How are B2C and B2B businesses different in a startup setting?

Generally, b2c (business to consumer) ventures can get going very quickly, but scaling is tough, because each customer pays a small amount and you need a lot of customers to generate a significant amount of revenue. There may also be natural churn that you have to deal with. For example, an ed tech startup focusing on the preschool years may make a few hundred dollars off a household with 2 or 3 kids per year – and then they age out of that developmental stage, and the company would have to take that into account in terms of the marketing they need to do to keep acquiring new customers.

B2B (business to business) ventures take a very long time to get going, as large organizations have processes and take months or even years to adopt something new. But once you get in, the deal size can be very big and they tend to stay for a long time. For example, it can take 18-24 months to convince a large hospital system to adopt a new healthcare IT system. It is very slow and frictionful. However: Once you are in, you will virtually never be removed – because it is much more disruptive to stop using a new system than keep working with the vendor to address issues and make it better.

Was this article helpful?
2 out of 2 found this helpful

Comments

0 comments

Please sign in to leave a comment.

This website and all posts and content are intended for educational purposes only and for no other purposes including without limitation commercial purposes. Any other use must give proper attribution to the Martin Trust Center and is subject to certain legal rights contained in our license and terms of use. See full legal disclaimer HERE .
The content in this knowledgebase is subject to a non-exclusive license with share-alike restrictions and the terms of use of this site – which is available for your review HERE .

Have more questions?
Submit a request
Share it, if you like it.