Reading one of the latest excellent post from Paul Graham, I found this interesting part about the conservatism of large corporation when purchasing software :
There used to be a saying in the corporate world: "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." You no longer hear this about IBM specifically, but the idea is very much alive; there is a whole category of "enterprise" software companies that exist to take advantage of it. People buying technology for large organizations don't care if they pay a fortune for mediocre software. It's not their money. They just want to buy from a supplier who seems safe—a company with an established name, confident salesmen, impressive offices, and software that conforms to all the current fashions. Not necessarily a company that will deliver so much as one that, if they do let you down, will still seem to have been a prudent choice. So companies have evolved to fill that niche.
Reading between the line, if you run a startup and you have an excellent software that you want to sell to a large corporation. You'll need to do the following :
- Hire a nice and confident sales(wo)men,
- Spend money on a priceless office in the city center,
- Change the name of your company to something established or known (confusion is great),
- and… use buzzwords.
By doing so, you'll move your excellent software to just mediocre software chosen by large corporation (as you are not anymore focusing on the software but just its general packaging). A big dilemma…
Tags: startup software innovation entrepreneurship company
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