Comments on: Got Customers, Part 2: The One in Which We Save the Startup but Lose Our Souls

By: Brant Cooper

Brant Cooper — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:30:58 +0000

This is great representation of the conflict between market direction and vision; thanks for sharing. A core principle In the leanstarup framework is the concept of pivot, i.e., of changing course based on negative lessons learned while keeping the positives. A less intuitive pivot, yet as valid as any other, is one where the fulcrum is based on values. I applaud the courage!

By: uberVU - social comments

uberVU - social comments — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:18:48 +0000

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By: Rex M

Rex M — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 01:35:44 +0000

I'll add to what Ryan said: It's extremely risky to target the F100 or even F500 space for a number of reasons:

1. There's only 100 (or 500) possible customers *in the whole world*. Yikes.

2. The people who make enterprise-wide solution decisions are difficult to "get in" with – not only getting their attention, but convincing them to convince tens or scores of stakeholders to commit the organization's time and money to something. Small businesses try things and drop them if they don't work – F500 have 2, 3, 5 and 10 year views on solution lifecycles, because they are dropping the kind of bank that requires them to do it. Not only on your solution, but on the organizational investment and ecosystem around committing to it.

3. If you do manage to sign a few F100s, it's most likely your solution is not viable for anyone below the next level down (F500) without significant rework (see #1). That means your profitability – nay, income – is tied up in the whims of a few jerks who are well aware of their advantages over you. It's the golden handcuffs problem – you can't afford to not do whatever they want without serious investment and pain.

*I know this because I am one of those jerks who makes solution decisions for an F500 company

By: Ryan Waggoner

Ryan Waggoner — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:43:52 +0000

Fair question that we're still trying to work through, but here are a few things off the top of my head:

1. We understand the needs and motivations of small businesses more.

2. There are a litany of very expensive tools available to large companies already that are cost-prohibitive for small and medium businesses, which is one reason we did this in the first place.

3. We've moved away from social media monitoring towards social media engagement tools and the problems in the engagement space are a lot harder for Fortune 100 enterprises.

All that said, we're keeping an open mind and we're always open to discussions around how we can learn more about our customers needs and how we can better serve them. It wouldn't be any fun if we weren't scrambling to keep up

By: Jon Stokes

Jon Stokes — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:24:39 +0000

Question: why wed yourself to the focus on small businesses? I'm really involved in this space and even the very large accounts are just now trying to figure it out. There is a need for social media expertise even at the Fortune 100 level, so why not approach those guys first?

Anyway, I agree that the agencies are in trouble here (for a variety of reasons), but there is space for a new kind of agency that serves the same customer base of really large players.

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Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:09:37 +0000

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