Ask HN: How do you do a B2B startup?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2229559

by gawker • 15 years ago

6 8 15 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Forgive me if this question has already been asked. It seems like a lot of advice is geared towards building something for customers.

I'm curious if anyone has any experience with a B2B startup? Particularly, how would you go and acquire businesses to be your customer. Thanks!

Jsarokin• 15 years ago

One of the startups I'm working on is in this B2B niche.

The most effective way I've found is to find some keywords that these businesses are searching, then start an aggressive SEO campaign on them.

Also, contacting them (By phone not email) works well too.

gawker2• 15 years ago

Thanks for the quick reply!

Is there some way to validate what these businesses are searching for? Also, did you think of making the product and then go out to find the businesses or did you identify some inefficiency that these businesses have and exploit them?

Yes I have heard about cold calling though I'm wondering if there are any techniques for getting them to switch over. I suppose if some are locked in to some sort of vendor contract then it might be challenging.

sagacity• 15 years ago

>Is there some way to validate what these businesses are searching for?

Use Google keyword tool: https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Enter some words/terms/phrases related to your products/service that you think your potential customers would be searching for.

Look (closely) at what suggestions it comes up with, dig deeper, always keeping an eye on monthly search volumes etc. - I think that'll do the trick. :-)

>Also, did you think of making the product and then go out to find the businesses or did you identify some inefficiency that these businesses have and exploit them?

About a decade ago, I did the latter and grew the startup from 0 to ~$2M revenue/pa in a bit over two years, finding customers (businesses) only via cold calling until referrals started pouring in too.

Your mileage, naturally, will vary, depending on the business sector you're targeting and/or your product/service.

HTH

appregattaken• 15 years ago

hi - all the startups i work with are B2B. gotta tell you that A LOT depends on type of solution you're selling, the types of companies in the industries you're targeting (are they typically early adopters, Luddites, etc.), are you going large enterprise or small businesses, how many users will have to use the solution, is security important... i could go on and on but this is core to B2B approach.

best advice i could offer in this situation from an appregatta perspective is get yourself positioned with someone that already has access to the customers you're trying to reach (a consulting firm with domain expertise, a reseller, etc.). ask them to be your product experts and hook you up with just a few prospects. there are real tricks to this to get it to work but it's doable and i see it work all the time.

another often viable option is to sell a very small piece of work as a consulting deal, and provide the prospect with real and tangible deliverables in terms of what they will get... if they get to "try out" a product also, all the better for them. but the deliverable is often an assessment and process improvement recommendations. if it's a real problem, they're likely to be willing to pay $500, $2,500, $10,000 for a consulting gig if you're team is credible and the pain is real. done right, mini consulting gigs can be easier to get meetings for and get deep into dialogue about nature of the probs at the very early stages.

so much is situational with B2B selling, it's borderline not even appropriate for me to offer much. but hopefully this gets you thinking and pushes your process forward a bit.

congrats on the biz and best of luck!

gawker2• 15 years ago

Thanks! Sounds like a good strategy. I've never really understood the nature of consulting though. Seems like there's much to learn for me but how do you get to consult for someone? Again, I guess customer acquisition seems to be the key thing missing for me here. Apart from cold calling people, putting out ads and through your network, I'm not sure what other ways you could do it - especially if you're a single founder?

us• 15 years ago

I did a B2B startup previously. We went to industry events and conferences and connected with other businesses and contacts. While that is not the only strategy, it is a good one.

pitdesi• 15 years ago

The main thing I've learned at FeeFighters is - businesses are people, too. You treat them as people, not much different than consumers, and market them in similar means but different channels.

At first, I thought - man, this is SO not sexy... but over time, I've realized that we can be ourselves and be fun and still cater to businesses. Our previous name was Transparent Financial Services. We have now changed to FeeFighters and have a ninja logo, and our customers have raved to us about the change.

In terms of tactics, we use a lot of SEO/SEM, being at the right conferences, and partnerships with other companies working for small businesses (this is a large opportunity that is under-tapped).

What kind of businesses do you want to sell to?

amac• 15 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2221039

Ask HN: How do you do a B2B startup?

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