\\ 10 One enterprise tech leader said that talking to his team simplicity and removing the challenges with infrastructure, about bringing in a new technology inevitably triggers an which enabled customers to shift the dollars to their “immune defense” reaction: business objectives…But Greylock’s [customer program] gave us the opportunity to get in as we were aligning to the When you go out and see new technology and then right message.” —Chadd Kenney, VP & CTO “ come back home and talk to your team about adopting Americas of Pure Storage it, there’s this phenomena that kicks in — a sort of immune Our offering can help companies save money in lots of defense system. Not because they don’t like you or the “ different ways. It’s important for me to ask early on in all new technology, but because their own priorities and risk customer meetings what problems are most pressing and tolerance puts them at odds with the new technology you how she or he defines and measures savings — or it can have brought home… Encouraging adoption can be tricky, wind up being a giant waste of time for both of us.” it’s sometimes tempting to just say it’s my call, I’m buying —Chris Cook, CEO of Delphix this and we’re using it… as you’d imagine this approach is rarely successful. What I’ve found to be helpful is bringing a Enterprise customers told us they think also about the cross section of my team with me when I visit Silicon Valley “hidden costs” of vendor management, user training and (cutting across levels and functions) to stimulate interest and engagement. If they’ve seen and touched a new technology adoption, integration, implementation and administration, with their own eyes, met the founder, and believe it has and the risk of the startup dying or getting acquired. potential, then they can pull it into the organization for me and I don’t have to push it.”—Rich Adduci, Advisor at What startups don’t understand is that I may easily have Esito LLC, former CIO of National Grid “ budget for an $100K contract with your company, but it’s literally going to cost me $200K to assess, onboard, pay Startups should be empathetic to this risk aversion and and manage a new vendor. My people’s time is valuable. understand that, on the customer side, someone’s career There are huge hidden costs, so it has to be important for is often on the line. us to take on. Nice to have won’t work. ” —SVP Technology, Fortune 10 Bank New vendors need to understand how customers are If we select a startup, we do due a fair amount of diligence measuring return and cost. If you’re on different pages “ on the financial side. Where are they in their funding? How about this — for example, the enterprise is measuring well funded are they currently funded and who are their backers? That will tell a lot.” —Ravi Malick, CIO of return on investment differently or more narrowly than Vistra Energy you are — you’ll be in trouble in the future. We went in with an infrastructure pitch. It didn’t resonate “ with most CIOs……so we adjusted our message, we focused on simplicity and the impact that simplicity had on the reduction in costs and reduction in headcount to manage infrastructure. We would ask for their list of objectives, then ask how many of those objectives were are being met with your spend today. [Customers] quickly realized that the majority of their IT spend was going to infrastructure challenges and management, not the things helping their business objectives. So, we hammered on Startups Serving The Enterprise