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Well, here's a problem with your approach. Say you are a startup in storage niche. Well, big companies aren't going to try using you because you need to have

Well, here's a problem with your approach. Say you are a startup in storage niche. Well, big companies aren't going to try using you because you need to have like 10+ years of proven work record before they even consider trying. So, you find yourself in a catch 22 situation. What you can do is find another startup who'd agree to use your product. Maybe fore cheap. Maybe for sharing some resources with them, like marketing or engineering expertise in some area. And that's the only way to get any "mileage". Maybe you could bribe your way in, or maybe you could be "lucky" to personally know someone important in a big company, which will allow you to gather that mileage without cooperating with other startups... but if you are a nobody, not only won't you be able to get an interview with a relevant exec, you won't be even able to contact that exec to ask for an interview. These people treat their interviews as a hugely valuable service which they aren't willing to provide to the plebs.

jpgvm 3y ago
Storage (and other kinds of infra startups) all face these problems. They are solved via a number of factors: 1. Huge amounts of upfront VC investment to allow time to actually build out an enterprise ready product. 2. Leadership heavyweights with experience in the industry, both on the business relationship side and equally importantly on the technical side. These two factors allow people like Andy Bechtolsheim and John Colgrove to build these sorts of companies and sell directly into enterprise from the get go. This makes sense because startups have no money to spend on these things anyway, enterprises are used to accepting some free/cheap hardware to "test things out". In fact when I used to run an IaaS company we would frequently get a free box or two when AMD or Intel launched a new CPU architecture, they would push marketing spend through Dell or HP to allow us to have one to play with. These aren't the companies I was talking about though. I was talking about chasing shiny things that are half-baked. You can't sell a half-baked storage product to anyone so it's not really a concern.

jpgvm 3y ago

Storage (and other kinds of infra startups) all face these problems. They are solved via a number of factors: 1. Huge amounts of upfront VC investment to allow time to actually build out an enterprise ready product. 2. Leadership heavyweights with experience in the industry, both on the business relationship side and equally importantly on the technical side. These two factors allow people like Andy Bechtolsheim and John Colgrove to build these sorts of companies and sell directly into enterprise from the get go. This makes sense because startups have no money to spend on these things anyway, enterprises are used to accepting some free/cheap hardware to "test things out". In fact when I used to run an IaaS company we would frequently get a free box or two when AMD or Intel launched a new CPU architecture, they would push marketing spend through Dell or HP to allow us to have one to play with. These aren't the companies I was talking about though. I was talking about chasing shiny things that are half-baked. You can't sell a half-baked storage product to anyone so it's not really a concern.