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  2. Would you build a B2C or B2B?

Would you build a B2C or B2B?

Gaurav Singhal
3 replies
I have heard multiple times that YC thinks that B2C is kind of hopeless compared to B2B. As per them unless people will go crazy about the product it is most likely a TARPIT idea. What do you think?

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Doğa Armangil
I personally would go for B2B if had a choice (and I do). If you choose to go the B2C route, I'd say be mindful of the fact that you are basically aiming for people's pocket money. That means: try to make your B2C offering as cheap as possible, and make it up on volume. On the B2B side: businesses want their suppliers to be on a solid financial footing, otherwise the supplier won't be reliable enough. And that means: B2B generally has higher margins than B2C.
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Doğa Armangil
@krazygaurav93 First of all congrats on your accomplishments. In terms of CAC: To me B2B is cheaper than B2C, because you can do direct sales in B2B, and you'll get many employees on board in one go, even if the sales cycles may be longer. About build vs buy for B2B SaaS: If the code base is large enough or if the software is very innovative (even patented), then that's probably a defensible SaaS business. Otherwise probably not, and FOSS alternatives will probably pop up fast for those; businesses won't even need to build them themselves. Regarding SaaS tool proliferation: Indeed, the large numbers of specialised SaaS and micro-SaaS that are coming online are a novelty, and this situation gives rise to new problems such as discoverability and integration. On the discoverability side, Capterra, G2 and Microlaunch.net can be useful. On the integration side, a platform such as Qworum.net is of note. Let me disclose here that I'm the author of Qworum, and I'm launching it here on Sept 13th, unless I change my mind for one reason or another.
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Gaurav Singhal
Pocket Hansei
Pocket Hansei
Launching soon!
@doga_armangil thank you for sharing your insights. I understand what you mean, however, isn't in B2B you have to consider the customer acquisition cost? which can be huge but locking a corporate client is very difficult now that everyone is creating SaaS tools for them to buy. Nowadays any company has a bucket of 10-12 tools at minimum when they start. It keeps on growing and then it also becomes a question of whether we should buy a tool or build one, especially the ones which are mostly the LLM wrappers.
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