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The modern perception of a startup venture is a fast-paced and creative group of innovators, radical thinkers and entrepreneurs coming together to disrupt the market, alter the way technology is used and change the world, one industry at a time.
While it is hard to recall, there was once a time when that wasn’t the case; startups today are drastically different in almost every way possible, and the result is even more innovation, game changing technologies and advancements in nearly every vertical.
During the dot-com bubble years, where the World Wide Web was changing the way information was transferred, stored and shared, startups were much different in nature and organizational structure. During those formative years, more of the money raised was poured back into office space, technology and equipment that was expensive and hard to come by. More spending on equipment and technology, meant that less money was spent on the product and the UI/UX.
Today more and more startups are built based on existing cloud technology, therefore reducing costs and overhead. Thanks to the introduction of cloud technology and the ease of access to technology, startups have been able to alter the way in which they build their business models, focusing more on the actual product and customer experience from the start.
The result of this shift in the way startups operate directly impacted the way enterprises view, interact and depend on startups.
The Rise of the Virtual Marketplace
One of the most notable changes in recent years is the introduction of the marketplace as the newest startup business model. The idea of virtual marketplaces has been infiltrating nearly every industry with rapid speed. Marketplaces are able to instantly connect providers and consumers by serving as the low-cost and efficient middleman. Companies such as Craigslist, AirBnB etc are dominating the virtual marketplace scene and changing the way services are rendered and received.
Today virtual marketplaces function as stand alone ecosystems that aim to disrupt the modern market by speeding up the consumption process while reducing the number of middlemen necessary to cut a piece of the profit cake. In creating these ecosystems, startups don’t just offer a new alternative, but rather create new markets and change the way others operate entirely.
In a world where startups rise and fall based on their ability to successfully complete a Proof-of-Concept, it is no wonder that one company created a virtual marketplace for exactly that reason; to connect startups with enterprises instantly. prooV is a revolutionary game-changing startup that simplifies the PoC process while reducing the time wasted by enterprises and startups alike.
From the way the marketplace is structured and the simplicity by which PoC’s can be assessed, it seems as though prooV is aiming to do more than disrupt the market, but rather create a new market entirely. By shifting the way enterprises seek startups and startups test their technology thanks to their one-time secure cloud integration. In fact, prooV offers the most cost effective solution for both parties, making the PoC process a win-win situation.
By simplifying the lines of communication between enterprise decision makers and innovators, while speeding up the go-to-market rate of new technologies, enterprises are able to quickly determine the viability and scalability of a new technology and decide whether to move forward with it or not.
Enterprises Turn to SaaS Startups
The introduction of the Pilot-as-a-Service concept comes as a twist on the increasingly common Software-as-a-Service solution. With more startups relying on cloud technology and reducing the need for hardware and complex equipment-based infrastructure, SaaS is on the rise.
Startups that are looking to make a game-changing impact on the startup world in 2016 are turning their eyes to SaaS solutions due to their increased adaptability, scalability and reduced initial costs. With no need to buy, build and operate a fully functional IT department, and the only real necessity being a computer with internet connection, the SaaS model is, like the marketplace, altering the way startups operate in 2016.
While perceived initially as a B2C or SMB oriented niche, SaaS solutions are increasingly appealing to enterprises that want to simplify time to deployment and increase their ROI. By relying on cloud-based, easily integratable SaaS solutions, enterprises can increase their understanding of their clients while reducing their customer acquisition costs by many times, in an automatic and easily scalable way.
The dependency on SaaS solutions, particularly for enterprises that rely on IT, is also increasing thanks to the rapid advancements in IT SaaS technology. Whether turning to project management solutions, easily customizable CRM’s or any other SaaS solution, enterprises have long left the days of mistrust behind them and are actively seeking SaaS solutions to integrate within their own ecosystems.
