<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a brutality to B2B in that it\u2019s not about joy, and it\u2019s not about comfort. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s always about the ROI. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Project management software like Asana and Monday – for all their joyful UX and colour-coding and cute collab tools – exist purely to save companies money in the form of time. Accounting software can have all the elegant UX in the world, but it still has a single purpose: to save companies from costly miscalculations. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike in B2C, you can\u2019t seduce B2B customers with shiny features if it doesn\u2019t save them money. B2B customers don\u2019t impulse-buy (and wouldn\u2019t be able to if they wanted to, thanks to the seven circles of stakeholder approval they need to go through). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not everything about business is cold and corporate, but B2B selling can be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the successful B2B starter, that\u2019s not a problem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are often personality types at play. B2Bs tend to attract the archetypally pragmatic and process driven. You\u2019re a problem solver, likely with strong specialised knowledge of an industry. Many B2B entrepreneurs are just as passionate as their B2C counterparts, but it\u2019s usually the professional kind of passion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You won\u2019t be too bothered about the corporate nature of your work, because unlike your friends in B2C, you\u2019re not having trouble attracting venture capital. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019re also more likely to be male. In a study<\/a> of 351 startups founded since 2013, only 2% of female entrepreneurs had founded B2B companies, compared with 12% of men. This may have something to do with their corporate experiences. The study found men got more exposure to strategy and tactics, while women \u201cwere coached on navigating internal politics, building confidence, and presenting themselves in the workplace\u201d. They were being taught how to fit in rather than lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are more women in B2C<\/a> and the heavily person-focused, marketing-led skill sets that drive it. An abysmal 4%<\/a> of VC funding that goes to female-only founding teams. Does VC have a bias against B2B? Or is it a bias against female founders? <\/p>\n\n\n\n You might think the consumer-facing Facebooks and Amazons of the world generate by far the most value for investors. And you\u2019d be correct. But Cowboy Ventures found that<\/a> B2B unicorns deliver more returns per dollar invested<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Across the 39 certified horn-holders in their dataset, B2B firms raised an average of USD $138 million in private investment, compared to B2C firms\u2019 $348 million. But the B2Bs were worth an average of 26 times their private capital raised. The top performers (namely Workday, ServiceNow, and FireEye) were worth 60x<\/strong> their raise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In comparison, B2C firms were worth \u201cjust\u201d 11 times their raise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But while we have averages and safer bets, we have victors. And the world\u2019s biggest victors of investment returns are B2C. Think Amazon, Alibaba, Shopify, Walmart, and eBay. <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no shortage of investors prepared to take risks. And there\u2019s no shortage of monstrously successful B2C propositions. The above male-founded B2C ventures didn\u2019t turn off VCs. It seems like women are subject to bias on both counts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If this is the case, investors are missing a trick. People in businesses who make service and software purchasing decisions are increasingly women (41%, in fact<\/a>), who may respond favourably to female founding teams, boosting the potential of female-founded B2C investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In recent times, stuff like AI, ML, SaaS, and the cloud have been deployed in force to make things better for businesses. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the pandemic forced technology forward to cater to our complex, remote, hybrid working needs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It definitely helps to explain why B2B is so hot right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But consumer startups have been in decline<\/a> since long before the COVID years. It seems like only yesterday when apps became a thing, Instagram took over our lives, and AirBnB took over our holidays. But it was – terrifyingly – a decade ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Following that heyday of 2009 to 2012, consumers, creators, and marketers alike got used to the expectation of what\u2019s next. But there hasn\u2019t been a what\u2019s next for a while. After the rapid proliferation of Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat to Pinterest to Vine, the flow stemmed. The last social platform to make it big was TikTok, and that wasn\u2019t really new. <\/p>\n\n\n\n B2C tends to create demand where B2B responds to it. So why can\u2019t consumer-centric startups just\u2026 create more demand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps it\u2019s something to do with the trade-off. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In those innocent days of the early 2010s, rudimentary social apps brought us a joyful way to pass the time. Then our data started getting bought and sold, we got creeped out by the cookies, and there was a noticeable shift in who benefited most<\/strong>. The main beneficiary flipped from ordinary folk to the FAANG.<\/p>\n\n\n\n D2C now faces a jaded consumer base, and a similar sentiment from investors, who are being lured over to the enterprise side by the seeming safety of SaaS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n B2C is not dead, and will never die. Consumers are still gonna consume.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Granted, it\u2019s harder to identify the next B2C frontrunner. But the majority of European tech companies valued at over $1bn are still consumer businesses<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n B2C sales cycles are fast. Growth can be faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n B2C is limitless. There are only so many ways to innovate within businesses, but in B2C our imaginations can run wild. <\/p>\n\n\n\nWhy is VC obsessed with B2B?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Is this why B2C is dropping off?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
A case for B2C<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n