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.
I worked briefly on a Gartner (and Forrester) pitch for a services company. They do do an evaluation and you get to make your case. We had to compile case studies, highlight our competencies and the like. Put it in a deck and present it. Then they call up our references and get their input. We even had a consultant who specializes in helping companies with their rankings. As a services company, it was pretty similar to how we pitched clients and I gather the evaluation they did was also similar. I didn't get any hint of corruption in the process but I wasn't really in position to see it if it were happening. The execs seemed to take it seriously and put sincere effort into it.
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.
Every few years when I’ve gotten incredibly desperate I’ve gone on the Gartner site, then after looking at their average data vis artifacts, I realize it’s useless. But, I bet those major awards they give out put companies’ young employees in awe.
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.
Ignoring the magic quadrant baloney and market growth predictions, Gartner and other analyst firms conduct some useful research based on large industry surveys on how companies and large organizations regard emerging technologies, or how they are planning to pilot or deploy new technology. This is especially true of in-house series conducted on a quarterly or annual basis, less so for vendor-funded research.
The data may pour cold water on whatever Big Trend is supposedly rising to the fore, or call out important caveats that vendors would rather not address.
Agree. If you get past the baloney, the typical Gartner analyst is speaking with 50-100 CTOs per month. This is incredibly useful, as it provides a great general understanding of what companies are implementing, what is working, what is failing, what is no longer important, what is important. This allows them to become true mavens on their specific vertical or sub-vertical, sharing best practice. So this is definitely valuable, depending on how cutting-edge you happen to be.
and the author totally misunderstands this. ctos / execs generally are not offering their candid thoughts on how company X's products work to youtube. ec.
What they discover is what the CEOs would _like_ to happen for their business. Everyone is seeking an edge, and CEOs would like nothing better than hitching their wagon to the next buzzword. Gartner generates a buzzword, trials it with CEOs who make it an actual industry buzz.
Most HN readers don't have visibility into what a gaggle of CEOs is going to be tempted to do.
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.
His point was not that the enterprise software market would be upended immediately by AI, but rather that the pay-to-play scam of analyst-powered purchasing advice is near the end of its lifecycle.
If you've ever been part of the process, you learn quick that it's one analyst who works whatever beat your company operates in who has an extremely poor understanding of your product, the market, or where it's headed. But they'll have a new catchphrase they've dreamed up and so it's just a game of saying "yeah, sure, we do that" and then paying money to be mentioned.
I still recommend to companies that they should endeavor to be put into a Gardener Magic quadrant because it can be transformative for enterprise sales pipeline. But I always feel bad for the purchasing decision makers as non of this is good data. I agree with swyx that automated deep research will phase this whole model out, which will be a net win for both companies and customers.
I wouldn’t bet on automated deep research until they figure out a business model that gives people a throat to choke. Enterprise software is a world where it’s more important to have another human you can blame for when you fuck things up than actually making a good decision. What incentive is there for an exec to say, “well I ran a deep research and it seemed good enough to me” when their boss demands an answer as to why $VENDOR was a bad choice?
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.
I will never trust Gartner for recommendations on anything. Either your product solve a problem we presently have or we don’t need it.
It’s really just the suits relying on it as a crutch in lieu of actually hiring competent Engineers and Architects and then listening to them. As those folks cycle out with their millions in cash to retire somewhere, I’m hoping us younger folks won’t tolerate such consultant drivel.
Because they aren't actually selling software advice; they're laundering personal-responsibility for corporate decision makers.
That's the real business of most brand-name B2B "advice."
Very few people are dumb enough to believe the 22yr-old new grad from Ohio that created the powerpoint you're buying is an expert in Software (or management in the case of McKinsey/BCG/Bain, or law in the case of overpriced white shoe law firms, or accounting in the case of the big 4, etc).
But John Executive with the big house and 3 kids doesn't care what the actual advice is, or if your software will save the company millions. He just wants to keep his job.
Being able to point to a "trusted brand" like Gartner as the escape hatch for why you made a large decision with downside risk is priceless. That's the real grift.
"...so that software implementation didn't turn out well for us? Wow..who could have known? I followed what the trusted experts at Gartner said!"
Yes this is an astute perspective. I would say a lot of consulting firms are basically little more than narrative devices in the bigger story of 'the economy'.
The children of elites need an avenue to fulfill their parents' expectations and propagate the legitimacy of the social order. Consulting firms provide that.
If it's 100% dumb, then it seems unsustainable, as the brand will become tarnished, and no longer an escape hatch. It seems like it has to provide at least okay advice, or it isn't sustainable. I have no idea if that's what Gartner is doing or not, this is the first I'm hearing about them, and it's fascinating. I had no idea a thing like this existed. I guess maybe we're watching them pay for bad advice right now.
There is no argument for it if the company is a legacy juggernaut with basically zero new product development (which is most of the Fortune 500).
Leadership comp is a total grift and has ballooned in recent decades (in the US exclusively) since the 1980s due to the shift to stock-based comp. Fun story, a lot of analysts didn’t even count stock based comp as part of the cost structure of a company until oddly recently.
large institutions dont buy into gartner because its accurate or even reasonably current. Gartner is part of a risk management strategy for shareholders. its a brand and reputation that you can shove in front of any problem you might encounter to insulate your companies reputation.
X, Podcasts, and Substacks offer up-to-the-second analysis of the latest trends and such, but at no point will they offer the type of indemnity that Gartner does. They are a technical resource, not a business leadership one.
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.
I think this is the at same model that the NYTimes book reviews back had in the 1990s. Pay us money and we'll say nice things.
It'll be interesting to see how AI Agents approach things. My prediction is that more of our media is going to be controlled by our AI Agent's Algorithm instead of Google, Twitter, and Facebook's algorithm or some distant editors who decided what went on the front page of the newspaper.
How are the architects and directors at my company’s IT department going to make decisions without Gartner? They don’t believe the people who have hands-on experience with the products. Who else can they go to for advice?
Boy, am i glad i ran into you! I'd like to introduce myself: I am lead analyst for a new org named Rentrag! We do the opposite of Gartner, so you can trust us, And our analysis!
Readit News
> 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.
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?
The data may pour cold water on whatever Big Trend is supposedly rising to the fore, or call out important caveats that vendors would rather not address.
Most HN readers don't have visibility into what a gaggle of CEOs is going to be tempted to do.
If you've ever been part of the process, you learn quick that it's one analyst who works whatever beat your company operates in who has an extremely poor understanding of your product, the market, or where it's headed. But they'll have a new catchphrase they've dreamed up and so it's just a game of saying "yeah, sure, we do that" and then paying money to be mentioned.
I still recommend to companies that they should endeavor to be put into a Gardener Magic quadrant because it can be transformative for enterprise sales pipeline. But I always feel bad for the purchasing decision makers as non of this is good data. I agree with swyx that automated deep research will phase this whole model out, which will be a net win for both companies and customers.
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.
It’s really just the suits relying on it as a crutch in lieu of actually hiring competent Engineers and Architects and then listening to them. As those folks cycle out with their millions in cash to retire somewhere, I’m hoping us younger folks won’t tolerate such consultant drivel.
How do I know?
Because they aren't actually selling software advice; they're laundering personal-responsibility for corporate decision makers.
That's the real business of most brand-name B2B "advice."
Very few people are dumb enough to believe the 22yr-old new grad from Ohio that created the powerpoint you're buying is an expert in Software (or management in the case of McKinsey/BCG/Bain, or law in the case of overpriced white shoe law firms, or accounting in the case of the big 4, etc).
But John Executive with the big house and 3 kids doesn't care what the actual advice is, or if your software will save the company millions. He just wants to keep his job.
Being able to point to a "trusted brand" like Gartner as the escape hatch for why you made a large decision with downside risk is priceless. That's the real grift.
"...so that software implementation didn't turn out well for us? Wow..who could have known? I followed what the trusted experts at Gartner said!"
The children of elites need an avenue to fulfill their parents' expectations and propagate the legitimacy of the social order. Consulting firms provide that.
Leadership comp is a total grift and has ballooned in recent decades (in the US exclusively) since the 1980s due to the shift to stock-based comp. Fun story, a lot of analysts didn’t even count stock based comp as part of the cost structure of a company until oddly recently.
X, Podcasts, and Substacks offer up-to-the-second analysis of the latest trends and such, but at no point will they offer the type of indemnity that Gartner does. They are a technical resource, not a business leadership one.
...and more importantly, allows you to keep your job should your choice not work out.
Gartner, like consultants, get paid for so management can pass the buck and not be held accountable for their decisions.
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.
It'll be interesting to see how AI Agents approach things. My prediction is that more of our media is going to be controlled by our AI Agent's Algorithm instead of Google, Twitter, and Facebook's algorithm or some distant editors who decided what went on the front page of the newspaper.
:-) /s