iMinds Events
 
On September 20th, iMinds sponsored the 4th "Meeting of the Minds" event.  In attendance were over 100 guests from prominent angel groups, iMinds investors, iMinds' newly formed CIO/CTO Council, and other distinguished guests, all discussing new trends in the Enterprise Software space. The panel featured:
 
Chris Barlow,  Principal at McKinsey's Business Technology Office
Constantin Delivanis, Founder and Managing Director, Sand Hill Group
Bob Sanguedolce, CTO of eBay
 
Some interesting insights that panelists and guests shared included:

The market is poor for enterprise software right now, especially for applications with major deployment costs. No one is doing the big million dollar deployments in this market.

Buyers are routinely asking for discounts from vendors, even on established contracts.

Low entry price points are working, especially those whose costs can be buried in another budget line.

Buyers are not looking for top-line revenue enhancement applications in a down market like this. Instead, they're looking for applications that reduce costs with a hard ROI justification.

The financial stability of enterprise software providers is being closely scrutinized, especially for those with a hosted model.

The event was held at Thomas Fogarty Winery, located in sunny Woodside, west of Palo Alto. With a mountain top setting and views of the San Francisco Bay Area, our guests enjoyed an intimate and relaxed setting while listening to our four panelists discuss innovation and trends in software for Corporate America.
 
We would like to take this opportunity to thank our panelists and guests for their attendance and helping us make this event memorable. This semi-annual event was organized by iMinds Ventures.