I am not interested in defending or advertising the product or company. I am on Hacker News, a site for people interested in startups that serves as a something

I am not interested in defending or advertising the product or company. I am on Hacker News, a site for people interested in startups that serves as a something of a feeder for Ycombinator. My interest is in discussing the dynamics of making and selling enterprise software so that my fellow HNers and I gain more insight into what to build and how to sell it. At the risk of an appeal to authority, I have been in the enterprise technology business since the late 1980s. I have held position in sales and marketing before my current career in engineering. In engineering I have had roles on both the IC ladder (I am currently a Principal Engineer) and the management ladder (topping out as a Director of Engineering). I don't regard this as a game we play for the purpose of bamboozling stupid customers into overpaying for software. I think that's a remarkably poor perspective on how business works, very similar in my mind to calling all Apple users "fanbois." It's a way of dismissing a large and complex equation that encompasses complex organizations, individuals within those organizations, various tradeoffs and aggregations of value, and so on and so forth. Reducing it to a simplistic take that it's all about marketing bullshit is low-effort and contributes nothing to anyone who wants to enter this space or survive if the economics of what they build indicates--as it did with companies like DropBox and 1Password--that they need to pivot to enterprise. Everything you are saying that drips with contempt for enterprise SaaS business, is also expressing contempt for their customers. I do not hold our customers or those who buy from our competitors in contempt, I admire them all: They have built businesses that advance technology, grow our economies, and employ people (modulo the current climate for employment). If you want to model the world as companies picking products with a dart toss, that's your business. But I'm not dignifying your position, I think it is absolutely not a foundation for success selling into these markets.