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Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

startupclass.samaltman.com

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Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#11

Post by 7Figures2Commas »

soneca wrote: post #6

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 worl…

There was useful high-level content in this video, but anyone who is serious about building for the enterprise should definitely study other enterprise SaaS companies. Box's financials, on the surface, are comparatively unimpressive and some of them even raise questions about the company's long-term viability[1][2]. Some folks argue that Box is in better shape than it might appear to be in[3], but this is based on assumptions which may or may not prove to be valid[4].

[1] http://kellblog.com/2014/03/27/burn-baby-burn-a-look-at-the-...

[2] http://tomtunguz.com/box-ipo/

[3] http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-why-boxs-aaron-levie-is...

[4] http://kellblog.com/2014/05/15/the-box-s-1-delayed-ipo-and-t...

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#12

Post by capkutay »

soneca wrote: post #6

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 worl…

I think he's a smart guy...but for the most part his public success is propped up by VCs. That's why for CEO/founder standards, he owns a pretty small portion of his own company

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#13

Post by rsobers »

According to Levie, Box has 99% of the Fortune 500. Does it really count if 75 people in Toyota's marketing department uses Box to share a few hundred gigabytes of files?

The numbers don't lie: "Box’s average customer value (ACV) is $3,653, much lower than the median of 59,600." [1]

They're selling "enterprise" software at SMB price points.

Setting aside security concerns, getting a big enterprise to move a substantial part of their IT infrastructure to the cloud is a logistical nightmare. Perhaps they underestimated this.

[1] http://tomtunguz.com/box-ipo/

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#14

Post by mindcrime »

I hate content like this on HN[1].

Please, let all the Stanford kids building startups go after the consumer space... the world needs more solomo-dailydeal-catpicture-ridesharing-airbnbForX apps. What it doesn't need is any more vendors selling software to businesses, who, you know, actually pay, like, money, for software.

No, really, I mean it. There is absolutely NOTHING interesting about selling enterprise software. It's boring, dull, unexciting, unprofitable, gives you bad breath, causes cancer, kills puppies, and is bad for the environment. If you are thinking about an enterprise software startup, forget it. No joke. Really. Just. Don't. Do. It.

[1]: Because I'm greedy and don't want more competition!

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#15

Post by benchmark6 »

rsobers wrote: post #13

According to Levie, Box has 99% of the Fortune 500. Does it really count if 75 people in Toyota's marketing department uses Box to share a few hundred gigabytes of files? The numbers don't lie: "Box’s average customer value (ACV) is $3,653, much lower than the median of 59,600." [1] They're selling "enterprise" software at SMB price points. Setting aside security concerns, getting a big enterprise to move a substanti…

Is this supposed to be feedback on his talk? If you watched, Levie is implementing his own suggested wedge strategy.

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#16

Post by ghuntley »

7Figures2Commas wrote: post #11
soneca wrote: post #6

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 worl…

There was useful high-level content in this video, but anyone who is serious about building for the enterprise should definitely study other enterprise SaaS companies. Box's financials, on the surface, are comparatively unimpressive and some of them even raise questions about the company's long-term viability[1][2]. Some folks argue that Box is in better shape than it might appear to be in[3], but this is based on as…

re: "but anyone who is serious about building for the enterprise should definitely study other enterprise SaaS companies"

Can recommend http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/saas-metrics-2/ as a good starting point.

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#19

Post by jeffmanu »

What's interesting about Box is that they've succeeded to charge enterprise clients with a service that should be a commodity by now. They've also taken the route of graduating consumer interest into enterprise use. Their quick advance into mobile was good thinking.

Re: Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise

#20

Post by fsloth »

borski wrote: post #9
api wrote: post #4

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 wit…

This isn't quite true. Enterprise knows what their problems are, and you should listen to them slavishly. The issue comes in when you listen to them for what solutions to build for their problems. They don't know what the right solution is, but they do know what the right problem is. If they knew what the right solution was, you wouldn't have a (good) business. In finding the solution, you will sometimes address a pr…

"Enterprise knows what their problems are, and you should listen to them slavishly. The issue comes in when you listen to them for what solutions to build for their problems."

So very much true. In the company I work for this principle applies to inhouse development as well. I.e the problems are obvious but the solutions not so much. We are an independent software vendor, but ownership of code is so scattered that essentially a huge portion of development is handled as if it would be done by external service providers - i.e. the driving force in development is business who know exactly what the pain points are but would want only quick hacks.

Except, those pain points are so acute that if there are ready solutions available they will authorize purchases of ridiculous amounts of cash to have them solved. I imagine this is the situation in most businesses.

Now, out of those problems some are really hard to crack, while others are just an artifact of lack of inhouse knowledge of the particular technical field. Those consultants that manage to offer viable solutions for these well known problem domains probably can earn their bread quite nicely.

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