Kobi Fullerpartner at Progressive companies, had the idea that there are certain characteristics that every successful software company shares. You might think this isn’t something that’s easily measurable or identifiable, maybe just something every investor knows or feels when they see it. But Fuller decided to sit down and figure out what those elements were, and he created a framework that he released today.

What Fuller came up with, he called DUST, a way to measure and understand which business software companies are most likely to succeed. “Fabric represents my overall stance on how I think about software and what I will be investing in for the next decade,” Fuller told australiabusinessblog.com.

There are six components he says are important for companies to prioritize and stand out, including being fast, addictive, daring, rewarding, integrated and built on community

He says that while it’s not necessary for every company to have all of these characteristics, it gives him a foundation to think about the enterprise software companies he invests in. I lay out what anyone building the next generation of enterprise software companies should think about — and use it as a guide to how they’re simply shaping their business within their company.”

Fuller says there are now tens of thousands of SaaS companies, and the number is constantly growing, that companies need to think about how to differentiate themselves and why buyers and users prefer one solution over another, and he believes it should be fast and fun to use, something that users rely on and come back to.

He uses the term addictive, but what he means is that the software has to be designed in such a way, that it is so useful and so easy to use that you come back to it again and again, that you designed the software in such a way that it turns the industry upside down . That contains those first three elements of being fast, addictive and daring.

Aside from all that, it should pay you back, a reward, help you complete a task faster means you get your work done faster. It also needs to be integrated into your existing technology systems and your teams and workflows. Finally, there must be a whole community around that helps you and you feel part of it because you use that software.

This may all sound like common sense, but building software that does all that is no easy task. Once you do that, and you start selling it within the enterprise, you make it incredibly difficult to stop using it or switch to another vendor that sells a similar service, because your users are completely convinced of it. idea of ​​this product, this company.

He says a startup that really embodies this idea is Figma, the company Adobe is trying to buy for $20 billion dollars. “Figma embodies all these components of FABRIC – they are fast, addictive, daring and rewarding in terms of value. They are deeply integrated and have done a fantastic job and built a community from day one,” he said.

It comes down to documenting something Fuller learned over the years as he built a company and was an investor. Prior to joining Upfront Ventures, Fuller was chief marketing officer at Revolve, an LA-based fashion e-commerce company.

“We try to apply some of these principles we’ve learned to all facets of our overall background. experience, especially in the field of [working with] consumers and try to distill it down to something very simple, very, very powerful, that anyone can get and then allow there to be a common language for software creation,” Fuller said.