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B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

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Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#21

Post by maayank »

mindcrime wrote: post #3

Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…

The problem is how to get exposure to B2B processes as a software developer. Unless you have previous work experience as a sales guy/marketing/inventory procurement/etc. or a MBA or already developing B2B tools, how can you learn about the needs and opportunities?

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#22

Post by Axsuul »

maayank wrote: post #21
mindcrime wrote: post #3

Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…

The problem is how to get exposure to B2B processes as a software developer. Unless you have previous work experience as a sales guy/marketing/inventory procurement/etc. or a MBA or already developing B2B tools, how can you learn about the needs and opportunities?

Try to make a lot of friends in college. You'll gain exposure to more industries that way and will eventually come across something that needs a better solution.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#24

Post by karamazov »

bdunn wrote: post #18

I wouldn't ever consider building a product for consumers. Why? * Businesses are used to paying for services. * Businesses can typically make judgements about the ROI of software (X saves Maggie 5 hours a week. That translates to $200 in pay. Sure, $100/mo is worth it.) Consumers can't. * Businesses pay thousands of dollars a month for each person on staff. If you can eliminate the need for a position, a business wil…

I've never heard the term '3 figures' before :)

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#25

Post by maayank »

Axsuul wrote: post #22
maayank wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is how to get exposure to B2B processes as a software developer. Unless you have previous work experience as a sales guy/marketing/inventory procurement/etc. or a MBA or already developing B2B tools, how can you learn about the needs and opportunities?

Try to make a lot of friends in college. You'll gain exposure to more industries that way and will eventually come across something that needs a better solution.

I'll give you that, indeed networking (in conventions, general friends-making and so on) as resulted for me in ideas and opportunities in sectors I have no prior experience in.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#26

Post by diminium »

This feels like deja vu. I asked a similar question in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182993

B2B is also very dysfunctional. You almost have to operate in a different reality to survive there.

diskdoctor answered with "Marketing and selling software to enterprises is the most dysfunctional cycle of decision making you will ever see in business. In almost all cases the individuals in the business who actually derive value from the technology are entirely disconnected from those who make the purchasing decisions. Many times those purchasing decisions are made based on "perceived" synergies with other software systems already owned from the same vendor, having never been vetted by the actually consumer in the business."

This is probably the biggest difficulty in B2B.

Steve Jobs even said something similar "What I love about the consumer market, that I always hated about the enterprise market, is that we come up with a product, we try to tell everybody about it, and every person votes for themselves. They go ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and if enough of them say ‘yes,’ we get to come to work tomorrow. That’s how it works. It’s really simple. With the enterprise market, it’s not so simple. The people that use the products don’t decide for themselves, and the people that make those decisions sometimes are confused. We love just trying to make the best products in the world for people and having them tell us by how they vote with their wallets whether we’re on track or not.”

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#27

Post by hkmurakami »

maayank wrote: post #21
mindcrime wrote: post #3

Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…

The problem is how to get exposure to B2B processes as a software developer. Unless you have previous work experience as a sales guy/marketing/inventory procurement/etc. or a MBA or already developing B2B tools, how can you learn about the needs and opportunities?

I'm wondering if you went straight into a startup or sole proprietorship?

If you ever spent time in a mid or large sized company and talked with people in various departments and what sucks about their day to day tasks, then ideas are abound (or as previously mentioned, make friends with people who work in such environments, and pick their brains about what sucks). PMs have their pain points, sales guys have their pain points, IT guys have their pain points, etc.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#28

Post by paulsutter »

diminium wrote: post #26

This feels like deja vu. I asked a similar question in http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4182993 B2B is also very dysfunctional. You almost have to operate in a different reality to survive there. diskdoctor answered with "Marketing and selling software to enterprises is the most dysfunctional cycle of decision making you will ever see in business. In almost all cases the individuals in the business who actually de…

Dropbox found a way around that. It's heavily used within corporations, but the adoption decision gets made by each individual acting alone.

Ping Li has an excellent paper on this: http://www.accel.com/assets/resources/files/17/original_rena...

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#29

Post by StavrosK »

karamazov wrote: post #24
bdunn wrote: post #18

I wouldn't ever consider building a product for consumers. Why? * Businesses are used to paying for services. * Businesses can typically make judgements about the ROI of software (X saves Maggie 5 hours a week. That translates to $200 in pay. Sure, $100/mo is worth it.) Consumers can't. * Businesses pay thousands of dollars a month for each person on staff. If you can eliminate the need for a position, a business wil…

I've never heard the term '3 figures' before :)

Do you mean you haven't heard "three", or "figures"? Because you've definitely heard "six figures".

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#30

Post by mattmanser »

mindcrime wrote: post #3

Good stuff, and I agree with almost 100% of that. The only thing I take exception to is the (seemingly) implicit suggestion that "sexy" is defined by what college kids like: And that’s true. B2B is unsexy in that I don’t build things that my college friends want to use. Nah... if you're doing sexy technology, it's sexy even if not a single college kid has ever heard of it. I'd encourage everyone to NOT buy into the H…

I completely disagree with this, this isn't an echo chamber, and no-one's buying into that ethos.

Let's be frank, b2b is boring as shit.

It's not even vaguely interesting.

The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. B2B programming is an utter pile of mind-numbingly boring crap. It's not sexy because it's incredibly simple with a colossal amount of edge cases. B2B is mindbogglingly complex simple software.

B2B is just the edge cases.

It's not in the remotest bit interesting to most people. It's often bound by the most ridiculous laws and covenants.

But it'll make you a lot of money.

Do you want to read about it? No, because it's so ridiculously shallow and dull. That why no-one talks about it.

(disclosure: I am also writing b2b software)

EDIT: There was a very recent post by Intuit about the 10 million lines they've written for Quickbooks and how they manage it. That says it all to me really. 10 million lines means something has gone very, very, very wrong to me. Would you want to write a 10 million line essay about accounting? Think about your average words per line programming, that's nigh on a 50 million page essay. Just to do accounting.

Joy.

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