Big Boy Software: The Enterprises They Are a-Changin’

September 12, 2011

I love enterprise software, B2B if you will. The consumer web bores me, both from an investing and personal standpoint (with the exception of Twitter, which is a killer RSS feed). A lot of money will be thrown at the consumer space, a lot of money has been made there (LinkedIn, Groupon, Pandora), and much more will be made in the future (Facebook, Zynga, Twitter). Now yes, some of these billion dollar darlings have a toe in the business world. They are for the most part, however, reaping the benefits of an increasingly connected (web, mobile, etc.) global population and riding this network effect.

While some venture investors like to look at new subscribers/active users/daily logins, the “consumer” market scares the hell out of me. Call it naïve or out-of-touch, but while I respect my colleagues going all-in on the trend, it isn’t for me.

No… I love companies that began around a pain point: something in response to terrible service, overpriced upgrades, onerous contract terms, or just plain shitty products.  Businesses aren’t running as well as they could be and someone needed to solve it.

Big Boy Software is what one of my colleagues calls it. This is the stuff that makes the world run. This is the company managing petabytes of data for Wall Street, or the business helping service providers get paid, or the Fortune 500 managing millions of documents. This is no frou-frou puppy game (no offense OMGPOP). This is the stuff of 12-month sales cycles, six-month implementations, and seven-digit contracts.

With the market focusing on anything but the enterprise, opportunity abounds. We at OpenView Venture Partners have already found a number of companies that are coming and selling successfully to businesses that need a solution not to boost their Klout, but increase their bottom-line. As Marc Andreessen, founding partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, puts it in his recent article for the Wall Street Journal, “Companies in every industry need to assume that a software revolution is coming.”

Take Prognosis. The Houston-based software company is selling an enterprise solution to rural hospitals across the country. The founders saw an opportunity to come into a market being led by companies from the 1980s that are based on MUMPS, and eat-their-lunch with a web-native solution and straight forward contracts.

Or take AtTask. The Salt Lake City-based business saw an opportunity in a market rife with legacy, on-premise products that were taking up space. With its on-demand solution, AtTask is able provide valuable business intelligence and resource management to companies like Apple and GE with an engaging user interface and lower TCO.

These are just a few of the many companies in our portfolio that are changing the dynamics of their respective marketplaces, by making use of better technology, focusing on more intuitive design, and helping businesses just plain run.

Chief of Staff/Director

Daniel was an Associate at OpenView Venture Partners where he took part in the investments in uSamp, Kareo, Prognosis Health, Mashery, NextDocs and Xtium. Currently, Daniel is Chief-of-Staff/Financial Strategy Director at <a href="https://www.anthem.com/">Anthem</a>.