Ask YC: Is it a bad idea to...?

Hard to draw any specific conclusions, but the cost of a sales team can be fairly easily determined. A lot of that stuff is really more science than art, and there are some good resources to help guide you.<p>Plenty of companies have been successful with an app that is sold through a sales organization.<p>I've done some of the math before, and have run/developed tech sales organizations. Email me if you have more specific questions that you don't want to post publicly.

Most startups i read of here, try succeeding in getting famous with a service known by millions of people. But, the market for startups trying to pitch products to well-established companies is not only big, it's also quite worth the effort, compared to direct-marketing. In most of the cases, startups don't have financial resources to reach out for residential customers, no matter how interesting your product might be (ok, you still might dream about succeeding like $youtube, $facebook, $whatever, but reality is you need some revenue to pay your rent, regardless what enthusiasts tell you.. and they won't pay your rent, unless they sign some investment thing - at least, here in Europe we tend to think like that).<p>However: large corporates often either lack innovation, or they try to lower costs by implementing something which is open-source. There is your chance. Go implement something based on open-source which is competitive to some commercial product, and you'll see you can sell for 1/5 of the price of big vendors.... and a lot of companies are really sick of being dependend of big corporates like Cisco, Nortel, whatever... you "just have to get your foot into the door" of such companies... and for this task, you have to have a great sales person.... you don't make it as a technical kind of person... I tried it... forget it... it's a completely different world... the important thing is: respect it... these sales-guys sell your late grand-mother, but they keep you going... No-one on the street will ever recognise you, and no-one on the street will have heard of your company, but does that really matter if you deliver to a big corporate which pays you some ten thousands of dollards a month to satisfy THEIR customers? Think about it, before wasting just another 10 men months to something RESIDENTIAL customers might like.

Programmers are maybe a little sheltered, but there are these people called "salesmen" who are sometimes quite good at dealing with the problems you'll have. If you genuinely fill a "big need", then it's just a matter of hiring the right person.

I'd say there's nothing wrong with this. I work for a small company that solicits specifically to one specific kind of organization. Our entire business model is based on targeting and sales, not open registration or enterprise solutions. The company was started around 2000, so it's worked well for almost 7 years now.

I'd rather have a sales team than sell to enterprises. Selling to enterprises (which I do a bit in my current job) is so painful that I'd definitely recommend staying away from it. Sell it to the individuals in those enterprises and maybe one day it'll be worth the hassle of selling to the whole enterprise.

i think you would have more luck if you were more specific in your question about your product and your customers.

What's your funding situation? Do you know anyone in an HR department at any decently sized company that might be willing to try it out and provide references to future potential clients?

we're putting finishing touches to "our product" (outside the US and for enterprise clients) and in the next week the sales would begin...and we're just facing the reality of selling to enterprises.. its a really ardous task... at this point.. we're thinkin of bringing in more people (either as co founders, or as partners). shoot me an email if you would be interested