I'm a young founder building an "enterprise" SaaS start-up and I agree with most of this.
One important fact that is often overlooked in terms of SaaS+capital is the need to have a basic infrastructure in place in order to get customers. It's not, as the author says, as simple as building a product quickly and getting customers.
Your customers will usually be big companies who invest in software very conservatively and your competing with massive billion dollar enterprise software businesses.
To get customers requires sales reps, 1800 numbers, basic technical support, knowledge base, very secure servers, implementation support, etc. When your app is mission critical, theres no time for beta.
If you're the startup, then you have to be beyond beta.
But if you're the billion dollar enterprise company, then that's not quite true. All you have to do is sell a checklist of features on some glossy paper and throw in some "services" which basically gives you cover for trying to get a functional (or maybe even just installable) build out the door.
And here's an article talking about Waste Management suing SAP for playing that game:
For Enterprise software, absolutely. It's a pretty damn big undertaking. That's why we're straying away from "enterprise sales".
For SaaS, I don't think it's true at all. Why does it have to be different than the consumer market? You have a piece of software, it solves a need, you use it. In the consumer market people pay for an upgrade, with SaaS/biz software people pay on a freemium model/ after a trial basis.
One important fact that is often overlooked in terms of SaaS+capital is the need to have a basic infrastructure in place in order to get customers. It's not, as the author says, as simple as building a product quickly and getting customers.
Your customers will usually be big companies who invest in software very conservatively and your competing with massive billion dollar enterprise software businesses.
To get customers requires sales reps, 1800 numbers, basic technical support, knowledge base, very secure servers, implementation support, etc. When your app is mission critical, theres no time for beta.