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> So even a relatively small lead in consumer-facing firms will seem much larger than it actually is. No? Leading consumer brands are a lot bigger than B2B bra

> So even a relatively small lead in consumer-facing firms will seem much larger than it actually is. No? Leading consumer brands are a lot bigger than B2B brands for the most part because B2C in the aggregate economy has to be bigger than B2B (in $) and because B2B is a more fragmented and specialized market than B2C (i.e. harder to gain large market share). Just look at the biggest tech companies by market cap/valuation: Apple (B2C), Amazon (mixed, debatable), Google (B2C-designed products), Microsoft (mixed, more B2B), Facebook (B2C-designed products), Alibaba (B2C), Tencent (B2C), Oracle (B2B), IBM (B2B), Netflix (B2C), Uber (B2C), Baidu (B2C). You don't find a pure B2B company until Oracle, which is ~20% the size of the Apple. This makes sense as well. The ultimate source of private sector profit comes from selling to the consumer. There's no point of a B2B company if there are no businesses selling to consumers (ignoring governments). If the B2B space is bigger than B2C, businesses would, on aggregate, be buying more from other businesses that they would be selling to consumers. In other words, they'd be losing money and such a system wouldn't sustainable for long. Of course, we're focusing on tech, and tech is a subsegment of the overall economy, etc., so it's possible that tech as a sector is more B2B than B2C... but this a question that will have to answered with data, not assertions.

e12e 8y ago
> Just look at the biggest tech companies by market cap/valuation: Apple (B2C), Amazon (mixed, debatable), Google (B2C-designed products), Microsoft (mixed, more B2B), Facebook (B2C-designed products), Alibaba (B2C), Tencent (B2C), Oracle (B2B), IBM (B2B), Netflix (B2C), Uber (B2C), Baidu (B2C). You don't find a pure B2B company until Oracle, which is ~20% the size of the Apple. Google and Facebook are advertising companies - literally b2b?
- navalsaini 8y ago
  Not quite. They just monetise in the manner. The core value-proposition is very much b2c in both above cases.
jacques_chester 8y ago
My argument here is about the sum of activity across the entire economy. There are thousands of companies writing software for thousands of distinct niches and industries. Millions of businesses world wide have software that was written by them or for them. Every line of COBOL in a bank basement, every SCADA gadget, every drill screen on a wildcatter rig, every MS Access database responsible for the work of 3 people in an office in rural England ... the sum value and volume of software we don't see and don't recognise is staggering. More to the point, it would be mathematically impossible for the structure of production to be smaller than the consumer market. Unless you are producing something from nothing, or producing instantaneously, or both, then the absolute minimum possible size for the structure of production is to be precisely equivalent to the consumer market. This is clearly not what we observe.

e12e 8y ago

> Just look at the biggest tech companies by market cap/valuation: Apple (B2C), Amazon (mixed, debatable), Google (B2C-designed products), Microsoft (mixed, more B2B), Facebook (B2C-designed products), Alibaba (B2C), Tencent (B2C), Oracle (B2B), IBM (B2B), Netflix (B2C), Uber (B2C), Baidu (B2C). You don't find a pure B2B company until Oracle, which is ~20% the size of the Apple. Google and Facebook are advertising companies - literally b2b?

navalsaini 8y ago
Not quite. They just monetise in the manner. The core value-proposition is very much b2c in both above cases.

jacques_chester 8y ago

My argument here is about the sum of activity across the entire economy. There are thousands of companies writing software for thousands of distinct niches and industries. Millions of businesses world wide have software that was written by them or for them. Every line of COBOL in a bank basement, every SCADA gadget, every drill screen on a wildcatter rig, every MS Access database responsible for the work of 3 people in an office in rural England ... the sum value and volume of software we don't see and don't recognise is staggering. More to the point, it would be mathematically impossible for the structure of production to be smaller than the consumer market. Unless you are producing something from nothing, or producing instantaneously, or both, then the absolute minimum possible size for the structure of production is to be precisely equivalent to the consumer market. This is clearly not what we observe.