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One of the trends I'm most excited about is the democratization of b2b technology. Let's discuss. 1/
This is broader than, but related to the "consumerization of enterprise." 2/
Consumers are using great software experiences more pervasively in their personal lives, driving higher expectations around usability, less tolerance for bad process and tools, and more discovery. 3/
Democratization is about access -- not just usability, but availability and adoption vectors. 4/
If something takes 6 months to buy, is too expensive, and requires 9 months implementation, ongoing maintenance and org-wide training, certain segments of the market can't adopt that software. If there's not way to integrate it with other software you use, you're stuck. 5/
I see startups getting better and better at designing intuitive and deployable software, integration, web-based marketing, and at making self serve & inside sales models efficient -- addressing usability and adoption. I see customers requiring more openness (see APIs in RFPs). 6/
Traditionalists argued this smb/midmarket success "can only happen" in areas where there's a massive secular trend like Shopify (ecommerce). Or productivity, like Microsoft, Dropbox, Slack and Zoom. Or that outcomes were capped. 7/
Or maybe a smaller trend Hubspot (inbound marketing). Or maybe if the audiences are technical, like Sumologic or Datadog. Or must-haves like Finance/HR (Intuit, Gusto, Namely). 8/
Or maybe then just areas where the incumbents aren't serving the customer well. Hey, that's getting pretty broad. I first wrote about this cambrian explosion in 2015: medium.com/@saranormous/n… 9/
Where's the first principles thinking in that set of rules of "what can't be done"? If the software is valuable, and you can acquire, serve and retain a happy customer efficiently, then you have a valuable business. If you can do it at scale, you have a big one. 10/
On that note, the third factor of democratization is actually availability -- the building and funding of products that serve a lower-market segment well. This is collective knowledge growing in the entrepreneurial/VC community, figured out company by company. 11/
A product that doesn't require training, months of implementation, and FTE headcount to administer has a different set of design principles. 12/
And some of those midmarket co's then DO grow into the enterprise as well. While there's an enormous product & GTM lift in expanding to new market segments, and not always possible, there are examples. Quiz: what was the ASP if Salesforce at IPO? 13/
But how many enterprise companies have expanded downmarket successfully, without M&A? Very few. Any? Any engineer or product person would recognize it's "easier" to add than to simplify. 14/
I believe we're going to see big SMB/midmarket-focused companies in more and more segments of software, and it's going to become an increasingly popular place to start a venture-scale, venture-growth company. 15/
To be clear -- the enterprise isn't dead, and they have many unique pains worth solving, and a ton of money to invest in solving them. See our whitepaper on "Startups Serving the Enterprise" for more on that. news.greylock.com/startups-servi… 16/
But the software market is about to get a lot bigger than just the enterprise. Which means there's actually a lot of greenfield SaaS opportunity out there. So excited for our companies at Greylock (and others) to make it happen. 17/
