B2B Startups
topic on 6 shows · 11 statements across 10 episodes
the Y Combinator Startup Podcast 
We Live to Build 
the Neon Show 
the Official SaaStr Podcast 
A Product Market Fit Show 
20VC
11 statements about B2B Startups, every show
Early B2B startups should target the smallest companies with their problem
“And probably You want to go after the smallest company that has the problem you try to solve.”
Levie: B2B founders must master three essential strategy books
“Read Innovator's Dilemma.
Read Crossing the Chasm.
Read Blue Ocean Strategy.
Those are the three books you have to read.
If you do what's in those books, and you are going after the B to B market, I guarantee you will be 10 times better off than any other star…”
Kausas: Early B2B startups hire CSMs before support staff
“In B to B, especially early stage, you're typically hiring like customer success managers before you have anyone who does support the CSM kind of like owns all of post sales customer communication.”
Blomfield: Matching Existing Software Pricing Structures Improves B2B Sales
“Really, if you can mirror the way they are used to paying for other software, the better you'll do.”
Blomfield: Startups are priced correctly when they lose 25% of deals
“And when you start To lose more than 25% of potential deals based solely on price, you're now probably in the right ballpark. So you don't need to win every single deal, and if every single deal is closing straight away, you're almost certainly underpricing.”
Somani: Founders fail to test customer willingness to pay early enough
“I think people don't do enough of this willingness to pay experimentation early on, right? In terms of what will it take to get to it.”
Early B2B Startups Should Hire PMs With Strong Product Intuition
“So when you're a startup, a B to B startup, like you should hire people with strong intuition or at the very least like strong ideas that they can very quickly invalidate with more qualitative data than quantitative data.”
Hariharan: Adding features to capture new segments fails 80% of the time
“If you assume that just adding a feature will help you scale to the next segment, that doesn't work. That doesn't work eight out of 10 times. You may get lucky with a one or two, but that doesn't work eight out of 10 times.”
Early-stage B2B products without paying customers are effectively worthless
“Even in the early days, like, if we don't have any customers, like, if we don't have anyone who is paying for your technology, that would kind of tell you that, you know, your technology, your product is worthless.”
Glyman: Venture investors add real value in B2B, unlike other sectors
“In some categories, I would say absolutely not. I think that in B to B, I really think that they can.”
Svane: B2B startups can disrupt legacy vendors via consumer-oriented CIOs
“Everybody here who has a B to B startup, it's, there's a huge opportunity right now because a lot of the established vendors are lacking tremendously behind. You have a whole new generation of much more consumer-friendly, consumer-oriented CIOs and executives …”