
Sequoia’s Jim Goetz: Shocking More Startups Are Not Building For The Enterprise - davidedicillo
http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/12/sequoias-jim-goetz-shocking-more-startups-are-not-building-for-the-enterprise/
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malandrew
I've been on the other end of the enterprise purchasing process for tech
products and services many times and given my experiences as oftentimes the
only technical person involved a fundamentally broken process, I would not
recommend that anyone go into producing enterprise technology solutions with
the exception of those products that solve problems impervious to
bikeshedding.

You want to solve problems that business people are capable of understanding
are problems that are worth solving, but which are sufficiently complex enough
that the business side of things has no other option than to defer the
decision to purchase or not to those within the enterprise that are
technologically competent. If bikeshedding can occur in the purchasing process
and that is not a pleasant process to deal with.

If you're willing to put up with bullshit, then there is money to be made, but
then again many entrepreneurs left a career in entreprise because they were
sick of dealing with those problems.

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Codhisattva
Enterprise is boring and has terrible deficiencies such as a long decision
cycle and a heavy dependency on salesmanship.

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geoffschmidt
Also, arguably unlike social media, it requires domain expertise that many
potential founders do not have.

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Codhisattva
That's a great point. You can't really consider addressing enterprise needs
until you've done a tour of duty in the cube farm gulag.

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se85
Makes plenty of sense to me.

If you actually sit down and think of it from a entrepreneur point of view as
opposed to a corporate point of view, it's pretty clear that more often than
not, the risk proposition is just not worth it, and the odds are already
stacked against you as an entrepreneur without bringing the enterprise into
the equation.

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bradmilne
I agree with geoffschmidt - domain expertise is difficult to acquire if you
don't work in a large company and understand where the pain points are. Sales
cycles are always going to be a hassle though and a fundamentally different
skill set to acquire than building the tech.

