@marclou is executing the 37signals playbook very well.

Does anyone know the original source of this poem / essay?

@dhh is going to love this 💪

Read the full post on the Write Software, Well blog: writesoftwarewell.com/going-…

For the past two years, I've been working with a client, an enterprise software company (built with Ruby on Rails, of course), particularly in the niche of software used by enterprises of all sizes + MSPs and IT administrators for real businesses like law firms, municipalities, architects, hospitals, manufacturers, financial institutions, and government agencies. Working with an enterprise software company has revealed a whole new world of B2B software companies and managed service providers (MSPs) that I had no idea existed before. I guess most people building typical SaaS startups and Rails apps don’t know much about it either. Personally, I’ve had to revisit many of my priors about how a software business works. So many things work differently in the enterprise world: how the software is developed, how it is marketed and sold, how it is licensed, how it is deployed, and how customers are supported (support is a huge, non-negotiable part of enterprise software, something I learned after handling a ton of support requests lately). Take authentication, for example. Beyond email and password, there’s SAML, SSO, identity providers, and multi-factor authentication. Then there are the related concerns of SCIM provisioning and role-based access control, along with all the complexity of making these work with an enterprise’s existing systems. And authentication is just one part of it. Audit logs, backwards compatibility, documentation, support, data retention, and encryption all demand your attention when building for enterprises. So do service-level agreements, disaster recovery, observability, compliance, configuration and customization. Then there’s the work of deploying on-premises, navigating security reviews and vendor assessments, and dealing with licensing and procurement processes. These products are also not sold directly to the end users of the software. They involve IT administrators, security teams, procurement departments, legal teams, compliance officers, 3rd party software vendors, company executives, and a bunch of other roles you wouldn't come across in B2C or consumer software. I seriously wish the mainstream software development discourse included these topics as much as growth, raising funding, product-led growth, freemium, going viral, building in public, becoming an indie hacker, or whatever the current SaaS trend happens to be. I also wish universities, colleges, and programming curriculum taught about this side of the industry. Anyways, the more I work on the enterprise software, the more I'm enjoying working on it. It’s not as visible or fashionable as the typical SaaS apps, but that’s part of what makes it interesting and fun for me. There is a ton I don’t know, which also means there is plenty to learn, and write about. I also think this industry is very much immune from AI disruption, as the customers (which are real businesses and not developers) are just not interested in building, maintaining, hosting, securing, and debugging their own solution with AI. On the other hand, with all the power of AI agents we now have, I think there’s a lot of room to speed up all areas surrounding enterprise businesses. Plenty of businesses have software they want to improve and a long list of things they’ve learned to live with. They could use someone who can understand their business, help decide what’s worth fixing, and follow through. That’s the work I want to do more of. Going forward, I want to go deep on the topics surrounding enterprise software: MSPs, SSO/SAML authentication, licensing, support, deployment, and the technologies and business models behind enterprise products. In short, anything and everything that touches the enterprise. The goal is to understand this largely invisible world deeply, and then use that understanding to make enterprise software better, using the powerful AI agents we have at our disposal. In a way, this feels like coming home to me, as I started my career in a 35-year old enterprise software company (CityView) running on .NET that built and sold municipal software to local municipalities all over North America. I don’t think I fully appreciated that world at the time. If you’re building, buying, selling, or supporting software in this world of enterprise software or managed services, I would love to connect with you.

Would love to, thank you! I've already learned so much from your podcasts and posts here. For now I just hope and wish you either start your own podcast or join Aaron and Ian on the mostly tech pod! It's already my fav podcast but having you as third host would make it even better ❤️

Learning marketing and sales by reading Jesse's tweets (especially replies) on X 💪

But they all made their mark in the USA, the land of dreams and opportunity.

Link please?

Wow thanks for the details, appreciate it. Sounds like a fun codebase😅

What was the tech stack?

Congratulations 🎊

Thanks for all your work on this Jorge. Lexxy is fantastic, use it all the time.

I wish. Last post from 2022 and haven't heard him anywhere else. Just hope he's enjoying his post-StackOverflow/Trello freedom and wealth in private and in good health.

No worries, I love occasionally going back to Joel on Software and Coding Horror essays (among other). Always learn something new and/or enjoy a little nostalgia of the earlier days of our glorious industry.

Just scrolling and skimming the titles of the posts you can see multiple violations of "CoC" "Harassment Free" "High Standards" "Productive Disagreement"

Everybody wondering why Omarchy is succeeding should read this classic Joel on Software essay: joelonsoftware.com/2006/04/1…

Nice!!

Was this your first time? How does it feel in terms of safety? Never sat in one before but would love to.