Koral, Salesforce, and a Video you should watch

I ran into an old friend and co-worker, Mark Suster, at a Valley event last week.  I haven't spoke to Mark in probably a decade, but he has been very successful and is one of the more thoughtful software/business guys I know.

I Googled him after the event and came across a video he did about his venture history and, more importantly, what he learned about through building and selling software to enterprises.  It is absolutely uncanny how similar our experiences were and the lessons we took away.

Watch his video on Scoble's blog here.

Seriously, watch the video.  He is a very thoughtful guy and much more pragmatic than most software execs you will run across.

What I liked:
1. Simple insights that are devastating to the model of his industry - A content management system without folders is almost heresy to anyone but the Web2.0 world, but Mark got it - folders are just places to lose content in at large corporations.
2. The real dynamics of software development - When you charge a lot of money to large enterprises for your software, it will never be usable.  This might actually be a law of physics.

There is more, so watch it.

Both Mark and I met while working on a very large custom software project for a huge utility in Southern California.  It was years long and impossibly expensive.  In the intervening years I started an ecommerce software integration firm (Fort Point Partners) and he started an Internet firm for builders.  We both raised a great deal of money, suffered through the downturn and created new products. His recent venture, Koral, is now part of Salesforce.com.