Enterprise software used to be clunky. Enterprise software used to have long deployment cycles and massive hurdles. Enterprise software, plain and simple, was not glamorous.
Well guess what? Technology evolved a lot. People got educated. People became empowered.
Innovation in the enterprise led to some of the shackles of legacy software being removed. As Aaron Levie, CEO of the enterprise cloud content management platform Box put it back in 2010, “enterprise tech is sexy,” and lately it seems everyone wants to ask it to the dance
Levie commented, “I mean, these are totally cool areas of innovation, but when compared to $3.4B software acquisitions and SaaS stocks up 60%, or over-performing IPOs and more rumored to come, I’m not sure the world of enterprise software is that lacking in spice.”
So what’s next? Enterprise technology has obviously made inroads, yet still mainstream tech culture is all about consumer tech. How do we further promote innovation and get more developers focusing on enterprise problems, and get more startups tackling the many areas still ripe for disruption in the enterprise world?
The answer here is two-fold, and is modeled after what essentially contributed to NYC’s emergence as a tech powerhouse.
- We need a community built around enterprise technology
- We need incubators and mentorship
1. Let’s start with the first point. If you look back five years, NYC didn’t really have a tech scene. That all changed as the NY Tech Meetup grew from 20 to 20,000 members and became a hub for helping promote new startups such as Tumblr and foursquare when they launched, serving as a “town hall” of sorts by organizing hackathons, growing groups like hackNY, and giving back to the community with events like the RaiseCache fashion show, and influencing education paths by getting more students learning to code and interning at startups.
This is the basis for why I founded the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup - in order to help foster this innovation and get people more knowledgeable and excited for enterprise technology.
I’ve launched the Meetup as a way to help the enterprise technology ecosystem in NY leverage the great foundation set by its consumer counterpart. Consumer technology has a strong community including incubators, meetups such as the NYTM, and many networking opportunities, and the NYETM aims to become a first class enterprise cohort.
The group’s mission statement is to foster innovation in the NY enterprise technology ecosystem through promoting early stage technology companies, supporting entrepreneurs, educating companies on how to work with enterprises, and creating an environment where entrepreneurs, investors, and businesses can all network and learn from one another.
What better place to launch than NYC, where we are full of enterprises such as financial services, advertising, media, retail, and fashion companies.
2. The next point is regarding incubators and mentorship. While consumer startups have flourished over the last few years thanks to Y Combinator, TechStars, and other programs, there is really a need for them in the enterprise space.
Founding an enterprise software company is hard enough even when you’ve had years of experience in the space, but for younger people who haven’t spent a large chunk of their lives working at a large company and thus don’t know their inner workings as well nor do they have extensive networks across many organizations, accelerator programs can offer substantial value here.
Whereas Instragram can be created and maintained by a small team and get 27 million downloads, you can’t just push out a website or an app to the enterprise space and obtain immediate adoption. Beyond navigating the security and scaling issues that enterprise IT demands, even getting a meeting with the right stakeholder within an organization is tough.
Empowering more people within organizations to identify and deal with innovative companies is hopefully going to be aided through the NY Enterprise Technology Meetup. But taking it further, we need more incubators like the Fintech Innovation Lab which is focused on enterprise technology startups focusing on financial services, and which is in its second class. Or media like NYC Seed did. The value here is that these programs have buy in from the large enterprises that will ideally be the customers of these startups. So getting CIOs or Senior IT involved in these programs offers unparalleled access to advice in terms of the direction of their company and development of their product. Maybe even it will lead to a contract for some business.
We certainly have a ways to go before we see widespread creation of enterprise technology startups, but as we keep riding the waves of new trends such as the Consumerization of IT and Big Data analysis, new minds will be required to bring unique insights to the table in order to drive further innovation in the future. Empowering more people and giving them the ability to succeed will help get them excited (in addition to the potential for large financial gains as well), and then we’ll be truly living in a brave new world of enterprise technology.
