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Comment by ErrantX | Hacker News Reader

Oh, absolutely.

Before my current job I had no idea of the sort of money that corporations would throw at enterprise software if it filled an need.

We have an enterprise product in a under-developed market; in the first six months we pushed prices up literally 1000 fold without any drop in interest.

I've observed this even in competitive markets.

Enterprise is a seriously seriously big money spinner; you're looking at more cash in a single sale than some of the exits we see.

EDIT: and the irony is that most of this software is not particularly hard to build. A lot of it is just databases with a front end on it; the only bar to entry is being able to work your way through the policy document/guideline/law that you are providing a tool for and figure out what is needed. After struggling to throw together relatively complex web apps for a couple of years, this sort of development is almost cheating :D

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There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?"

"An operating system," replied the programmer.

The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system," he said.

"Not so," said the programmer, "when designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to the tax laws. By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outside appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design."

- from the Tao of Programming

Our company charges $250k. Per CPU.

Yes, I didn't believe it either.

And this is just one of the many line items.

According to VC, some of our bigger customers didn't take us seriously until we charged the money they were used to paying.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

The problem with building enterprise (highly-domain specific business) software is that to start, you need to know that a problem exists.

You won't find this information on the Internet or even in books. You need someone with very deep domain knowledge and the insight to recognize that a problem exists, that it has a possible solution, and that the solution has a larger market it can be sold to. The people who know all that, and are willing to take a risk and start a company around it are rare. If you're a programmer, find and work with them.

Would you recommend working for enterprises to find out what sort of software they need, or can you just ask them?

The way I have found works is this; find a consultant who charges a lot of money to go and do X at a company (and who has a lot of business).

Figure out a way for a company to do most of X itself with some software whilst still leaving some "wrapping up" or auditing for consultants to do.

Convince consultant to come onboard with their expertise to help develop the software (revenue sharing deal). He/she becomes a ready made sales person once launched.

Price product at fraction of the cost of getting consultant to do the work (i.e. instead of 100K - price it at 10K).

Thanks!

Any tips on the "find a consultant who charges a lot of money to go and do X at a company" stage? Do consultants have conventions or anything like that?

Do you mean "is not particularly hard to build"?

ugh, yep I did - edited. Thanks for the catch :) it's late and I've been typing a report for the last 5 hours or so ;)

TPS?

Heh, no thank goodness. 10,000 word systems engineering essay. An attempt at getting more edification in my spare time :)

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