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So how does slack, square and shopify do it with their SMB products?

• vacri 10y ago
  'traps' don't necessarily have a 100% capture rate.
  • danieltillett 10y ago
    Exactly. People see the few companies that manage to succeed in this market and assume it is easier than it really is - the few survivors hide the thousands of companies that tried and failed.
• danieltillett 10y ago
  It is not impossible in this market, just very hard. The key is getting your cost of customer acquisition down below your lifetime customer value. You can do this two ways - use a low touch sales model or offer a sticky product with high margins at a relatively high price. The problem is not many products can be sold successfully into the SMB market with a low touch sales model - the decision makers are just too busy running their businesses to investigate what technology products will make their life easier on their own (hence the need for sales staff). Once you need sales staff you need a product that is going to give you a high lifetime customer value and there are not many technology products aimed at the SMB market that can offer this. I sell into SMB market, but I sell a very expensive SAAS product in a tiny niche. This makes a great lifestyle business, but it has no interest to investors because the total market size is just too small.
• AznHisoka 10y ago
  I recommend you don't even think about the term SMB. It's such a broad category. You can't just group all small businesses together and say you can't sell to this group. They all have different pain points and problems. Some products address them (slack), others don't (op)