| Had a negative experience with MS recently. They were very interested in licensing some code for use in bing and we did a number of presentations to the top of the hierarchy which was extremely time consuming. In the end there was radio silence so we followed up and didn't hear back, then things were delayed multiple times on their end. It seemed highly unprofessional of the business development lead to string us along because it burns a bridge for future partnership while only gaining a delay of deployment on a competing property. In any case, after following up a number of times, they finally indicated they decided to build it internally instead. The funny part was through the demos they kept pushing for a source code review which seemed highly premature considering we had nothing signed at that point. I am glad we didn't hand over the source. Perhaps I am not in the most objective position, but their implementation is incredibly weak. There is a build at all costs culture which leads internal teams to build vs buy even when the PMs see the value of buy. In any case, take this story as a cautionary note to pursue parallel paths even if things are very far along on one path and the stakeholders are highly enthusiastic. We have been looking at other major partners and had some success with some; but, for Yahoo we hit a wall of first level routing which seems somewhat impenetrable. I am not wanting to attack the individuals that man the first level email routing since they are just doing their job, but they don't have a technical understanding of what is being presented--we got replies that completely misunderstood the message more than 4 times in a row--and are only able to route requests as secretary would. So we were finally directed to http://add.yahoo.com/fast/yahoo/technology/cgi_form which is no doubt a spam honeypot where submissions never reaches the appropriate team or get reviewed in any time sensitive manner. So, I would like to ask if anyone has any contacts within Yahoo, ideally within Yahoo Finance on the development side. We actually did our usability testing with google / yahoo / x so we have some good data there. Thanks for any help you can offer getting in contact with the right team lead at Yahoo! |
As a start-up we get completely focused on what we're doing and how much energy it takes. I'm sure there are times you've messed up a contact, didn't get back to somebody, transfered to a partner who didn't respond, etc. Now put yourself in their shoes. They have 100x more people trying to get their attention. Sometimes we don't realize that these larger companies with multiple levels of bureaucracy.
At the same time, it was very smart of you not to give them our source code without a contract.
A 'they burned us' mentality won't help you in the long run. You just happened to make a contact at Microsoft and it didn't work out this time. If I were you I'd send them a 'thanks, we're here if you need us' response.
They just qualified your market if it wasn't already done.
As mentioned by Zacharycohn, LinkedIn is likely the best resource for finding contacts. I'd recommend adding your Microsoft contacts to your linkedIn contacts. That way people may be able to find in association with that Microsoft group, and you seem to be that much closer.
One last thing, doing anything with the big dogs is likely going to take time. I hope you aren't putting all your eggs in one big basket. I think it often helps a bigger company take the plunge if a moderately sized one has done it already.
Is anybody already using your service? Is there a start-up you could work with that might give you an added bit of publicity?
Best of luck, Pete