Building An Enterprise Software Company That Doesn’t Suck

George Roberts

July 27, 2011

At OpenView partners we enjoy actively working with expansion stage software companies that we invest growth capital in. The combination of our partners’ operational backgrounds combined with OpenView Labs allows us to focus on working with portfolio company CEOs, Founders and Management teams to improve operational execution across all areas of their business models.

Exactly one year ago, after reading a blog titled “Enterprise Software Is Sexy Again” by Aaron Levie the founder and CEO of Box.net in TechCrunch, I wrote a blog discussing what I would look for and how I would build a great software company if I was an entrepreneur. You can read about it here.

In his first blog on enterprise software Aaron discusses:

  • Big Problems, Large Markets, New Scale
  • Massive Innovation In The Enterprise
  • Culture And Execution Matter More Than size

This week in TechCrunch Aaron wrote another blog titled “Building An Enterprise Software Company That Doesn’t Suck” that I wanted to pass along. In it he discusses:

  • Creating amazing products not amazing RFP responses
  • Maintaining a hacker centric engineering culture
  • Building radically different enterprise sales
  • Taking responsibility for customer success and support

There is plenty of opportunity for the right companies with the right leadership and the right business models. I hope you enjoy Aaron’s blog and it helps you think about how to build a great company and achieve your vision in the enterprise software space.

All the best!

G

Venture Partner

<strong>George Roberts</strong> is a Venture Partner at OpenView. He enjoys partnering with companies and helping them achieve their goals through strategy, focus and operational execution. From 1990 to 2003, George spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation, most recently having served as Executive Vice President of North American Sales. While at Oracle, George was responsible for over $1 billion in revenue and more than 2,000 employees, reporting directly to the company’s CEO and Chairman, Larry Ellison.