Building An Enterprise Software Company That Doesn’t Suck

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