Enterprise Panel featuring Sol Lipman, Stephanie Hsu, and Fritz Schlereth at #ProductSF

TL;DR

Successful enterprise products need more than a polished end-user experience. Teams must identify the actual buyer, fit the product into established workflows, provide distinctive value, and partner with clients to encourage adoption. TomFoolery’s experience suggests that treating employees as the sole customer can weaken the business when purchasing decisions require a top-down enterprise approach.

Transcript

so i'm going to start with uh let's start with uh saul so can you talk talk a little bit about what what tom flewer was sort of aspiring to do so uh tom fullery was a startup that uh was not a very old startup it was we started about a year and a half before uh we were acquired by yahoo um and uh what we tried to do was build consumer what we calle... Read More

Key Insights

• Consumer-grade enterprise software is designed to bring the appealing experiences associated with consumer and mobile applications into workplace tools. TomFoolery pursued this goal after observing enterprise applications that were expensive and functional but did not provide employees with an inspiring daily experience.
• Customer selection is one of the most important decisions in enterprise product development. TomFoolery treated the end user as its customer, but Sol Lipman concluded that the company needed a top-down sales approach because end-user adoption alone did not create a strong business.
• Yammer is intended to help employees communicate openly, collaborate, ask questions, and receive answers in ways that transactional email does not support. Its product evolved from a Twitter-like broadcasting model toward a platform structured around group work and self-organized team conversations.
• Enterprise adoption is constrained when a product appears to be yet another tool. Yammer therefore needed to fit established workflows while delivering value that employees could not obtain from the other communication and collaboration products already available to them.
• Dynamic Signal turns employees into a marketing channel by letting companies curate approved content and distribute it to their workforce. Employees can then share that material through their personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, giving companies another way to promote themselves.
• Employee participation requires a recognizable benefit for the employee, not only value for the company. Dynamic Signal cited social selling for salespeople, along with client-run contests, giveaways, and internal recognition, as possible reasons employees might actively use the product.
• Enterprise user experience is created through a partnership between the software provider and the client. Dynamic Signal’s product alone could not guarantee a valuable employee program, because the client also had to supply useful content and operate the program in a way that encouraged participation.
• Enterprise opportunities can emerge when existing workplace products satisfy purchasing requirements without serving users well. TomFoolery’s founders observed tools at AOL that cost millions of dollars yet did not work well or inspire employees, leading them to believe they could build better alternatives.

Questions & Answers

Q: How do you build a consumer-grade enterprise product?

A consumer-grade enterprise product begins with the goal of giving employees the quality of experience they associate with strong consumer and mobile applications. The product must also address enterprise realities by identifying the buyer, fitting established workflows, and delivering distinctive value. TomFoolery’s experience showed that attractive design and end-user appeal were insufficient when the business also required top-down organizational purchasing.

Q: Why is choosing the customer important in enterprise software?

Choosing the customer determines how the product is sold and whether adoption can become a viable business. TomFoolery assumed that the end user was its customer, but Sol Lipman later described this as potentially its biggest mistake. The company could not build a strong business by moving upward from individual users and instead needed a top-down approach involving organizational decision-makers.

Q: What problem was Yammer designed to solve?

Yammer was designed to help people communicate and collaborate more openly inside the workplace. It sought to make it easier for employees to ask questions, receive answers, and talk with one another in ways that transactional email does not readily support. Its broader ambition was to provide a consumer-grade workplace product centered on open communication and group collaboration.

Q: Why did Yammer move beyond a Twitter-like interface?

Yammer moved beyond its original Twitter-like form because its product hypothesis increasingly centered on group work and team collaboration. The team wanted conversations to remain open and to organize themselves around how people work together. That required a structure broader than short broadcast-style updates, leading toward a collaborative platform whose layout supported teams, conversations, and shared workflows.

Q: What is the biggest adoption challenge for workplace collaboration tools?

The biggest adoption challenge described for Yammer was the perception that it was simply another tool. Employees already had established workflows and access to adjacent communication or collaboration products. A new platform therefore had to enter those workflows seamlessly and provide value unique to the product. Without that distinctive benefit, users would only gain another place to monitor and manage.

Q: How does Dynamic Signal use employees as a marketing channel?

Dynamic Signal gives a company the ability to curate brand-approved content and distribute it to employees. Those employees can then share the content through their personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts, effectively creating an additional marketing channel. The approach is based on the stated finding that people tend to trust what employees say about a company more than official marketing channels or its chief executive.

Q: How can companies motivate employees to share approved content?

Companies can motivate employees by creating value that is relevant to their roles and by operating an internal participation program. Dynamic Signal identified social selling as an inherent benefit for salespeople using social channels. Companies could also use contests, giveaways, or other forms of internal recognition. The software provider and client must work together to make participation worthwhile for employees.

Q: What did TomFoolery learn from building enterprise software?

TomFoolery learned that producing an appealing workplace application does not automatically establish a successful enterprise business. Sol Lipman said the company did not determine clearly enough what it would become as it grew. Its most important mistake may have been identifying the end user as the customer when the company actually needed a top-down route to organizational purchasing and adoption.

Summary

In this video, the panelists discuss their experiences in the enterprise software market and the challenges they faced in finding product-market fit. They also talk about the importance of understanding the customer, engaging in customer validation techniques, and the differences between consumer and enterprise markets.

Questions & Answers

Q: What was Tomfoolery's goal as a startup?

Tomfoolery aimed to build consumer-grade applications for the workplace, with a focus on creating beautiful and user-friendly products for professionals.

Q: What was Yammer's core problem that they were trying to solve?

Yammer aimed to develop a consumer-grade product that would facilitate open communication and collaboration within the workplace. Their goal was to make it easier for people to connect and communicate with each other, similar to how they would do so in social media platforms.

Q: Why did Yammer evolve from a Twitter-like interface to a more open collaborative platform?

Yammer wanted to promote a more team-oriented and self-organized workflow. They believed that by creating an open and collaborative platform, they could facilitate better group collaboration in the workplace. The current layout of Yammer's interface is reminiscent of social media platforms like Facebook, but the company is looking to further evolve in this direction.

Q: How does Yammer tackle the challenge of being seen as just another tool in the workplace?

Yammer recognizes that being perceived as just another tool is a common challenge for many enterprise software companies. To address this, they focus on providing unique value to their users and ensuring a seamless integration with their existing workflow. By offering a product that offers distinct benefits and is tailored to their specific needs, Yammer aims to differentiate itself from other tools.

Q: Who are Yammer's top five competitors?

Before the acquisition, Sharepoint was seen as a competitor but also as a complimentary product. Other competitors included Salesforce Chatter, Jive, and Flowdock. However, it's worth noting that Yammer's approach was more focused on unique positioning rather than direct competition.

Q: What problem does Dynamic Signal solve?

Dynamic Signal helps companies curate brand-approved content and enables employees to share that content on their personal social media accounts. This turns employees into a marketing channel and helps companies promote themselves authentically through their workforce.

Q: What size of companies are the best fit for Dynamic Signal's solution?

Dynamic Signal primarily focuses on Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies. However, they believe that companies with at least 50 employees can effectively utilize their product.

Q: How does Dynamic Signal address the challenge of conveying benefit to employees?

Dynamic Signal recognizes that conveying the benefits of their solution to employees is crucial. They strive to create a partnership between their product, the client, and the employees. This involves working closely with clients to develop programs and initiatives that make the product valuable to employees. In some cases, incentives and recognition programs are used to promote tool adoption.

Q: Can product-market fit be conceptually applied to the enterprise space?

Yes, product-market fit is just as important in the enterprise space as it is in the consumer market. It is crucial to demonstrate the value of the product to the end users and the company. Understanding the needs and usage patterns of the target market is essential to achieving product-market fit.

Q: Can you provide an example of a small feature that was successful or unsuccessful?

One example is Yammer's optimization of their sign-up flow. They initially trimmed down the steps in the sign-up process, but this led to a decrease in engagement and retention. They learned that certain pages and prompts were crucial for users' understanding and experience of the product, and they worked on reintroducing these elements in a more contextual and informative manner.

Takeaways

The panelists emphasized the importance of understanding the target customer and developing a product market fit. They highlighted the significance of customer validation techniques and the challenges of the enterprise market, including the need to address the concerns and fears of gatekeepers. They also mentioned the value of data analysis, finding internal advocates, and tailoring the product to meet the specific needs of the target market.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• TomFoolery set out to create beautiful, consumer-grade workplace applications, particularly social products. Its team saw enterprises paying substantial amounts for uninspiring tools that merely satisfied requirements. Although the startup was acquired by Yahoo, Sol Lipman believed it never fully determined what the product and business should become as they grew.

• Yammer sought to improve workplace communication and collaboration beyond transactional email. The product began with a Twitter-like structure, then evolved toward open, self-organized team conversations and a broader collaborative platform. Its central adoption challenge was avoiding the perception that it was simply another tool added to an employee’s existing workflow.

• Dynamic Signal allowed companies to curate approved content and distribute it to employees, who could share it through personal LinkedIn and Twitter accounts. Adoption depended on benefits for employees as well as employers. Social selling, contests, giveaways, recognition, useful content, and close collaboration with each client could support participation in the program.