Kleiner Perkins investment criterias for software startups: Consumer ? Enterprise ? Both!
A few days ago, Don Dodge reported on a panel he did at TiECon East with KP's Ajit Nazre, during which Ajit mentioned the 7 rules that enterprise software startups must meet in order to be considered for an investment:
- Instant Value to customers - solve a problem or create value with the first use
- Viral adoption - Pull, not push. No direct sales force required
- Minimum IT footprint, preferably none. Hosted SaaS is best.
- Simple, intuitive user experience - no training required.
- Personalized user experience - customizable
- Easy configuration based on application or usage templates
- Context aware - adjust to location, groups, preferences, devices, etc.
Friend Jeff Nolan reminded me that these rules were actually introduced by Ray Lane, a Kleiner Perkins Partner, during his keynote of MR Rangaswami's conference, Software 2006. I actually recommend listening to the podcast and reading through the presentation.
What is interesting is that these rules seemed to be focusing on enterprise software companies, and upon reading them they were really fitting consumer-facing services. Yet another data point showing that Consumer and Enterprise 2.0 are getting closer and closer in the way they are built and marketed. Ben Barren from down under had a similar thought.
During my keynote to the Web 2.0 Irish Conference, I talked about similar things - in the form of the key questions that I ask myself when meeting a prospective investment:
- Value ?
- Adoption ?
- Differentiation ?
- Distribution ?
- Business Model ?
- Technology ?
- Team ?
- Plan ?
What is interesting is that fundamental aspects like the the Team and the Plan are not covered by the 7 rules, so I would posit that there were other aspects being discussed.
Tag: enterprise2.0
I thought these were Ray Lane's laws? :)
Posted by: jeff | June 20, 2006 at 03:49 PM
Jeff> Thanks for the reminder. I was not there yet for Ray's keynote at Software 2006. I have updated the post accordingly.
Posted by: Jeff Clavier | June 20, 2006 at 04:44 PM
The modelization of successful software companies you´re showing is extremely interesting, and true. But isn´t the software industry one of the most competitive areas worldwide? Don´t you think what software companies should urge to do is, besides providing access on demand (which most already do thanks do ASP techs), differentiate their products? Differentiating one´s offer seems to me to be the success key of incomers in this extremely busy market.
Posted by: Jeremy | July 06, 2006 at 11:01 AM