Startups selling to enterprise should aim to be important but not indispensable. If you're central to their operations, they fear you'll disappear and resist deep integration. Instead, deliver hard-to-replicate value they can easily replace if you stop performing well.
Okay, so how does a startup sell to enterprise? And I think the key mental model for this is to be important, but not central. If you are central, you're like, hey, you should go build, you know, some significant piece of your business on our thing, like, which sounds like a very sassy strategy, they will say, we don't really want to do that. There are lots of reasons for that. But it really boils down to the fact that you're small, they're big, and they're afraid that you're gonna go away. And there's not that much you can do about that risk. You can try like pricing it out or something. But all that does is slightly reduce risk while significantly reducing using your profits. Contrast that with just providing them with a whole lot of value. Make it something where they could swap it out if they decided it wasn't adding value. But because it is adding value, they're going to keep you forever and ever and ever. That is where you want to be. So it's not that you— and when you're doing that kind of thing, it's got to be that's creating a whole lot of value they can't easily get from somewhere else, or can't get from like an existing incumbent or what have you. It's more than just a feature. When you are adding value, when you are important, it's so much more valuable than being central.
