

Ask HN: What enterprise problems do you face? - scotthtaylor

If you run a small/medium business, I want to know the things that really annoy you on a daily basis?<p>Dealing with employee schedules? Processing payments? I think with the great crowd of people that read HN we should be able to come up with a pretty comprehensive list.<p>I'd really appreciate your opinions. Thanks!
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helen842000
If you're trying to find a valuable niche, anything that helps businesses to
get paid quicker or cutting costs (with measurable results) would be an easy
sell.

Unfortunately small businesses are usually too wrapped up working IN their
business to have the time to spend ON their business setting up any new
products that are a 'nice to have'

Simple core features and implementation is key. If it has got a direct link to
making them more money or saving them a LOT of hours then that cuts through a
lot of friction when pitching the product.

Good questions to ask business owners are :-

* What are your main costs

* What tasks make up your day

* What tasks do you do monthly/annually

Why not pick a specific type of business then you can really hone in on the
same pain point that is repeated in that industry.

Random examples

* Ebay power sellers - A tool to find the best shipping provider (lowest cost)

* Etsy Sellers - A tool to add up material costs + time taken to work out a sale price

* Courier Business - A bare bones utility to configure multi drop routes & find low cost fuel enroute

If you don't pick a specific industry it's really tough to reach mass market,
have a solid target audience and learn it inside out before you build
anything.

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scotthtaylor
Hey Helen,

Thanks for the detailed response - a lot of valuable information in your
comment.

You're entirely correct about the owners usually being too wrapped up in their
business to spend time on their business setting up any new products.

Thus whatever the product is - it will have to have obvious savings (time or
money) and simple integration. Thanks for the input - I'm hoping some
small/medium business owners pitch in :)

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czbond
Some feedback:

Scour Linkedin - it's where people mention industry issues.

If you're doing CustDev, I would suggest these questions are at too high of a
level. "What problems do you have" will get you very broad top of mind issues
that aren't actionable. There is a Mixergy interview with Dane Maxwell & or
Sam Ovens that goes more into this as well.

~~~
scotthtaylor
Hey czbond - thanks, yeah I intentionally left it quite high level, just to
get a better understanding for myself. Once I get this background I shall get
more granular. Going to check out the interview you mention. Thanks again.

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caw
I can tell you from experience that small businesses, and to some extent
medium businesses, have nowhere near the same problems as what I would
traditionally consider enterprises. Being in an office of 200 people versus
1500 people leads to different problems. I'd probably take a second look at
what your target really is.

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scotthtaylor
Sorry; for clarification, you are correct - I am using the term 'enterprise'
loosely.. target is the small/medium companies that (as Helen pointed out in
another comment) are too busy running their companies to focus on the 'nice to
haves'.

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scotthtaylor
Just to perhaps provide some more reference to anyone visiting this thread,
I've found quite a helpful question on Quora:

[http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-problems-
plaguing-...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-biggest-problems-plaguing-
small-business-owners-today)

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orangethirty
The warp drive keeps going offline.

~~~
scotthtaylor
Good news is I think NASA are trying to fix that problem:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/what-i...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/what-
if-nasa-could-figure-out-the-math-of-a-workable-warp-drive/265655/)

------
tectonic
Recruiting.

