and technological perspectives, not from the market validation perspective) and build a decent enough (for B2B enterprise) MVP. Easier said than done ... Oh well. :-)