Creating an on-premise version of our product for enterprises (as opposed to a pure SaaS version)

Turns out there is still a lot of money in selling technology to large enterprises that they can host and run themselves on an annual licensing model.

We were initially afraid of the long and high-touch enterprise sales cycles, complex procurement processes and enterprise integration requirements (complex permissions, LDAP auth, audit trails etc.) and thus wanted to do a simpler SaaS version with a monthly plan.

But I learned that if you start on the enterprise angle early, you can get some incredibly sticky customers with five, six or even seven figure annual license payments and very predictable cashflows you can raise or borrow against.