Archives for 2016-02-10

Slack has been attempting to make inroads in the Enterprise market for some time. The release of its enterprise version has been plagued by delays as it has sought to ensure it fills the needs of its existing enterprise-level consumers such as:

• IT Administration
• Security & Compliance Policy Enforcement
• Unified Team Directory
• Consolidated Billing

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Like any company that wishes to scale into the enterprise market, Slack has some hurdles it must overcome before it can achieve that goal.

When startups start talking about their goal to break into the “enterprise” market, they often think of these companies as larger versions of themselves. They’ll be easy to sell to, right?

Wrong.

The enterprise sales cycle can be anywhere from 12 months to 3 years, depending on the solution provider currently in place solving the problem in your vertical. What’s the holdup in making decisions? A lot of things, actually:

Whenever a large enterprise client wishes to consider taking on a new vendor (software, hardware, person who stocks the vending machines, anything), they will have a set of protocols they need to go through. Depending on the governing department, those protocols will be different (but probably similar, based on companies.)

For a new software solution, the absolute first thing is generally:

Is there a need for this?

If they already have a solution in place that the company has paid for training and is currently using, the answer is likely going to be no.

Most companies are already using Hipchat, Skype or something similar (not to forget email) for the same purpose, so Slack would be seen as redundant.

If your sales team is exceptionally good, though, you may get past this phase.

If you do, the next question you have to overcome is:

Is there a budget for this?

Again, if there’s a solution already in place, you may have to wait until their current contract is near renewal before you’ll be given a shot at competing for the business. This can be, as I mentioned, anywhere from 12 months to 3 years. (Enterprise is definitely lucrative.)

If you make it to the Request for Proposal stage, congratulations! You now get to go back and forth for months with large enterprise compliance, security and legal teams to ensure that your software does not violate any policies the company has in place. If it does, you better be prepared to fix it (at your cost, of course) if you want them to consider your business. And this still doesn’t guarantee that they’ll buy anything.

If you manage to close the sale, congratulations! You now need to have a world-class, around the clock support team dedicated to handling even the most mundane questions from Enterprise-level users. No “find your own support” for these people. They want phone support, email and chat, 24/7, in their time zones. And anything you’ve promised them should be delivered, or you risk non-renewal to the next person who comes along.

Better make sure you lock them in to that 3 year contract, eh?

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If Slack positions themselves with a large sales and support team, rather than with a large development team that is inherent to most startups, then they can absolutely succeed with enterprise.

However, if they are not prepared for this type of environment, I do not see them succeeding.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Will-Slack-succeed-with-large-enterprises

Originally Posted On: 2016-02-15

I’m curious about what exactly you mean by “really stupid in real life”. If you mean that you are awkward in social situations, well, welcome to the club!

I was 8 when I got my first computer (which was a huge deal, as this was the 80’s).

I instantly fell in love.

There weren’t many games for it, so I wrote one. And then I played that for hours upon end.

I discovered BBS’s and the games they had when I was around 11, and played them for all hours of the night (much to the chagrin of our phone bill.)

My friends from the BBS’s and MUD’s were all ages, and lived all over the place, so I couldn’t exactly go meet them IRL. So I’d do my school stuff and extracurriculars, and then at night we’d play and chat and go on quests and they were awesome.

When I was 15 we started doing weekend quests IRL. We were all geeks, none of us really good with people but we used the time to socialize ourselves. Basically, the only rules were “respect others” and “get over yourself.” There were 40 year old guys throwing themselves out there being as awkward as we were and it was good for all of us. We had fun.

So, my suggestion is, if that is what you mean, head over to Meetup and look in your area for stuff until you find the thing that makes you the most uncomfortable. Seriously, look at the upcoming events calendar and keep going until you find something where your initial reaction is “Ugh, no, I would never do that in a million years! What kind of person likes that stuff?!”

Then sign up and find out.

By going and doing that you’ll be both expanding your intellect and bypassing your awkward filter at the same time. And odds are you will meet someone there that you will get along with, even if you truly can’t stand the event itself.

Playing video games isn’t a problem in itself – I played them and became a game designer. It’s what other choices you make in your life.

Originally Posted: https://www.quora.com/Im-24-and-I-used-to-play-video-games-very-hard-but-now-when-game-addiction-is-gone-I-realized-that-Im-really-stupid-in-real-life-What-should-I-do

Originally Posted On: 2015-12-28