4 ms·

Siasto Attempts the Improbable: Making Enterprise Software Beautiful (YC W11)

36 points by niccolop 14y ago

tarr11 14y ago
Is this a more well designed replacement for Yammer? Hard to tell what the use case is from the article.
- niccolop 14y ago
  It's more like a better designed basecamp, a place to manage projects. Email us at contact@siasto.com if you have questions.
maukdaddy 14y ago
I'd hardly call that enterprise software. When you can make any of the following somewhat more painless, and marginally prettier, you'll make $$$: - SAP - PeopleSoft - Pretty much any ERP or financial application
- arethuza 14y ago
  Actually, to be fair to Microsoft, Dynamics AX 2012 is actually fairly reasonable looking.
  - mickeyp 14y ago
    And fairly easy to extend with C# to boot.
- mbesto 14y ago
  >I'd hardly call that enterprise software. Agreed. >When you can make any of the following somewhat more painless, and marginally prettier, you'll make $$$ Painless to who? The person who uses enterprise software isn't the person who is buying it. If I can give any startup (without a large sales team) any advice, it's stay far away from enterprise software. The only who might be able to pull it off is Workday or SalesForce.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
se85 14y ago
There is nothing enterprise about this at all, its just yet another project management portal with a pretty design and a simplistic feature set (the complete opposite of what an enterprise needs). ...And to confirm my thoughts, the linked post basically says in the first paragraph that design is the reason for many problems behind enterprise software.... I think a lot of potential enterprise customers who have to deal with the problems associated with poor enterprise solutions daily would never give you guys a second look after saying something so....unrealistic? The reality is that most enterprise software I've ever had to work with has had far bigger issues than UX and design, and due to office politics among many other roadblocks, software with these known issues can remain running for years with no fixes, or half assed fixes at best, before a decision is finally made to deal with the situation, and at this point, the cycle repeats itself again. Do you honestly think that corporations are going to break the cycle and do something different and drastic (such as changing all their workflows to suit your tool for example) just because your stuff looks prettier and easier to use? When large companies are looking to replace architecture, there is usually a pretty big reason behind it, and many people who need to be sold on the idea for final approval, this isn't going to happen because of anything design related, it will almost certainly be feature or strategy related. You will find very limited traction going down this path. Enterprise is all about features, workflows, politics and (sometimes but rarely) reducing costs (from a product and man-hours point of view), all I see is a simple project management tool that doesn't address any of this. The idea of a cloud distributed project management portal arguably makes it non-enterprise automatically (security or privacy policies anyone?) as does the fact that you guys are clearly not an enterprise yourself (although there is little you can do about this, it just puts you at an automatic disadvantage for consideration amongst many large corporations). How will you guys support a support contract for an enterprise with 1000 users? What about 5000? Hows about 20,000? My point behind all of this is that, to break the software lifecycle in large corporations in large numbers requires large amounts of money, and many multi-faceted strategies (which require considerable head counts), amongst many other complex considerations. I suggest you guys have a long and hard think about who your customer really is in enterprise (its not the end user, its middle management) and think about pivoting into something which would ultimately not be as disruptive to an enterprise as a new project management portal (for the 10th time in as many years, as is usually the case) or ditch enterprise altogether, it sounds like you guys have a lot to learn before you can build a product for the enterprise, and there is nothing fun about doing this, trust me! I do really like what you guys have done so far from a product point of view, the problem is that it totally is not appropriate for enterprise and is a very very long way from being even close, I think you guys should be doing something more like what Yammer are doing with their general business strategy (not targetting enterprises, just businesses, big and small, but mostly small) to have any chance at success, and because of the industry you have chosen (project management) with the added bonus of Yammer as a competitor its going to be tough to gain any traction regardless of business strategy, but you guys should be looking to at least maximise your chances instead of shooting yourselves in the foot. Pivot. - An ex-enterprise programmer.
Seth_Kriticos 14y ago
I really wish someone would start to make enterprise software well documented. Most of the stuff I have to deal with has a truckload of marketing bullcrap and very little sane technical documentation with a total lack of community. Also most of the stuff is very unflexible, outdated and slower than a snail. I can go on all day, there is no end to the weirdness of "enterprise" software. It's really bad.
cwilson 14y ago
While I'd definitely not call this enterprise, I am impressed by how elegantly all of the features they do have are implemented. Yes, it's a simple product, but I actually quite like that (so many project management systems are bloated with excess features for edge cases). I'm particularly pleased with how easy it was to grab everything from Google Calendar and Google Docs. Most of all I was blown away by the new user experience. I'm making all of my co-founders go through it simply so they see what a great new user experience is like, and understand why I obsess over such things (as well as to see if they might like using this over say, Asana).
edw519 14y ago
Sorry to burst your bubble, but costmetic issues in the enterprise are exactly that: cosmetic. You may think people care about them, but believe me, they don't. Enterprise people need solutions to their problems and answers to their questions, no matter how pretty. Just one (out of thousands) of everyday examples: I already know from existing reporting that 984 orders (18% of our backlog) are already past due. For those 984 orders: - How many are for one item and how many are for multiples? - Do we own what we owe those customers? - If we do own it, is it in the proper warehouse? - If it is in the proper warehouse, can we find it? - If we can find it, is it undamaged and certified? - If it's shippable, do we have enough labor to ship it? - If it isn't certified, how soon can QA certify it? - If it isn't in the right warehouse, can we move it? - If we don't own any, where can we get some? - Which vendors have it on the shelf? - Which vendors do we have blanket purchase orders with? - Which vendors do we have contracts with? - Which orders can be split to satisfy a partial? - Which orders are for customers already on credit hold? - Which customers are threatening not to renew with us? and (ironically) the most asked question of all: - Which orders must be shipped to hit our quarterly numbers? Carve the answers to those questions into a pile of shit, and enterprise customers will dump the contents of their wallets into your bank account. Give them something pretty that doesn't answer those questions and you're just wasting your time.

36 points by niccolop 14y ago

tarr11 14y ago

Is this a more well designed replacement for Yammer? Hard to tell what the use case is from the article.

niccolop 14y ago
It's more like a better designed basecamp, a place to manage projects. Email us at contact@siasto.com if you have questions.

maukdaddy 14y ago

I'd hardly call that enterprise software. When you can make any of the following somewhat more painless, and marginally prettier, you'll make $$$: - SAP - PeopleSoft - Pretty much any ERP or financial application

arethuza 14y ago
Actually, to be fair to Microsoft, Dynamics AX 2012 is actually fairly reasonable looking.
- mickeyp 14y ago
  And fairly easy to extend with C# to boot.
mbesto 14y ago
>I'd hardly call that enterprise software. Agreed. >When you can make any of the following somewhat more painless, and marginally prettier, you'll make $$$ Painless to who? The person who uses enterprise software isn't the person who is buying it. If I can give any startup (without a large sales team) any advice, it's stay far away from enterprise software. The only who might be able to pull it off is Workday or SalesForce.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

se85 14y ago

There is nothing enterprise about this at all, its just yet another project management portal with a pretty design and a simplistic feature set (the complete opposite of what an enterprise needs). ...And to confirm my thoughts, the linked post basically says in the first paragraph that design is the reason for many problems behind enterprise software.... I think a lot of potential enterprise customers who have to deal with the problems associated with poor enterprise solutions daily would never give you guys a second look after saying something so....unrealistic? The reality is that most enterprise software I've ever had to work with has had far bigger issues than UX and design, and due to office politics among many other roadblocks, software with these known issues can remain running for years with no fixes, or half assed fixes at best, before a decision is finally made to deal with the situation, and at this point, the cycle repeats itself again. Do you honestly think that corporations are going to break the cycle and do something different and drastic (such as changing all their workflows to suit your tool for example) just because your stuff looks prettier and easier to use? When large companies are looking to replace architecture, there is usually a pretty big reason behind it, and many people who need to be sold on the idea for final approval, this isn't going to happen because of anything design related, it will almost certainly be feature or strategy related. You will find very limited traction going down this path. Enterprise is all about features, workflows, politics and (sometimes but rarely) reducing costs (from a product and man-hours point of view), all I see is a simple project management tool that doesn't address any of this. The idea of a cloud distributed project management portal arguably makes it non-enterprise automatically (security or privacy policies anyone?) as does the fact that you guys are clearly not an enterprise yourself (although there is little you can do about this, it just puts you at an automatic disadvantage for consideration amongst many large corporations). How will you guys support a support contract for an enterprise with 1000 users? What about 5000? Hows about 20,000? My point behind all of this is that, to break the software lifecycle in large corporations in large numbers requires large amounts of money, and many multi-faceted strategies (which require considerable head counts), amongst many other complex considerations. I suggest you guys have a long and hard think about who your customer really is in enterprise (its not the end user, its middle management) and think about pivoting into something which would ultimately not be as disruptive to an enterprise as a new project management portal (for the 10th time in as many years, as is usually the case) or ditch enterprise altogether, it sounds like you guys have a lot to learn before you can build a product for the enterprise, and there is nothing fun about doing this, trust me! I do really like what you guys have done so far from a product point of view, the problem is that it totally is not appropriate for enterprise and is a very very long way from being even close, I think you guys should be doing something more like what Yammer are doing with their general business strategy (not targetting enterprises, just businesses, big and small, but mostly small) to have any chance at success, and because of the industry you have chosen (project management) with the added bonus of Yammer as a competitor its going to be tough to gain any traction regardless of business strategy, but you guys should be looking to at least maximise your chances instead of shooting yourselves in the foot. Pivot. - An ex-enterprise programmer.

Seth_Kriticos 14y ago

I really wish someone would start to make enterprise software well documented. Most of the stuff I have to deal with has a truckload of marketing bullcrap and very little sane technical documentation with a total lack of community. Also most of the stuff is very unflexible, outdated and slower than a snail. I can go on all day, there is no end to the weirdness of "enterprise" software. It's really bad.

cwilson 14y ago

While I'd definitely not call this enterprise, I am impressed by how elegantly all of the features they do have are implemented. Yes, it's a simple product, but I actually quite like that (so many project management systems are bloated with excess features for edge cases). I'm particularly pleased with how easy it was to grab everything from Google Calendar and Google Docs. Most of all I was blown away by the new user experience. I'm making all of my co-founders go through it simply so they see what a great new user experience is like, and understand why I obsess over such things (as well as to see if they might like using this over say, Asana).

edw519 14y ago

Sorry to burst your bubble, but costmetic issues in the enterprise are exactly that: cosmetic. You may think people care about them, but believe me, they don't. Enterprise people need solutions to their problems and answers to their questions, no matter how pretty. Just one (out of thousands) of everyday examples: I already know from existing reporting that 984 orders (18% of our backlog) are already past due. For those 984 orders: - How many are for one item and how many are for multiples? - Do we own what we owe those customers? - If we do own it, is it in the proper warehouse? - If it is in the proper warehouse, can we find it? - If we can find it, is it undamaged and certified? - If it's shippable, do we have enough labor to ship it? - If it isn't certified, how soon can QA certify it? - If it isn't in the right warehouse, can we move it? - If we don't own any, where can we get some? - Which vendors have it on the shelf? - Which vendors do we have blanket purchase orders with? - Which vendors do we have contracts with? - Which orders can be split to satisfy a partial? - Which orders are for customers already on credit hold? - Which customers are threatening not to renew with us? and (ironically) the most asked question of all: - Which orders must be shipped to hit our quarterly numbers? Carve the answers to those questions into a pile of shit, and enterprise customers will dump the contents of their wallets into your bank account. Give them something pretty that doesn't answer those questions and you're just wasting your time.