Enterprise Software Lessons:If you are Going to Pick Up a Fight, Hit the Big Guy

These are the good things about Enterprise software, but what about the bad? Just want to make sure we paint a realistic picture of the enterprise here. Just a couple of note to consider:

- Good products that have superior technology and end-user benefit, must take a long-tail approach (i.e. many small customers first and then big boys next)

- In general it requires large amount of sales teams and long sales cycles.

- Remember who is buying the software. It's most likely not the end-user. (this is wildly different from selling a photo-sharing app) They normally have long standing relationships with IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc. and value their relationships sometimes largely more than pleasing their end-users.

- It hurdles are usually a pain. It requires getting sign off by not only a large number of stakeholders but through a vigorous set of checks. This also means you might need to shed out extra money for certifications, etc.

There's lot more and I'll be writing a blog post about this in case anyone is interested.

There is this requisite: if you have a solid product or service Then you can go directly after enterprise customers. Now one just needs to come up with a way of building solid enterprise products without customers in the first place.