http://bingme.com/articles/2006/11/06/investment-criteria-for-software-startups en-us 40 How do you want to be touched? <p>I just ran across an old post on Jeff Clavier's site on some guidelines for getting funded. The ideas are a rework of Ray Lane's original ideas and even more true today. The key idea is that the ideal buyers in the enterprise act just like consumers. They want an instant solution to an immediate problem. Keep it simple, clear, well designed and easy to sell to your neighbor.</p> <blockquote>7 rules that enterprise software startups must meet in order to be considered for an investment: bac5a56b4c3c0d81768ad99185700b8e <img src="/files/ray_lane_slide.jpg" border="0" height="186" width="240" alt="ray_lane_slide.jpg" align="right" /> Friend Jeff Nolan reminded me that these rules were actually <a href="http://jeffnolan.com/wp/2006/04/04/software-2006-ray-lane/">introduced by Ray Lane</a>, a Kleiner Perkins Partner, during his keynote of MR Rangaswami's conference, Software 2006. I actually recommend <a href="http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1025.html">listening to the podcast</a> and <a href="http://www.sandhill.com/conferences/sw2006_materials/lane_final.pdf">reading through the presentation</a>. 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. <a href="http://blog.softtechvc.com/2006/06/kleiner_perkins.html">By Jeff Clavier</a></blockquote> Mon, 06 Nov 2006 21:59:00 +0000 urn:uuid:e8e82afe-e2d5-4281-942b-6ae0c4e7dcbe Chip Vanek http://bingme.com/articles/2006/11/06/investment-criteria-for-software-startups Web Business