[pixelmonkey]

Loved this essay, but I'm a little confused by this footnote.

"[5] If you're building something for which you can't easily get a small set of users to observe—e.g. enterprise software—and in a domain where you have no connections, you'll have to rely on cold calls and introductions. But should you even be working on such an idea?"

When pg says, "Should you even be working on such an idea?" -- is he saying that he questions any startup that is focusing on enterprise and which cannot be sold to fellow founders in a YC batch?

He once wrote "enterprise software companies sell bad software for huge amounts of money", so I suppose he doesn't love enterprise software that doesn't have a long tail customer base.

But, wouldn't this exclude a lot of interesting ideas in education, healthcare, government, finance, etc.?

[Spooky23]

You need to understand the secret handshakes and domain trivia in a particular enterprise space to be successful.

I have worked in government IT for years. When some breathless sales dude tells me that he has some sort of amazing solution for X that allowed Goldman Sachs to cure the common cold, I'm intrigued. When the sales dude doesn't know what a government procurement contract is, I just shake my head, because we probably wasted an hour or more talking about it. Worst case scenario, the sales dude captures the imagination of some big shot and gets fired because instead of selling stuff, he wasted 6 months filling out forms and missed his quota.

The guys who sell to my vertical already know how I'm going to buy the product, and sell to the attributes of the product that matter to us.

[soneca]

No, he questions founders of enterprise startups on a field they don't have deep knowledge.

If I found a startup that wants to improve how car dealers sell cars, but I never worked selling cars, nor I know car dealers, why I am founding this.

[mkeung]

My interpretation: this is just saying your success is likely to be higher if you work with what you are familiar with.

If you deal with enterprise problems and enterprise software, go for it. If you haven't ever dealt with enterprise problems, what are you doing making a start up for what you don't understand well.

[davidcann]

Presumably, you enter YC with pre-existing domain knowledge and/or network or you have a way to gain those quickly.