You don't go in cold, you go in warm. Building a product in an industry you aren't familiar with is very difficult and even if you can get companies to talk to you, you're not going to be well positioned to truly understand what they're saying. You need to start with the relationships (either by developing them, or hiring people who already have these relationships). Pick any startup in your target industry and look at who they've hired: they'll be filled with industry stalwarts who provide the domain knowledge and relationships required to understand what's needed. If you want to sell into life sciences, time to hire some experienced VPs from your competitors.
Airbyte isn't a great example for you because businesses using ELT tools are radically different to pharmaceutical companies: pharmaceutical companies are working in a very slow moving industry that requires a great deal of careful consideration. As people in technology, we get caught up in the belief that because we can build incredible masterpieces that we're owed the time and expertise of others that we need to realise these incredible masterpieces... We're not. You have to approach this from a much more humble position, you're going cap in hand, you're not a hero, you're begging for scraps.
This is great advice. I’d add that either you have a very strong network with people from the industry that want to work with you or you have a solid idea/hypothesis of how to solve problems that the industry have.
Having the network without a solution to a problem doesn’t work, because big companies have even more access. And everyone is trying to use interviews to try to find new ideas. The experts will just be bored because that’s the nth person trying to interview them.
But it’ll it’s also hard to break into an industry when you don’t know anyone but have a great idea.
It seems that you have access to people that you can discuss about problems. But you have to bring them and a few ideas how to deal with them while listening to their critics.
Yeah it has to be warm, no one is willing to share problems with a stranger be it life or business. At my company, even our inbound leads, where our reps have a good sense of what is wrong, they aren't so forth coming, we teach reps to build rapport and lead with questions to help distill the issue as quickly as possible. This is particularly prevalent in some cultures, some find it super hard to admit they are facing challenges or seem embarrassed to let us know their existing ways of working. They are also often unable to articulate the root of the problem, sharing only symptoms so to speak.
Well connected people that VPs in pharma listen to. It’s not an impenetrable network but it’s based on history of working together.
You find one willing to vouch for you and it will at least open doors. I’m not so confident there are king makers so much as “adds a rook to your team-makers” :)
Airbyte isn't a great example for you because businesses using ELT tools are radically different to pharmaceutical companies: pharmaceutical companies are working in a very slow moving industry that requires a great deal of careful consideration. As people in technology, we get caught up in the belief that because we can build incredible masterpieces that we're owed the time and expertise of others that we need to realise these incredible masterpieces... We're not. You have to approach this from a much more humble position, you're going cap in hand, you're not a hero, you're begging for scraps.