5 ms·

this sounds great, but my question as a startup developer, is how would we get past the iron curtain of these businesses? You basically need to be on the insid

by hnwh 14y ago

this sounds great, but my question as a startup developer, is how would we get past the iron curtain of these businesses? You basically need to be on the inside, in order to recognize a problem, and develop the solution. Not to mention the fact that, if the existing thing somewhat works.. why would the business want to change for a "technically" better solution?

Radim 14y ago
Spot on. In enterprise B2B, nobody's going to give the time of the day to a startup whizzkid just because his solution is technologically better or faster or whatever, without connections and financial backing (stability). Enterprise is more about who knows who. Painful sales cycles. Talking to loads of people across many business layers (while greasing the right pockets, dinners, gifts and whatnot). Anonymous B2C is popular with startups for a reason.
sachingulaya 14y ago
Being on the inside is great--but you can just as easily look at the functionality of the existing software and then build an improved version. They would want to change because "somewhat works" is exactly that--somewhat works. The software that I mentioned in the post above took 45 minutes to export a single site report. The reporting was so bad that they actually had accepted that they would need 6 full-time positions in accounting just to reconcile the reporting and make progress sheets for their 500+ investors. They are desperate for an alternative solution but they are already dealing with the least-worst software available.
fookyong 14y ago
those aren't easy questions to address, sure. The scenario then is this: is it easier to achieve the massive scale needed to make a B2C startup profitable, or is it easier to spend time breaking down the iron curtain? Seems to me the latter problem is solved with domain expertise, which you can hire. There is no silver-bullet to the former problem. Your last point is valid but misses one point I was trying to make. The low-hanging fruit in the enterprise world is not solving problems that have already been solved shittily (like creating a competitor to LotusNotes, which is almost universally hated). I agree, that's a tough sell. The low-hanging fruit is solving problems that haven't actually been solved yet. Sure, you need to spend time in middle or back office at a big company to see these problems but so what? Go out, get a job, discover problems. You can't expect to dream up solutions out of thin air.
trapexit 14y ago
These are just limiting beliefs. Don't believe me? Good. Treat them as hypotheses and test them. You will be astonished. (Except for the last bit about why businesses buy; you're right there. The reason that big company decision-makers buy is not that the new product is "technically" better. They buy because they are convinced that the new product will deliver a better return on investment and also convinced that the decision will not blow in their face and get them fired.)
- Radim 14y ago
  You mean, build a statistically relevant sample of B2B products and then "test" selling them to enterprises? I guess I must have misunderstood, because this is not worthwhile advice :)
  - trapexit 14y ago
    The example hypothesis is: "you do not need to be on the inside, or have a pre-existing connection on the inside, in order to create a successful B2B product". How would you test this? Yes, one way is to build B2B products without any input and then try to sell them. Many people try to do this. This is, as you pointed out, a really terrible approach. A much better approach is just to hit the streets or the phones and talk to potential customers. Maybe you think they'll blow you off (and in my experience, yes, some of them will). But what I'm asking you to test experimentally is that 100% of them will blow you off. I have actually tried this, and the surprising result is that this is simply not the case. But don't believe me. Try it for yourself. Once you have people who will talk to you, then you can find out their problems. Once you know what their problems are, you can see if other people in that position have similar problems. Pick the most painful one of these problems, and, with your new industry insider friends to guide you, build an awesome product. My big point here is that one should not simply accept limiting beliefs about what is and is not possible without actually putting them to the test. Do the uncomfortable thing. Grow.
mmahemoff 14y ago
You can't compete with $MEGACORP on fancy dinners, but you can compete on great products, which they generally suck hard at. Look at GitHub, who presumably have giant enterprise accounts by now. But they started by making something great for hackers. While enterprises might seem like cold places devoid of humanity, a lot of people inside the enterprise want to get stuff done as much as anyone else. They will pay out of their own pocket and claim the cost as an expense later. They will fight internally to adopt products, etc. And once an app is used by a team, if it's good, it has the potential to spread virally inside the company. Other examples: Evernote (who just launched Evernote Business), Google Docs (the word processor came from Writely), Yammer, Atlassian's Confluence. I expect Trello is already used all over the enterprise and will be turning profits on that too.
jacques_chester 14y ago
This is a good reason for getting out and doing other things in your life, apart from cutting code. Otherwise, just talk to people at parties. Everyone works with some horrible system. People talk about the "information revolution" as if it's over. Look around at the amount of paper forms still being pushed around -- it's hardly even started.
jkaljundi 14y ago
Start small. Start with 5 person customers. 10. 25. 100. 500. Grow as you go. Talk to people. Friends. Family. People who have jobs. Who can intro you to their managers. Ask questions. Listen listen listen. Spend your time out of the office, out on the streets, doing customer visits. Read and learn everything about an area you might want to solve. Succeed.
jaggederest 14y ago
Honestly? Consulting. The best way to sell products is to sell your time to the company, assess it's problems, and then help to solve them with software you've written. Per 9000 HN posts to this date, you don't want to be someone who writes software, you want to be someone who solves problems.
- pjmlp 14y ago
  That is how I moved from religious OS and language wars to just code regardless of technology. Customers want their problem solved in a specific way, they don't care about the OS or language of the month.

by hnwh 14y ago

Radim 14y ago

Spot on. In enterprise B2B, nobody's going to give the time of the day to a startup whizzkid just because his solution is technologically better or faster or whatever, without connections and financial backing (stability). Enterprise is more about who knows who. Painful sales cycles. Talking to loads of people across many business layers (while greasing the right pockets, dinners, gifts and whatnot). Anonymous B2C is popular with startups for a reason.

sachingulaya 14y ago

Being on the inside is great--but you can just as easily look at the functionality of the existing software and then build an improved version. They would want to change because "somewhat works" is exactly that--somewhat works. The software that I mentioned in the post above took 45 minutes to export a single site report. The reporting was so bad that they actually had accepted that they would need 6 full-time positions in accounting just to reconcile the reporting and make progress sheets for their 500+ investors. They are desperate for an alternative solution but they are already dealing with the least-worst software available.

fookyong 14y ago

those aren't easy questions to address, sure. The scenario then is this: is it easier to achieve the massive scale needed to make a B2C startup profitable, or is it easier to spend time breaking down the iron curtain? Seems to me the latter problem is solved with domain expertise, which you can hire. There is no silver-bullet to the former problem. Your last point is valid but misses one point I was trying to make. The low-hanging fruit in the enterprise world is not solving problems that have already been solved shittily (like creating a competitor to LotusNotes, which is almost universally hated). I agree, that's a tough sell. The low-hanging fruit is solving problems that haven't actually been solved yet. Sure, you need to spend time in middle or back office at a big company to see these problems but so what? Go out, get a job, discover problems. You can't expect to dream up solutions out of thin air.

trapexit 14y ago

These are just limiting beliefs. Don't believe me? Good. Treat them as hypotheses and test them. You will be astonished. (Except for the last bit about why businesses buy; you're right there. The reason that big company decision-makers buy is not that the new product is "technically" better. They buy because they are convinced that the new product will deliver a better return on investment and also convinced that the decision will not blow in their face and get them fired.)

Radim 14y ago
You mean, build a statistically relevant sample of B2B products and then "test" selling them to enterprises? I guess I must have misunderstood, because this is not worthwhile advice :)
- trapexit 14y ago
  The example hypothesis is: "you do not need to be on the inside, or have a pre-existing connection on the inside, in order to create a successful B2B product". How would you test this? Yes, one way is to build B2B products without any input and then try to sell them. Many people try to do this. This is, as you pointed out, a really terrible approach. A much better approach is just to hit the streets or the phones and talk to potential customers. Maybe you think they'll blow you off (and in my experience, yes, some of them will). But what I'm asking you to test experimentally is that 100% of them will blow you off. I have actually tried this, and the surprising result is that this is simply not the case. But don't believe me. Try it for yourself. Once you have people who will talk to you, then you can find out their problems. Once you know what their problems are, you can see if other people in that position have similar problems. Pick the most painful one of these problems, and, with your new industry insider friends to guide you, build an awesome product. My big point here is that one should not simply accept limiting beliefs about what is and is not possible without actually putting them to the test. Do the uncomfortable thing. Grow.

mmahemoff 14y ago

You can't compete with $MEGACORP on fancy dinners, but you can compete on great products, which they generally suck hard at. Look at GitHub, who presumably have giant enterprise accounts by now. But they started by making something great for hackers. While enterprises might seem like cold places devoid of humanity, a lot of people inside the enterprise want to get stuff done as much as anyone else. They will pay out of their own pocket and claim the cost as an expense later. They will fight internally to adopt products, etc. And once an app is used by a team, if it's good, it has the potential to spread virally inside the company. Other examples: Evernote (who just launched Evernote Business), Google Docs (the word processor came from Writely), Yammer, Atlassian's Confluence. I expect Trello is already used all over the enterprise and will be turning profits on that too.

jacques_chester 14y ago

This is a good reason for getting out and doing other things in your life, apart from cutting code. Otherwise, just talk to people at parties. Everyone works with some horrible system. People talk about the "information revolution" as if it's over. Look around at the amount of paper forms still being pushed around -- it's hardly even started.

jkaljundi 14y ago

Start small. Start with 5 person customers. 10. 25. 100. 500. Grow as you go. Talk to people. Friends. Family. People who have jobs. Who can intro you to their managers. Ask questions. Listen listen listen. Spend your time out of the office, out on the streets, doing customer visits. Read and learn everything about an area you might want to solve. Succeed.

jaggederest 14y ago

Honestly? Consulting. The best way to sell products is to sell your time to the company, assess it's problems, and then help to solve them with software you've written. Per 9000 HN posts to this date, you don't want to be someone who writes software, you want to be someone who solves problems.

pjmlp 14y ago
That is how I moved from religious OS and language wars to just code regardless of technology. Customers want their problem solved in a specific way, they don't care about the OS or language of the month.