Networking Opportunities For MVP-stage Enterprise Software Product?

Anonymous

March 14th, 2016

We have a (minimal) product ready to do and working through our personal networks looking for early traction. This is an enterprise software product that takes a while to sell and comes with a bit of a price tag, so at this point we're looking for higher quality leads, not having enough staff to chase the maybes. All that is going reasonably well, but I am also wondering if people have found certain networking events worth their while. Bay Area / Boston / New York only please.

Thanks in advance.

-Igor.

Paul Coady Founder at The Lightning EAM Project

March 16th, 2016

Have you considered the open-source model? Our enterprise product released this week has got significant coverage. It would not have got this coverage under a commercial licensing arrangement. Chasing licenses may not be the best approach with a new product. You may get more income through deployment, maintenance, training and support services.You can of course also release free and paid versions.
You still maintain copyright of the code and the GPL license prevents people using your code to sell products in competition to you.

Karl Schulmeisters Founder ExStreamVR

March 15th, 2016

industry networking events in your particular vertical/sub vertical work well

Jessica Alter Entrepreneur & Advisor

March 15th, 2016

Agreed, there isn't one event or set of events, depends who your customer is, or rather where they are

Shane Boudreau Business coaching and consulting

March 17th, 2016

Find a local company that would be able to ingrate it into their system without fee or nominal and use them as your test team. A midsize company that is looking to upgrade existing services would be ideal. Offer then unfettered access to help and allow them the option of customization. Getting them vested in the cultivating of the new product will bring value to your product rather than insisting they take a jump of faith into a non proven system.

This will involve knocking on doors, I don't see you being able to get this kind of access at a networking event.

Anonymous

March 17th, 2016

@Paul: Thanks, for that thought. I have and haven't yet made the final decision. For now, the full product is available for download under dev license. But frankly, I don't see a difference wrt publicity: you need to go out and find the right people to use it, free or for a license. Or am I missing something.
@Shane: I am certainly willing to negotiate on the price and the deployment costs - all your points are valid, but don't quite answer the question.

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