Software Startup Heuristics - by Aashay Sanghvi

After surveying the wide landscape of business software from seed to public equities over the past few years, I’d like to lay out common heuristics or patterns I’ve seen entrepreneurs use to start their businesses. It’s important to note that these are really just jumping off points. The best companies usually take a first principles or unique approach to their market. Also, if you haven’t read it yet, it is worth going through Avichal’s post from a couple years back. He has a broader lens, and I focus my attention to business-facing software. Follow the money (i.e. build for Sales): Sales departments are budget behemoths inside large organizations given their direct ties to revenue generation. Salesforce is the >$200B incumbent in the space, and I’ll leave the attempts to disrupt it aside for now. The size of the opportunity for other functional tools inside the sales department have blown me away, with the likes of Outreach and Gong scaling rapidly. Newer entrants like Cresta and For

After surveying the wide landscape of business software from seed to public equities over the past few years, I’d like to lay out common heuristics or patterns I’ve seen entrepreneurs use to start their businesses. It’s important to note that these are really just jumping off points. The best companies usually take a first principles or unique approach to their market. Also, if you haven’t read it yet, it is worth going through Avichal’s post from a couple years back. He has a broader lens, and I focus my attention to business-facing software. Follow the money (i.e. build for Sales): Sales dep