Ask HN: Describe your first enterprise sale
I don't have a story about enterprise sales, but if you'll allow me I will just slip in the story of the first copy of software that I sold. I hope no one minds.I wrote a silly computer game about cats (http://store.steampowered.com/app/386900), essentially making a puzzle game out of finite-state automata questions you get during the computation course of a Computer Science degree. Of course, the abstraction on the mechanics involve cats, because it's a good way to trick people into doing computer science.Now, three weeks before I released the product, I stuck up a webpage where people could purchase the game for a higher price, but the twist was that they could send me a picture of their cat, and I'd put the cat in the game, in a level somewhere. I didn't really know if anyone would be interested, I didn't do any marketing, but since it didn't take long to hook Stripe up and the idea amused me, I went for it. The next day I received my first customer, someone from Peru, who in broken English described their cat 'Missy', and attached a dozen or so photos of her. So, I draw an in-game representation of the Peruvian cat, place her in the game, and add a feature where when the user mouses-over Missy, an overlay pops up with a photo inside. I still have no idea how this customer found me, but I do know who their cat is, what food it likes, what toys are its favourite. Over the course of the three weeks, a little more than a dozen people preordered and sent me (usually loads) of pictures of their cat(s), which was quite a personal subject for some. More than one had recently lost their pet, and wished me to memorialise the cat inside the game, either for them, or their wife/husband, as a gift or as a surprise when they played it through. I did not expect to be in some way apart of people's grieving. Some of them wrote me much later to express their thanks. What stuck with me most though was the feeling of making a personal connection with someone on the otherside of the globe, Peru, Singapore, Algeria, etc, and effectively being introduced to a member of their family. It was a surprisingly meaningful experience.So no, not at all about big enterprise sales, instead a $10 game involving cats, but, there you go.