I agree with the article and I'd like to challenge pg's view that hackers should let others (arguably non-hackers) start enterprise startups.
I agree with the article because while it is true that startups addressing "localized" enterprise-problems can go to market in a super effective new way (e.g., salesforce, box, etc), there are still a huge set of problems that require enterprise-wide/complex adoptions (e.g., infrastructure, analytics) and therefore cannot be purchased by individuals-workers with their credit cards over the internet.
In those cases, a lot of people need to agree on how to proceed, budgets assigned/etc etc - that can take forever and you need to hand-hold the process - thus - you need "sales people"
So the traditional view is those type of startups are 'sales' startups - ie the main deciding factor of success is being good at sales (that is roughly pg's view)
I disagree with that point of view - because many things have change in the past few years - nowadays with a small team you can adress niche enterprise-wide problems, by leveraging AWS, tons of open source libraries and so on. At the same time, large companies are more into trying niche solutions to their needs even if they come from tiny companies.
That is our story at Kormox - we are a super small team of hackers who are targeting a huge market, but started focusing first on a specific vertical (in our case, targeting our offering first to Management Consulting Firms).
It is still true that you need to be very patient and iterations last WAY longer (ie - you don't know if what you are building is not something people want up until WAY longer than in a non-enterprise startup, because the cycles for customers to use something are super long).
On the flip side, you can find adventurous customers that can virtually fund you.
The good news is you don't have to raise $967876876M to start as it used to be the case to "build the product" - I think nowadays a bunch of energized hackers can build the product in a relatively short period of time.
No questions though you'll need someone that is willing to wear suits (or at least kakis) and go talk to hundreds of middle-managers across a bunch or large companies. But I don't see why is that a problem (especially when compared to all the sort of "boring" things people do for growth hacking in a non-enterprise startup).
I agree with the article because while it is true that startups addressing "localized" enterprise-problems can go to market in a super effective new way (e.g., salesforce, box, etc), there are still a huge set of problems that require enterprise-wide/complex adoptions (e.g., infrastructure, analytics) and therefore cannot be purchased by individuals-workers with their credit cards over the internet.
In those cases, a lot of people need to agree on how to proceed, budgets assigned/etc etc - that can take forever and you need to hand-hold the process - thus - you need "sales people"
So the traditional view is those type of startups are 'sales' startups - ie the main deciding factor of success is being good at sales (that is roughly pg's view)
I disagree with that point of view - because many things have change in the past few years - nowadays with a small team you can adress niche enterprise-wide problems, by leveraging AWS, tons of open source libraries and so on. At the same time, large companies are more into trying niche solutions to their needs even if they come from tiny companies.
That is our story at Kormox - we are a super small team of hackers who are targeting a huge market, but started focusing first on a specific vertical (in our case, targeting our offering first to Management Consulting Firms).
It is still true that you need to be very patient and iterations last WAY longer (ie - you don't know if what you are building is not something people want up until WAY longer than in a non-enterprise startup, because the cycles for customers to use something are super long).
On the flip side, you can find adventurous customers that can virtually fund you.
The good news is you don't have to raise $967876876M to start as it used to be the case to "build the product" - I think nowadays a bunch of energized hackers can build the product in a relatively short period of time.
No questions though you'll need someone that is willing to wear suits (or at least kakis) and go talk to hundreds of middle-managers across a bunch or large companies. But I don't see why is that a problem (especially when compared to all the sort of "boring" things people do for growth hacking in a non-enterprise startup).