Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

I'm fairly new to enterprise software development, but I do know that I really like working with customers that are almost always smart and/or know what they want.

The more companies that move to an agile work flow the better enterprise software development will become.

IMHO, I don't get the same enjoyment from consumer-facing projects.

My trouble with the enterprise has always been that they tend to lag when it comes to adopting new ways of doing things. As a result, if you listen slavishly to what enterprise customers tell you to build you'll be building solutions to yesterday's problems or technology for yesterday's ecosystem.

I've found more recently that this isn't always true, and it really depends on what sort of enterprise you're dealing with. Bottom line is you can't listen mindlessly to what customers say-- you have to think about the plan/vision and the where the overall market is going.

One of the required reading is his own praising profile? And then he starts the video with a theme song??

Am I supposed to learn from him or worship his personality?

EDIT: I finished the video. Here is a too long; didn't watch as asked.

The first 18 minutes he is telling Box' history and justifying its existence. The first advice come at 7:40 - pay attention of the technological changes that are happening in the world.

He try to sell you the idea that is better to do business with enterprise because there is more money on it. Kind of the opposite as advised before about why to start a startup. And even the numbers he shows are shady. He says there are only two ways to make money on consumer tech. Consumers paying you or advertising. That sums up to a total 170 billion dollars market. Note that he leaves Apple and all sort of consumer tech that is not ads or mobile apps purchases. And then he compares that with corporate IT market of 4.7 trillion dollars. But here he includes servers and all infrastructure. Very shady sales technique comparig apples to oranges.

Then at minute 21 he finally cuts the bullshit and start to deliver content. Great content by the way. Worth watching after minute 21. If only he wasn't so Stan S. Stanman at the beginning.

> One of the required reading is his own praising profile? And then he starts the video with a theme song??

One thing that we should all consider is that, first and foremost, this lecture was for the Stanford students in the room whose attention span ranges anywhere from 0 and 15 seconds on the topic of enterprise software. I am pretty sure the required reading is a twisted, self-deprecating joke, and the theme song is to get the audience's attention.