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YC: Requests for Startups

(www.ycombinator.com)
514 points sarimkx | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.523s | source
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brettv2 ◴[] 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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1. mamcx ◴[] No.39375430[source]
> Very curious if anyone knows how to pull this off.

I work in this space (small/mid-size).

The good news is that there are several "obvious" ways to pull this off because an ERP is the culmination of everything a company needs and does. So almost anything you can imagine on the software is part of it.

The bad news, and the reason everyone wants a solution, is that is truly a big space, and then you need E.V.E.R.Y.T.H.I.N.G.

---

My take is to start from the bottom, and build a much better version of Access/FoxPro (https://tablam.org).

Any medium/big ERP end being a specialized computing platform that needs:

- A programming language

- A database engine

- An orchestration engine

- ELT engine

- Auth

- UI/Report builders

And to be clear: NONE of the "programming language", "database engine", etc are a good fit today.

NONE.

This is the big thing, This is the reason (from a tech POW only) that most attempts fail.

This is the secret of why Cobol rule(d): Is all of this! but is too old! (also, this is why SQL still is best: Is almost this).

---

So, to pull this off, you need a team that knows what is "missing" from our current tools, makes a well-integrated package, and adds a "user-friendly" interface in a way that is palatable for the kind of user that uses excel (powerfully).

Is not that impossible. FoxPro was the best example of this kind of integrated solution.

P.D: This is my life's dream, to make this truth!

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2. gscott ◴[] No.39375779[source]
I spent 8 years buidling and running a crm system as a solo project. (https://web.archive.org/web/20080706045541/http://officezill...). I agree without a programming language and database for users to build their own stuff in like Salesforce does any groupware/crm is doomed.

But I think of the YC requirement more like build a Zapier and make your crm all an API. Use some sort of AI or business logic for users to glue it together.

But at the end of the day you still would need to build out an internal programming language as well because it still would not be enough without it.