As a startup, you should also use this information to help decide your company's own risk/reward ratio of pursuing a customer. I worked in a B2B startup, and when we tried to engage larger businesses we ran up against this "trust" issue. Every time, we spent lots of time and money talking with them and came away with nothing.
Why you should (or shouldn’t) trust a startup
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Re: Why you should (or shouldn’t) trust a startup
#12The questions are setup for a generic situation which I like, but the answer for #2 seems to be a single solution. What do you do in the case that you need customer data as part of your product (Say the product was more traditional CRM).
Could have been a good post but they cut to the commercial message too soon.
Re: Why you should (or shouldn’t) trust a startup
#13The business risk of trusting a startup with a year or 2 operational record and a big company is pretty much the same. We have seen many big companies offerings ceases to exist in few months or sometimes even weeks.
Re: Why you should (or shouldn’t) trust a startup
#14How these objections work depend very strongly on the nature of the startup. It's something I'm very concerned about. My own work is going to be chock full of sensitive customer data about their system configurations (it could be described as a DevOps analytics tool). Privacy and security will be huge concerns for customers. I'm starting with SaaS, but I fully expect pressure from some customers to provide a COTS version for internal deployment, due to "security".
I don't want to do COTS at first because I want the ability to iterate quickly for new features and bug fixing. I can do that with SaaS, but enterprise COTS is the land of programs that haven't been updated in years. I don't want to put myself in a position of supporting antique versions of the code, even if it comes with lucrative support contracts, because it's a drag in other ways. So my answer to customers who can't deal with SaaS security in the short run is probably going to be "Sorry", and my efforts focused on pleasing the customers who are comfortable with a SaaS solution.
On the other hand, I'm not even in beta yet. I may well have to eat those words in fairly short order, if that's what it takes for survival and growth a year from now.
That all said, I've put a lot of thought into addressing customer objections about their data, and a lot of it is baked right into the architecture.
Re: Why you should (or shouldn’t) trust a startup
#15The questions are setup for a generic situation which I like, but the answer for #2 seems to be a single solution. What do you do in the case that you need customer data as part of your product (Say the product was more traditional CRM). Could have been a good post but they cut to the commercial message too soon.
from the author: thanks for valid criticism, I'll keep it in mind for my next post.