[apinstein]

In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore elucidates the critical fact that when selling a product whose economic buyer and end user are not the same person, you must sell differently to succeed. He is right and there's a reason that book is like a bible for tech entrepreneurs.

That said, this fact of life when selling to enterprises is what caused me to permanently exit the enterprise software space. Success requires you to make crappy software.

Fortunately the SaaS-ification of enterprise has allowed the enterprise world to mitigate this problem by allowing the actual end users of products to also be the economic buyer through their monthly budget.

I consider SaaS delivery to be a wonderful financial innovation. I agree with parent that this change isn't due to macro changes in buyers but rather innovations in pricing and channel which align incentives in a positive way.

I encourage all of us HN'ers to continually challenge ourselves to find innovative ways to align incentives for maximum value creation. It's good for society and tends to be even better for profits.