(im the author) i didnt submit this haha. thanks @mooreds for always having my back.
robertlagrant · 1h ago
> The basic business model of Gartner is:
> make up term as The Future
> put a lot of marketing firepower behind it
> make people pay to list on the magic quadrants
This is partially correct. My understanding is Gartner will also allow people to pay them to create the segment that exactly matches their product.
the_mitsuhiko · 57m ago
I have no idea how people end up on the magic quadrant but I had a good chuckle recently when I saw Vercel advertise that they are Visionaries in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ and when you look at the infographic [1] you become a visionary by just executing worse than the leaders.
the magic quadrant is essentially a stack ranking of 'how much money are you paying us vs how much money we think we can get out of you'.
that's how you end up in scenarios where some shit IBM product is leading the chart against its objectively superior competitors.
kstrauser · 44m ago
That's astounding. I could see bragging if you're almost as able to execute but with a better future plan: "look at us, the up-and-comers!" But less ability to execute and a smaller roadmap? I think I'd be keeping my mouth shut.
lazide · 1m ago
The problem with sales and marketing is they kinda can’t keep their mouth shut. It’s a problem.
esafak · 1h ago
Coining new categories gives startups the validation they need to justify their differentiation, which is how they get launched. If the company coins its own category, prospective buyers will never find the product in the first place since they will not have not heard of the category. So companies like Gartner are serving a valuable function in the startup economy. It's the formalization of what Karpathy did when he coined the term "vibe coding", christening a new category.
xnx · 1h ago
"OpenAI top Leader in AI companies with a CEO named 'Sam'"
phillipcarter · 46m ago
Yeah, nah. The enterprise software market is nowhere near close to being upended by AI, and Gartner has their tendrils deeply wrapped inside of it. Small companies like Netlify which are barely in use by this market are not a canary in the coal mine.
crinkly · 44m ago
Yeah that. The company I work for has an annual revenue of about 6x the valuation of Netlify. We're busy sucking Gartner off at every possible corner and learning it's a mistake over and over again. Everyone we know is as well.
Some of the startup industry has no idea how enterprise is at all. There aren't even any trendy CEO/CTO here. It's all suits.
Not all things are sexy.
samdixon · 7m ago
What do they use it for?
tallytarik · 15m ago
G2, Sourceforge (yes, that one), and Gartner’s Capterra/GetApp/SoftwareAdvice all have the same business plan: charge vendors $x,xxx+ per month to outrank other vendors in their made up categories.
Of course, you can technically list for free.
But look! For the low low price of $x,xxx per month, now you can show one of 40 tailor-made award icons on your site!
Or, unlock the privilege of showing “user reviews” from our site on your site! (of course if you had managed to get reviews independently, you’re not allowed to use the widget without paying)
Don’t have reviews? Ah, I forgot to mention. The $x,xxx plan also comes with “review generation” — we’ll pay users to write reviews for you!
Oh, and on an unrelated note, the $x,xxx plan just also happens to unlock dofollow links across each of those 40 made up categories, which all rank highly in google. And the $xx,xxx plan means that - user ratings aside - you can end up at the top of those categories.
It’s hard to describe it other than the author says: a grift. Seeing those logos on other companies sites are now a huge turn off to me personally, and I haven’t yet capitulated for my own SaaS, but I suspect this isn’t the feeling of the execs they seek to target. Or maybe it is, and it’s just the price of doing business.
steveBK123 · 36m ago
My experience with Gartner has been seeing in-over-their-head CTOs in lagging firms take their recommendations a bit too seriously.
Earnestly printing out the latest white paper and distributing it to their directs. Hiring "head of X" for whatever new X Gartner has invented.
Thinking they are getting a peak at industry best practices when in reality the industry leaders are not sharing anything with Gartner, so its blind leading blind.
This leads to a lot of self delusion that actually being a lagger is an advantage because we'll simply buy XYZ that Gartner suggested and leapfrog over the leaders who are mired in their legacy tech.
No thought whatsoever to the people, processes and institutional knowledge that got the leaders to where they are. Nor any questioning as to whether there are actual off the shelf solutions for things your better competitors built in house with many man years of effort.
So the sooner the better ..
twoodfin · 34m ago
This article implies that Gartner’s revenue stream comes primarily from vendors.
Does anyone know if that’s true? Gartner calls that whole arm of the business “insights” and doesn’t break it down further in their SEC filings.
I’d be surprised if that’s the case.
kerblang · 46m ago
The web is already compostable
pinewurst · 24m ago
What’s really funny is that Gartner are probably the most reputable of the enterprise analysts. I had to cultivate these for years and could tell stories…
datax2 · 1h ago
Well written. Coming out of college years ago Gartner was a whole section of review during my business courses. Working with Data for years now I have become hyper sensitive to this keyword grift; Big data, Data lake, Datalakehouse, realtime-analytics, no-code, data model, data schema...etc. People lean so hard on certain words as if they mean they are doing something different or unique. You work in one product in your company, then you bring someone who has experience in another product and they remark "But product X cannot do XYZGrift" but it can, people hang on these keywords as though they are platform actions or enablement that exist only there.
Rambling, but to get to the point, AI in general will strip this SEO/Marketing/Boomer catch phrasing, and build the common language which I appreciate greatly. I can go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask it I want to Foo this Bar with these filters, doesn't matter if its SQL, Python, Unix, Alteryx, Tableau... whatever, it digest the request without the fluff and responds commonly.
To stack on this info hunting or product research with AI is also typically less full of fluff for me. I don't have to deal with a sales engineer saying how wonderful their ML product is when I know its garbage immediately, I can just move on and assess the rest of the product.
The only value I can still see in Gartner is their customer survey information, but I am sure someone or somehow AI will scrape the forum post for all these products and weight the products community feedback about its product.
SirFatty · 1h ago
"Boomer catch phrasing"
really?
llm_nerd · 48m ago
"Boomer C-Suites who fancy themselves Enterprise Tech executives and are happy to throw humans at any problem were happy buying off the Gartner catalog and then hitting the golf course. Today, millennial CEOs and CTOs get their analysis and news sources from X, /r/LocalLlama, the All In Podcast, Semianalysis Substacks, any number of YouTubes and Podcasts."
This reads like parody, and instantly the author looks like a clown. I see another post in here talking about "Boomer catch phrasing" (in a word salad comment) which is simply hilarious.
While this self-anointed millennial thought guru seems to think their age defines them, I think the rest of us realize that there are gullible rubes in every age group. There are fresh new recruits citing the gartner magic quadrant or whatever nonsense makes their world feel more orderly. I mean, LinkedIn is absolutely full of hilarious nonsense from people at every age trying to show that they Ordered The World because of some list or source they subscribe to.
bitpush · 1m ago
I lost a bit of respect for author, who I see frequently here on HN and elsewhere. I always thought they were reasonable, highly technical and have been casually following them since their svelte days.
Their pivot to AI and rebranding (from a dev advocate who did js frameworks to now suddenly being an expert of AI/LLMs) was inspiring but this take has left me with a poor taste in my mouth.
notfromhere · 31m ago
Eh. They're not wrong. A lot of folks still pay Gartner money to be on their lists, but it's more of a feeling that you have to, and not because it actually leads to any results.
Having worked in both corporate and startup worlds, I've rarely seen anyone under 40 reference a Gartner report as credible or actually use that as a source of information. Everyone knows it's pay-to-play, not particularly credible, and as the younger generations age into these very senior roles, I have no doubt that Gartner will lose a lot of relevance.
Given that trust in "mainstream media" has pretty much collapsed everywhere, I don't really doubt that this will inevitably hit the obvious corporate gatekeepers as well. Enterprise/b2b is just 10-20 years behind on trends experienced elsewhere.
llm_nerd · 2m ago
"People used to rely on this thing. As replacements come along, people rely less on that thing so it became less valuable."
Amazing, super simple to understand and without any need for hilariously shallow bigotry!
I haven't heard anyone in business -- like you, having worked in F100, corporate, startups, and so on -- reference a Gartner report in well over a decade. From any age group. Whether "boomer" or super savvy YouTube-watching (lol) "millenial".
Seriously, trying to tie the evolution of industry to some sort of tired, laughable ageist nonsense is just boorish nonsense. Be better.
When someone older yips about how younguns today are all cooked and they play Roblox all day, it looks like ageist shrieking from someone with little nuance and a very binary view of the world. It is no different when laughable pieces like this appear.
On the day this was published (2025-02-07) it closed at $529.29. Yesterday it closed at $238.37.
Source - https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/IT/history/
Victory lap submission?
> make up term as The Future
> put a lot of marketing firepower behind it
> make people pay to list on the magic quadrants
This is partially correct. My understanding is Gartner will also allow people to pay them to create the segment that exactly matches their product.
[1]: https://vercel.com/gartner-mq-visionary
that's how you end up in scenarios where some shit IBM product is leading the chart against its objectively superior competitors.
Some of the startup industry has no idea how enterprise is at all. There aren't even any trendy CEO/CTO here. It's all suits.
Not all things are sexy.
Of course, you can technically list for free.
But look! For the low low price of $x,xxx per month, now you can show one of 40 tailor-made award icons on your site!
Or, unlock the privilege of showing “user reviews” from our site on your site! (of course if you had managed to get reviews independently, you’re not allowed to use the widget without paying)
Don’t have reviews? Ah, I forgot to mention. The $x,xxx plan also comes with “review generation” — we’ll pay users to write reviews for you!
Oh, and on an unrelated note, the $x,xxx plan just also happens to unlock dofollow links across each of those 40 made up categories, which all rank highly in google. And the $xx,xxx plan means that - user ratings aside - you can end up at the top of those categories.
It’s hard to describe it other than the author says: a grift. Seeing those logos on other companies sites are now a huge turn off to me personally, and I haven’t yet capitulated for my own SaaS, but I suspect this isn’t the feeling of the execs they seek to target. Or maybe it is, and it’s just the price of doing business.
Earnestly printing out the latest white paper and distributing it to their directs. Hiring "head of X" for whatever new X Gartner has invented.
Thinking they are getting a peak at industry best practices when in reality the industry leaders are not sharing anything with Gartner, so its blind leading blind.
This leads to a lot of self delusion that actually being a lagger is an advantage because we'll simply buy XYZ that Gartner suggested and leapfrog over the leaders who are mired in their legacy tech.
No thought whatsoever to the people, processes and institutional knowledge that got the leaders to where they are. Nor any questioning as to whether there are actual off the shelf solutions for things your better competitors built in house with many man years of effort.
So the sooner the better ..
Does anyone know if that’s true? Gartner calls that whole arm of the business “insights” and doesn’t break it down further in their SEC filings.
I’d be surprised if that’s the case.
Rambling, but to get to the point, AI in general will strip this SEO/Marketing/Boomer catch phrasing, and build the common language which I appreciate greatly. I can go to ChatGPT or Claude and ask it I want to Foo this Bar with these filters, doesn't matter if its SQL, Python, Unix, Alteryx, Tableau... whatever, it digest the request without the fluff and responds commonly.
To stack on this info hunting or product research with AI is also typically less full of fluff for me. I don't have to deal with a sales engineer saying how wonderful their ML product is when I know its garbage immediately, I can just move on and assess the rest of the product.
The only value I can still see in Gartner is their customer survey information, but I am sure someone or somehow AI will scrape the forum post for all these products and weight the products community feedback about its product.
really?
This reads like parody, and instantly the author looks like a clown. I see another post in here talking about "Boomer catch phrasing" (in a word salad comment) which is simply hilarious.
While this self-anointed millennial thought guru seems to think their age defines them, I think the rest of us realize that there are gullible rubes in every age group. There are fresh new recruits citing the gartner magic quadrant or whatever nonsense makes their world feel more orderly. I mean, LinkedIn is absolutely full of hilarious nonsense from people at every age trying to show that they Ordered The World because of some list or source they subscribe to.
Their pivot to AI and rebranding (from a dev advocate who did js frameworks to now suddenly being an expert of AI/LLMs) was inspiring but this take has left me with a poor taste in my mouth.
Having worked in both corporate and startup worlds, I've rarely seen anyone under 40 reference a Gartner report as credible or actually use that as a source of information. Everyone knows it's pay-to-play, not particularly credible, and as the younger generations age into these very senior roles, I have no doubt that Gartner will lose a lot of relevance.
Given that trust in "mainstream media" has pretty much collapsed everywhere, I don't really doubt that this will inevitably hit the obvious corporate gatekeepers as well. Enterprise/b2b is just 10-20 years behind on trends experienced elsewhere.
Amazing, super simple to understand and without any need for hilariously shallow bigotry!
I haven't heard anyone in business -- like you, having worked in F100, corporate, startups, and so on -- reference a Gartner report in well over a decade. From any age group. Whether "boomer" or super savvy YouTube-watching (lol) "millenial".
Seriously, trying to tie the evolution of industry to some sort of tired, laughable ageist nonsense is just boorish nonsense. Be better.
When someone older yips about how younguns today are all cooked and they play Roblox all day, it looks like ageist shrieking from someone with little nuance and a very binary view of the world. It is no different when laughable pieces like this appear.