Why so few enterprise start ups?

Why so few enterprise start ups?(businessinsider.com)

14 points by gph1 13 years ago | 4 comments

mindcrime 13 years ago |

Ssssshhh... please don't spread the word about this. We[1] are working very hard on an enterprise startup, and we'd rather keep all the dosh to ourselves, thank you.

[1]: http://www.fogbeam.com

petercooper 13 years ago |

They're hard to sell to. While this is a bit of a generalism, you need someone (or many people) full-time working on relationships and getting in the door with enterprises. (Not strictly true but a common experience.)

sjg007 13 years ago |

There are actually quite a few. The reason they don't attract the younger out of college startup crowd is that the unique problems the enterprise organizations face are not well known unless you work at a few of them. That's the big secret. Once you start working, it is harder to transition and leave. Sometimes you see lower level executive departures to commercialize a technology that a bigger corp will buy.

tylermauthe 13 years ago | |

Fully agree. Either you get sucked into working in Enterprise and have your Entrepreneurial drive beat out of you, or you never work in Enterprise and thus cannot relate to their problems.

To an Entrepreneur, Enterprise just seems slow, dusty, old. They don't realize the power behind the check & balance systems in place and the challenges of maintaining such a large organization. When you've got 10 people in a boat, you can keep them all rowing the same way with a drum. When you've got 20,0000 people all in 10-20 different boats, one drum just ain't going to cut it anymore.