Sometimes you can service both. GitHub, Heroku, New Relic, CircleCI, are all examples that serve 6 and 7 figure contracts while also supporting tiny 1-person contracts too.
Did these companies start doing both or only after getting investment? It's a genuine question, I don't know. I'm guessing you need to reach a certain mass to be able to do real Enterprise sales.
Github self-funded through $9 to ~$250 a month accounts while they were building their behind-the-firewall product which they sell to enterprises.
You need to have a certain mass to be able to sell six figure a year deals to a true Enterprise. I'd ballpark that mass as 90 lbs or so. They'd hire a software engineer who was 110 lbs soaking wet for $100k a year though, right? So clearly that engineer succeeded in an enterprise sales process at least once.
People tell me that that's different, but it is and it isn't. I closed my first (small) enterprise deal for AR, for a consortium of over a dozen hospitals (we got a tiny sliver of their appointments business), back when our run rate was below $2k a month. I felt pretty terrified about being on the phone with a VP they had around just to talk about HIPAA compliance, but no part of that conversation was a blocker to them doing the deal. (Long story short: I had done my homework on HIPAA and demonstrated that I understood what I was promising them. I then delivered it. The end.)
And not coincidentally, they all target the same person - the developer. You can't generalize about selling to all people based on this specific persona.
Comments
Sometimes you can service both. GitHub, Heroku, New Relic, CircleCI, are all examples that serve 6 and 7 figure contracts while also supporting tiny 1-person contracts too.
Did these companies start doing both or only after getting investment? It's a genuine question, I don't know. I'm guessing you need to reach a certain mass to be able to do real Enterprise sales.
Github self-funded through $9 to ~$250 a month accounts while they were building their behind-the-firewall product which they sell to enterprises.
You need to have a certain mass to be able to sell six figure a year deals to a true Enterprise. I'd ballpark that mass as 90 lbs or so. They'd hire a software engineer who was 110 lbs soaking wet for $100k a year though, right? So clearly that engineer succeeded in an enterprise sales process at least once.
People tell me that that's different, but it is and it isn't. I closed my first (small) enterprise deal for AR, for a consortium of over a dozen hospitals (we got a tiny sliver of their appointments business), back when our run rate was below $2k a month. I felt pretty terrified about being on the phone with a VP they had around just to talk about HIPAA compliance, but no part of that conversation was a blocker to them doing the deal. (Long story short: I had done my homework on HIPAA and demonstrated that I understood what I was promising them. I then delivered it. The end.)
And not coincidentally, they all target the same person - the developer. You can't generalize about selling to all people based on this specific persona.