[xnorswap]

Huge enterprises are often made up of thousands of sub-domains with relative freedom to choose different technology.

It's actually useful to remember if you're a start-up chasing a contract with an enterprise. You might bend over backward accommodating BigCo to get their name on your books thinking you'll make it huge once "they" start using your technology only to find it never actually gets further than 2 people in Sub-Department-Offshoot, and while you might get to use that fancy logo on your marketing material, you'll wonder if the concessions and vastly undercharged overwork was really worth it because the payday of actually having BigCo use your tech throughout their stack never materialised (because it never really does, but it'll be endlessly dangled in front of you to get you to agree to put in a bunch of features for free).

[mrtksn]

In my experience, there's actually gold to be dug from that relationship. The people who spend money in these BigCo don't spend their own money and their motives are structured way differently than what would be in a small business.

The BigCo can actually pay you big if you can improve the career and boost the ego of those who will make the decisions. To do this, you need to give people something that they can present to their own managers in a very positive light so they can present it to their own managers. That's how you can build a momentum of people who can push for purchase of your product.

From what I'se seen, making the life easier of some technical employees is not good. Think putting something trendy in it that the managers would love to boost about it. Could be a trendy tech(big data, AI etc.), could be social proof(Apple and Nvidia are also buying from this company). Just try to structure your marketing(which roughly means finding your customers, not to be confused with advertising) in a way that matches the incentives of people who don't spend their own money but try to work their way up in structured relationship. Of course, your product should also accomplish something so you can have a long term business. So it's not a fraud, it just needs right kind of engagement.

[ra120271]

I agree - and doing this is not the same as doing everything they ask, on the bet it will come off. In my opinion having that view for the managers to boast about means you are aligned with where they will invest - it is where they see value.

[oblio]

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2005/03/28/the-road-to-fogbug...

> Some of our customers still think we’re one of those big enterprise software companies where you call them up, negotiate with a salesperson for three months, and, on the last day of the fiscal quarter, force the salesperson to promise a long list of new features in exchange for a half-million dollar contract.

> That’s nice, but we don’t have salespeople and we’re not one of those vendors. Our customers are happy that our price point is low but not all of them quite understand the implications. They ask us to fly out to their headquarters to give a demo of the software to their development team. They send us long spreadsheets with lists of features and ask us to check off the features we support. They even send us RFPs (shudder). RFP stands for “Request for Proposal.” It’s a request by a large company for a custom proposal from a small company. The small company works on the 200 page laser-printed proposal like mad for three weeks and Fedexes it in great expense and at the last minute, where it gets put in the trash because the large company has their favorite vendor who takes them on a helicopter to Atlantic City on junkets involving blackjack and strippers, and who is going to get the contract no matter what, but someone in purchasing for some unexplained reason, maybe he’s bucking for a promotion is insisting that the proposal be opened up to “competitive bidding” and the small company has been chosen as a victim to write up a proposal that has no chance of being accepted just to make the process look a little bit less corrupt, and if you’re a small company, I would recommend that you don’t fall for it and don’t spend any time responding to RFPs unless it’s already understood that you’re going to get the contract.

Joel, if you're accidentally around, your archive is borked :-( The front page reading lists are broken and navigation is super hard to try to find some of the awesome old articles.

[ra120271]

I agree. For many BigCos this is not an active intent of malice. Often the 2 people do hope their vision will change the company. However, the company is often filled with these groups of "2 people" all trying to move the needle also, leading to a single vision not being effective.

My advice is have an honest and frank conversation with BigCo. Let them know it is in no one's interests for your start up to go out of business, and when they are doing at things at scale you (startup owner) can discuss passing on those economies of scale in terms of dedicated work, discounts, etc.

[groundthrower]

So much this