Pivot to enterprise
A lot of startups have recently announced enterprise products as a way to boost growth. It's an unusual focus for the startup sector, so what's driving this interest?
Ever since Atlassian arrived as a significant player in global tech, Australian software-as-a-service (SaaS) businesses have developed a reputation for scaling differently to their rivals from other parts of the word.
Specifically, local SaaS companies are known for eschewing a focus on enterprise customers and instead building off-the-shelf products designed for small-to-medium businesses or for teams within big companies — products which are built to eventually spread organically inside those organisations.
But recently, there has been growing evidence of a change of thinking on this issue. Over the past fortnight Capital Brief has run stories on at least three of the shining lights of Australian SaaS — Canva, Dovetail and Leonardo Ai — in which all explicitly declared intentions to target enterprise customers.
I was also curious to hear two different seed stage startup founders who are currently raising mention that they were surprised to be questioned by VCs about their enterprise strategies. Both are raising to get a product to market for SMBs. Enterprise was not on their radar yet.
