Instigator Blog - Latest Comments in Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Harvy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:35:47 -0000

Really great article Ben, Thank you :)

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:07:14 -0000

Daria - Glad you enjoyed the post and shared it with your colleagues. Hope to get more feedback from you (and them) in the future...

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Daria — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 07:04:20 -0000

Ben,
Thanks for a great collection of tips! I've passed it to my collegue :) Some points, especially the one about customer support are so true.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Ordbog — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 17:55:56 -0000

I recently started my own business and therefore I found this post very informative.
Especially the parts about when and what are companies buying.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Agence Web Geneve — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 21:13:33 -0000

Nice tips here. Keep us such interesting posts and tips !

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Pradnie — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:29:57 -0000

Having absolutely no family history or experience in business, I, due to my wife's idea and motivation decided to put my feet in this so far untouched water.
I read, and re-read books and articles about how to start-up and run a business to make up to the lack of experience, but each time I come to the point about "Knowing your market" just like Benjamin's point # 5, I stumble.
My question is, what if your market is not created? In other words, what if you are introducing a new product. It is easy to get in the business selling what is already popular. But what if your item is new? How do you know and understand the market, your potential customers?

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Matthew — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 08:53:22 -0000

Recently I started my own business. Having grown up with a family that had their own and, and a father which is very business-minded; I had a pretty good idea about how to structure my services.

I feel that a lot of businesses fail do to not entering the business world with good strategies. I feel that your article here addresses this point. If you don't start with a good exit strategy, and are true to yourself about why you have the business, then you can't fully help the customer. In the end, this will lead to your failure.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 08:31:07 -0000

Thanks for all the positive feedback from people - I appreciate it!

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Dave Motheral — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 20:51:41 -0000

This is great insight. I started our Enterprise 2.0 company in 2005. We are partnered with Kodak to offer their Unified Workflow OnDemand. I think you hit the nail on the head re: support, distribution channels and who are your customers.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Zang H — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 12:29:22 -0000

Really interesting post! And I definitely agree with all of the major highlights of this post especially the point that you have to be very conscious of the budgeting decisions!

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

davidC — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:41:08 -0000

Rick, I completely agree with you, those tips can certainly be applied to any internet business..

Thanks for neatly presenting such a great list of tips!

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Mike Huang — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:38:57 -0000

Great great post. I think a lot of entrepreneurs have a lot to learn from this post. I definitely have a lot more to learn.

-Mike

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Rose — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:44:09 -0000

I think that Enterprise 2.0 is the best. But the truth is that choosing a program is very much like choosing a religion. If you already preferred one, you would not believe what others would say about the other religion.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 14:43:08 -0000

B2C (Business to Consumer - selling to individuals) and B2B (Business to Business) are different in a lot of ways. It's not that one is better than the other, they're just different. Individuals are less likely to have ANY concerns with the SaaS model though, whereas businesses may still have some issues - be it security, uptime, etc. These are things that consumers think of less when making buying decisions.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Jenny — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 06:29:12 -0000

I do think enterprise social software needs this kind of event and exposure to allow companies to get-together and figure out what's going on, what's working, etc.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 13:51:24 -0000

Rick - I probably removed those comments.

Appreciate your input / thoughts. Hope you'll stick around.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

DanGTD — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:34:00 -0000

Thanks for the great article.

Which do you think is better for a Saas, selling to individuals or selling to companies?

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Chris Brogan — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:16:12 -0000

Stupid auto-responder. :(

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:15:13 -0000

The struggle between innovation and status quo will be with us for quite some time. You can't change the way companies work in a few days, it takes a long time. On top of which, companies will often want to just dip a toe vs. go whole hog into something.

Thanks for stopping by and commenting Chris, much appreciated.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Chris Brogan — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:05:07 -0000

I think you're quite on to something. As an enterprise employee who is out there messing with startups and internet companies, I'm often surprised what small development teams think an enterprise user base wants. Great post, mister!

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Darren Spratt — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:26:50 -0000

I am running a Web Development firm as well and have just started a website of my own which is directly to consumers. I am thinking of moving to product business from service business myself - after I got a few email saying 'I want to advertise my business on your website' whereas the website still needs a lot of improvement! Enterprise 2.0 rocks if you have resources for it.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:40:50 -0000

Thanks Jason. Hope you'll keep coming back.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Benjamin Yoskovitz — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:40:37 -0000

Yes, I'm sorry I missed it, but I wasn't able to go -- next time.

I do think enterprise social software needs this kind of event and exposure to allow companies to get-together and figure out what's going on, what's working, etc.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

Jason Kealey — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 22:50:26 -0000

Excellent post, Ben.

Re: Enterprise 2.0 Startups – Know Your Market

kapanpun — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:12:50 -0000

Enterprise 2.0 converged in Boston June 9 to 12 to create the single largest gathering of the people and companies changing the way we work