Saurav Chopra explains how Huddlebuy used low-cost B2C Facebook ad campaigns to sell B2B services to micro SMBs around 2012.
Insight
Chopra: A lack of competition does not mean there is no market
“If you can enter a market where there is no competition, and that doesn't mean there's no market, right? No competition doesn't mean there's no market. So I think spending a bit more time Finding that you know, finding that, you know, finding that market where…”
Insight
Chopra: Hardware group buying fails because single returns destroy thin margins
“Amazon is gonna kill us any day because you know, this, you know you know, you make 200 printers, you sell, and you, one comes back, there's no margin. So it's, it was unfortunately learned through a lot of pain that this model is not gonna work as a collectiv…”
Insight
Chopra: Social ads work for SMBs because employees befriend managers online
“In SMBs, employees have their managers also on social. So it doesn't happen in enterprise, right? You're not, your manager is not, if you're Oracle, your manager is not your Facebook buddy, but in small businesses, it does happen. And so employees start talkin…”
Insight
Chopra: Outbound sales models do not work for $1,000 deals
“Because the go-to-market model was so expensive, no one's going to do outbound on a thousand dollar deal, right?”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chopra: VCs refused to touch SMB SaaS startups in 2011
“After the angel round, we had a very hard time raising any VC then to top up because no one wanted to touch SME back then. So SME was kind of a dirty word, right? The SME businesses really did not make money. SaaS for SMBs was just not there yet, especially th…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chopra: Referring One Zipcar Customer Yielded More Margin Than 100 Printers
“We found that, you know, on one Zipcar business, if I send them one customer, we made more margin than selling a hundred printers, right? And there was no inventory, no hassle.”