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YC: Requests for Startups

(www.ycombinator.com)
514 points sarimkx | 1 comments | 14 Feb 24 16:31 UTC | HN request time: 0.288s | source
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brettv2 ◴[14 Feb 24 15:54 UTC] No.39371339[source]▶
> NEW ENTERPRISE RESOURCE PLANNING SOFTWARE

Very curious if anyone knows how to pull this off. There's so much value to be unlocked but it's just impossible to break through.

I've personally met three very talented founders that tried and failed (one was accepted to YC as a mid-market ERP and successfully pivoted into an application tracking system) and failed very quickly.

I'm guessing an important feature would be an integration system that maps data from the current ERP seamlessly into the new ERP. And that assumes you can even get through the enterprise sales process to even get the company to migrate.

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ibash ◴[14 Feb 24 16:05 UTC] No.39371513[source]▶
I’ve met a few people who’ve been on the buyer side of an erp migration. It’s a multi million dollar affair that takes years.

Two approaches I can think of:

1. Target mid market or smaller and grow with customers (will be slow)

2. Take a front-door-wrapper approach

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samsolomon ◴[14 Feb 24 18:37 UTC] No.39373429[source]▶
Or 3. Target a small slice of ERP/CRM tooling and gradually evolve into something more fully-featured.
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SteveNuts ◴[14 Feb 24 18:42 UTC] No.39373488[source]▶
The problem is ERP needs to be incredibly tightly integrated into the whole business from end-to-end.

You can't only offer raw materials tracking, but not accounting and shipping. There's just not a lot of value to the business unless you have everything coupled.

The MVP for an ERP is essentially, a fully featured and battle-tested system which is very expensive and time consuming to build before it's profitable.

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1. dragonwriter ◴[14 Feb 24 20:14 UTC] No.39374678[source]▶
> The problem is ERP needs to be incredibly tightly integrated into the whole business from end-to-end.

So you target firms that are not yet at the scale where they likely have or need ERP with something that does something they do need that would be integrated into an ERP when they get to that scale and build out from there.

No one is buying an ERP from a firm that doesn't either already have a deep relationship with the buyer or a track record in the ERP space or a track record in an ERP-adjacent space, and more than one of those is desirable, so be in the position that when you start trying to sell an ERP you have at least the last plus a stable of firms for which you also have the first.