Comment by Sytten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Sytten | Hacker News Reader

Someone needs to write the other side of the story as a small startup owner having to deal with big businesses. It should feature:

- Beeing asked for demos when they could have tried your free tier/trial and you have decent doc (They always prefer that you waste your time then asking someone on thier side to review)

- Being used a price/feature comparison with your enterprise competitor just so they can get a better deal on their renewal (no stupid they never intended to change)

- Having to fill endless security questionnaire without being sure you can even sell to them (what you dont love filling 100+ questions at 11PM on a Friday???).

- Having to deal 3-6 months with procurement, often with one or two third party software resellers which only cares if he can make its margin (hello there CDW, no I wont lower my price 15% so you can make money)

- Receiving the money 60-90 days after the deal close while you struggle with cashflow and you had to provide the service (and receiving a call from my bank rep to see why my margin and CC is full).

I am sure I can think of more things. That is why I will absolutely charge an arm and leg to big businesses.

This is why we have a flat "we won't fill in your forms" rule and only take card payments. We've lost some clients because of it sure, but we're a small team so it's fine.

I think being up front about what you will and won't do really helps. They still ask for procurement forms and stuff but we can at least deny it and set an expectation.

https://help.timetastic.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/115003288769...

And that's for selling a fixed off-the-shelf solution.

If you have something that needs to be a bit bespoke, or is an early-startup collaboration with a pilot customer as you refine and prove PMF... (and the customer is a real company, not just some other startups in your investors' portfolios)... and it impacts more than one very small team there... even if you already have the ear of their CEO... brace yourself for months of countless meetings with "stakeholders" of numerous departments.

Which, as a nimble early startup, impresses upon you why, in theory, you should have a massive innovation advantage over large, lumbering businesses, who can't seem to do anything.

Except you made the mistake of needing the buy-in of a large, lumbering business who can't seem to do anything. Now most of their barriers to movement are also yours. :)

At the startup I work with, one of our larger corporate customers needed several months of email customizations/branding for a monthly alert email our platform sends before they would finalize their deal with us.

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