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B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

danshipper.com

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Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#51

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…

B2B can incredibly interesting once you have a grasp of the problem space. My last two companies are B2B and I've loved every minute of if. But to outsiders it's usually not that exciting.

The one type of B2B I won't touch is that which has a lot of external friction in the value chain. Health care and government come to mind.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#52

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…

I think there are two kinds of B2B startups that can be super interesting:

The first is eliminating entire classes of jobs and the second one is eliminating entire "glue industries"/middlemen (disintermediation).

The former may sound callous, but creating a solution that frees up a human so they can pursue greater endeavors is a noble goal.

Those are exciting problems.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The only challenge to setting up the ultimate competitor to Sage/Quickbooks is that it's so mind numbingly dull. Yes, the dullness of the topic is why no one has bothered to enter the market and compete with the $3 billion Intuit, or the $1.5 billion Sage. It's just too boring for them to bother with that kind of money. You're fing kidding right? Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the 17,000 pages in GAAP have some…

I think ther are some sexy B2B problems, ie problems that can solved with technology rather than business solutions that use a tiny bit of software.

Analytics is pretty huge. Companies will pay big dollars for profitable insights into their data, queue distributed computing and machine learning. In machine learning and AI there are a massive number tasks being done by unskilled temps that could be automated away, for example data entry, basic research, report interpretation (back to analytics).

Then there's whole field of taking almost any piece of enterprise software and just giving it a decent/usable user experience, using sexy Web tech, html5, etc.

I think the only thing unsexy about b2b is that you'll never be famous in your friends eyes, ie you'll be the guy who made their accounting software 30% less frustrating rather than the guy who created the latest local cat photo montage social network

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#54

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…

Setting up a challenger to QuickBooks does sound dull.

Setting up a challenger to SAP on the other hand does not sound dull.

Wanna see a cool B2B company? Check out a tool called CyberArk.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#55
This article speaks to a point that most miss:

The business model can be as sexy, or sexier than the idea itself.

When we build something that is boring to some, I wonder if we forget the magic of what we do.

What is boring to us is magic to someone, stuck suffering with managing details. It's nice to see the maturation of developers who do for the world what's being asked of us: help everyone everywhere, with software.

About B2C or B2B:

1) It's a preference. A reality is, there is not as much B2C out there as we think. Too many consumer facing "successes" do not take money from "customers". Why? The users are the product that are sold to advertisers. They often ask businesses to pay, maybe by advertising, and it's a lot of work.

2) Consumers are quite fickle, irrational and emotional decision makers. They will often think about any decision over $5/month.

Small businesses, on the other hand, don't think about $50/month too much. They're fairly logical (a good fit for developer's tendencies), and very much understand and make decisions based on value -- saving them, or making them money. They'll also be more forgiving about understanding features-based marketing instead of benefit-based marketing if you can't dial in your copywriting. In short, there's more flexibility to learn and still do well enough to keep improving.

3) If you let a sliver of your talent tackle a B2B problem that customers will pay for, you get to keep the panacea much easier: Work on what you want every day without fear of paying the bills, or pursuing a swing for the fences idea without fear of failure or running out of money. Not everyone gets to live in the Valley. I'm sure I'd be open to other possibilities if I lived there, but I don't right now.

If you're out for the first success or two of your life, consider this: check any ego and immature thought habits to fit in. Exchange them with discipline, to learn what you need to about the fundamentals of building a business, it will serve you very well when going after the B2C ideas.

Almost everyone who tries to fit in, inevitably gets left behind. Do what others aren't willing to do to build a business that makes money, because it's worth way more, to customers, and VC's.

As every single person on HN gets older, they will have more responsibilities because of the other things in their lives they want, and cost money every month. There's a chance now to address those very easily and get some great business development experience. That doesn't sound like much to some, but startups are a longer haul game than anyone ever admits.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#56
post #55

This article speaks to a point that most miss: The business model can be as sexy, or sexier than the idea itself. When we build something that is boring to some, I wonder if we forget the magic of what we do. What is boring to us is magic to someone, stuck suffering with managing details. It's nice to see the maturation of developers who do for the world what's being asked of us: help everyone everywhere, with softwa…

william carlos williams couldn't have said it better

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#58

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…

Interesting case study that was able to buck the trend is Atlassian software. I have personally seen bottom up influence in 3 large publicly traded companies land Atlassian very nice (and well deserved I might add) license and support agreements.

They built a product that would usually be sold at the VITO level, gave it away for open source projects so it became defacto to developers and viola Jira is now replacing IBM products in many enterprise software development shops as we speak.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#59
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 :)

As in $XXX or $XXXX

I'm also so focused on subscription revenue that I forgot to clarify that. Get a few $XXXX/month businesses and you'll have six figure annual revenue before you know it.

Re: B2B Is Unsexy, and I Know It

#60

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…

Hmm, I get to write radio communication software, mostly TETRA stuff. Playing around with lots of awesome hardware, writing a lot of both high level management software and low level bare metal code, with many _very_ non-trivial problems. I find this incredibly interesting.
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