Building an enterprise business and developing a culture of customer obsession

One of the most common mistakes in building an enterprise software business is investing too heavily in building a platform and technology, before you even have a single customer. It is brutally hard to get a single, paying, customer, using and relying upon your product, everyday. The feedback you get from the early usage of the product is worth it’s weight in gold.

It’s important to build with a longer term vision in mind, and also balance that with serving the needs of a single customer. Through serving the needs of a single customer, a second customer, and then dozens, to tens of thousands, you then become a sustainable platform. Folks at larger, more established companies take paid, recurring usage for granted, the product of a decade of blood, sweat and tears from the early folks on the team.

So, how do you get a fast start and get paid, recurring usage? You develop a culture where your entire org —including engineers and recruiters — talk to customers, ask them questions about their pain points and burning needs, and work with them towards building solutions. During 2020, when the self driving industry got pushed out, at rideOS, we converted 50% of the company to do outbound sales, gave seminars on how to ask questions, and talked about customer pain points, everyday. When you look for burning needs from customers like your life depends on it, you maximize your chances for success.