| We've talked before. Give my explicit take on getting into the ERP space...blunt and raw. I think your situation is ALL of our situation. We are ALL kickass eng but no connections, no non-tech ie sales/marketing, no industry specific insight and the lack of key to your success: inside connections. Startups need VC's not for money but for the connections. VC helps the startups get not only in touch with people who makes decisions for the company but moreover have the ability to convince/convey/"pressure" them to at least give you a try. Another reason for VC's; make other startups use your product to launch theirs. Case and point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen He epitomizes that once you have that inside connection, you can make a 1+1 tool for a million dollars and the entire industry will jump on board and pay whatever it takes. It's amazing how people with no clue can quickly build up a company to add 1+1 and turn it into a billion dollar company and you can't even though yours for fraction of the price can do 1+2. I've been in Silicon Valley and at various FAANG/M to now have a clue to how things work. My observations: 1. Best products never gets greenlighted....never. Mind boggling.... but true. Decision makers are almost always a non-tech. 2. Company IT's are always looking for sweet deals, kickbacks, no brain implementation/integration and ungodly support 3. Company IT's 90% of work almost always comes from integrating various mismatched platforms 4. enduser's pain is almost never considered. decision process is almost always based on a single usecase for high level's myopic viewpoints. All above reasons why internals in enterprises absolutely sucks. ABSOLUTELY. You would be blown over by how backwards antique sw is being used by the likes of Apple, Amazon, Cisco, Microsoft and most fortune 500 runs inside because I've worked for most of the top 10 techs. and the worst piece of crap sw: SAP. Every company has this painpoint because it/they integrate all of other barely working junk platforms. So enterprises are basically crippled by an idiot who built their initial foundation. Probably because they lacked the knowledge, took the lowest barrier to entry and big tech junk constantly in their faces and no limit to funds. This is where the big boys like SAP work their evil to get you onto their legacy platform which makes you stuck forever. Once on it, the changes you have to make to your internals are resource impossible. I remember a little while back when I went to HR in a top 10 tech. The sw a HR person was using launched a bunch of DOS window to do some execution. It was unreal. This brings along another enterprise unicorn: Atlassian. I've been using it for years and there is a reason why they are able to create an eco around their sw.. mainly because their sw platform is so lacking. The most popular extension just to make confluence workable was a tiny little plugin a person was making millions from because confluence simply lacked some key fundamental func. So you have to wonder, how in the world did they get their foot in the door? I (prgm mgr) became a demigod of sorts after I was able to do "magical" basic func using their REST API. Bottomline, if you're looking to get into enterprise and you have no connections, and no industry standing (your partners in crime and/or an industry leader in a specific field) you will never break in... never. This is why many startups are emphasizing by saying s/he worked at FAANG which for whatever reason makes them god in their field and should be taken seriously regardless of their position. If you're trying to do cold calling, best to do is at tradeshows which IT people love going to. They get treated like royalties and get "kickbacks." However now with the advent of social media, if you can make a splash with some specific viral video that spotlights your product. You could get noticed and get your foot in the door. Another demo you can hit if you're B2B are SMB's. They usually lack the big boy's connections and are willing to take a risk in reducing cost, overhead, personnel and infra costs. Finally, if you're B2C product, then your best and only bet is social media engagement with an influencer. I'm sorry for you to think you'll get notice from enterprise procurement here in HN. Personally i don't think it will happen. I think most of us are either bored dev's, retired or bored non-influencers. Those people you so desperately want attention from, treats their work strictly 8-5 and do cocktail parties with visibility to sell themselves. Sorry, they are not scouring the web for best solutions. They are looking for best solutions for themselves which does not mean best for company. Think if you're trying to get T rump's attention, you have a choice: cheap fast food now with diet coke or showcase best in class enterprise sw that will save money, time and people's lives? Which do you think he will pay attention to? However, having said that, you can make it into the fray by yes, focusing on niche. Case Study: Stripe. They focused on reducing painpoints for webdev's. Once they got traction with an army of webdev's. That got the VC's attention, VC's joined in giving Stripe connections to decision makers and rest is history. If you feel you got what people who build things need to reduce their cost/pain expeditiously. Then you need to be in that dev's viewpoint; Stackoverflow, Medium articles and all other dev landing zones; DZone etc. Good luck. |
And thanks for so much insight once more. A lot to think about.
I am actually looking here on HN exactly for this. Experience told by people like you to get a new perspective and new data.
It's a lot to digest and process, so I don't have much smarter answer than this. Again thanks a lot!