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YC: Requests for Startups

(www.ycombinator.com)
514 points sarimkx | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.353s | 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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RowanH ◴[] No.39375543[source]
The problems with ERP is (1) in order to be a big player you have to cater for so many use cases it starts becoming a glorified development tool without any room for providing actual ROI to the vertical that wants to buy it. (2) it's very, very easy to fall into the trap of saying "well, process x is really no different in industry y, we can adapt the ERP system". In reality there's so many nuances that the platform becomes compromise.

Vertical specific software provides so much more value as you can build things unencumbered by the engine/data structures/way things work.

I've found our niche - ERP's would be hopelessly expensive so save for top tier OE companies no one uses it. In weeks we can develop and roll out features & functionality that our clients just lap up that you would never in a million years build into an ERP platform, but is intrinsic to the delivery of our clients products.

It was inconceivable to me 2 years ago, but now I've had very real discussions with some companies where they're looking at our software going "wow... you're going to give mid tier players better functionality that we could only dream of from our ERP systems.."

Basically ERP platforms are "jack of all trades, master of none".

In my former life we did vertical specific software for the window and door industry. Every time we heard from a prospect "oh we're looking at __some ERP platform__ to do configuration of W&D", we'd immediately list dozens of reasons why they would fail, and fail hard.. countless untold money to consulting teams has been burned learning those lessons.

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1. mamcx ◴[] No.39386116[source]
Yeah, this is the way for the small/mid tier (this is also how I do for https://www.bestsellerapp.net)

What make this complicated is that each company turns into a different project. So is like have several branches:

    ERP
       /CompanyA
       /CompanyB
This is high maintenance the more successful you are (and puts a serious barrier to adapting to certain customers).

It gets to a point where after a certain # of customers you can't grow, and now is where you think about making your own DB, programming language, ... :)