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> 2) it addresses a key part of their workflow, but the primary process exists in some other system so they are not willing to add a new system, This cannot be

> 2) it addresses a key part of their workflow, but the primary process exists in some other system so they are not willing to add a new system, This cannot be overstated enough. If you are planning a B2B product, especially anything middleware-ish, not planning for this on your upfront is just begging for failure.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
Yeah, there are so so many B2B products that don’t seem to realize being 10% to 20% better than the existing X in a large company is close to meaningless. In practice it has to be more like 200% better, at least, to be a viable competitor that has realistic prospects of being adopted.
- chubot 2y ago
  Yeah the way I think of it is that most big organizations are willing to burn the costs of a whole employee or a whole team to avoid adopting new/risky software As long as the cost is kinda spread out and not directly visible by management So yeah just being 20% better doesn’t mean anything, because most big orgs are much more inefficient than that anyway, almost across the board
  - hobs 2y ago
    Many people have to remember that the initial glut of SaaS sales were because they were transferring old and very broken software models into one they could charge a monthly fee on. Most younger folks wont have an experience of enterprisey stuff like remoting into a terminal server so that you could run a fat client in a shitty and slow network connection, or have the most awkward tech stack installed on your local computer. Moving to "its just a website" was way more than a 200% improvement on many things, even with the tradeoffs that javascript gave, moving people to the next level of more streamlined workflows doesn't have nearly the sales pitch.
- cortesoft 2y ago
  Yeah... I am not sure people understand how powerful inertia is at bigger companies. It is incredibly difficult to overcome.
- danielmarkbruce 2y ago
  There is a reason even smart folks throw around "10x on some valuable dimension" as some kind of rule of thumb. It's not a bad rule.

MichaelZuo 2y ago

Yeah, there are so so many B2B products that don’t seem to realize being 10% to 20% better than the existing X in a large company is close to meaningless. In practice it has to be more like 200% better, at least, to be a viable competitor that has realistic prospects of being adopted.

chubot 2y ago
Yeah the way I think of it is that most big organizations are willing to burn the costs of a whole employee or a whole team to avoid adopting new/risky software As long as the cost is kinda spread out and not directly visible by management So yeah just being 20% better doesn’t mean anything, because most big orgs are much more inefficient than that anyway, almost across the board
- hobs 2y ago
  Many people have to remember that the initial glut of SaaS sales were because they were transferring old and very broken software models into one they could charge a monthly fee on. Most younger folks wont have an experience of enterprisey stuff like remoting into a terminal server so that you could run a fat client in a shitty and slow network connection, or have the most awkward tech stack installed on your local computer. Moving to "its just a website" was way more than a 200% improvement on many things, even with the tradeoffs that javascript gave, moving people to the next level of more streamlined workflows doesn't have nearly the sales pitch.
cortesoft 2y ago
Yeah... I am not sure people understand how powerful inertia is at bigger companies. It is incredibly difficult to overcome.
danielmarkbruce 2y ago
There is a reason even smart folks throw around "10x on some valuable dimension" as some kind of rule of thumb. It's not a bad rule.