I was recently working for a customer that was heavily invested in an older version of Microsoft Dynamics, but they were considering alternatives for their CRM

I was recently working for a customer that was heavily invested in an older version of Microsoft Dynamics, but they were considering alternatives for their CRM platform. Salesforce was one of the options. They were a sales organization, so CRM was a very central tool for them, and they needed lots of customization and applications build on top of the CRM. So CRM selection was more than selecting a tool, it was selecting a platform, an ecosystem, method of developing apps etc. The reason they were considering the alternatives at all was that practically all of the MS Dynamics customization was built based on direct database access, and Microsoft no longer supports the versions that allow that. That, and all CRM development was behind one person, which was huge risk for a multi-billion dollar company. Salesforce was one of the alternatives, not due to it being technically superior, or even having a better UI, but because this customer was not really a software house, so they wanted to avoid in-house software development as much as possible. One part of that was to outsource CRM-related development, to "focus on their core competencies". When people say "network effects", this is what they talk about. What would have it taken for them to consider a startup like this as the CRM platform? They did not really consider HubSpot nor 100% custom frameworks as alternatives. You had to be in the Gartner magic quandrant to be considered a serious alternative. I am not saying you should target customers like this, but I believe it may helpful to think if this is the kind of customer you want to win in the long run, and what would it take to win a customer like this. In that company, sales wanted MS Dynamics, because that was what the sales people were used to. IT wanted Salesforce, because they believed they could just outsource the CRM-related development work to Salesforce consultants, and integration narrative is strong for Salesforce due to Mulesoft. They ended up choosing MS Dynamics, because in a sales orgazation, sales brings in the money, so everything else supports sales, and sales calls the shots.