[sonnyblarney]

It's not just the problem domain though - there are issues that are very specific in the 'real world' that are not apparent to those even who understand the problem domain well, especially if it's a true B2B style product. Second, is understanding the mindset and uses cases of buyers. Tech people tend to way over-estimate the sophistication of users, and also underestimate how hard it often it is to do basic things.

I once worked for a huge high tech company in Product Marketing, we wanted to run this simple program to reach out to some users. Our problem? We had to host a few images and bits of content and we literally had nowhere to host them. Seriously. Just a few images. We had no production capability for that ... even working with the marketing ops teams ... they have complicated tools and content management systems unsuited to 'just hosting a file'.

We reached out to our customers (carriers like AT&T) so that maybe they could host. Same problem! We're talking business unites of major high tech corporations here unable to just host a file.

Want to use S3? Or whatever? Enter 'legal'. Make a request to the legal department, maybe get a response in a month. Maybe.

It was eerie and funny and sad ... but it was a real eye opener.

[neolefty]

Wow, no wonder Box is doing well — that's a main problem they solve. I didn't really understand its value without hearing your predicament.