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Dropbox has a tough road ahead. With Google Drive, Microsoft Word cloud suite and Box, its definitely getting tough to survive by just doing B2C. With their rec

Dropbox has a tough road ahead. With Google Drive, Microsoft Word cloud suite and Box, its definitely getting tough to survive by just doing B2C. With their recent acquisitions they'll probably pivot to DocuSign like model. But they are definitely losing their niche.

notyourday 7y ago
B2C is the place to be - it is a niche where an excellent product is going to continue to earn excellent money. Continue to reiterate and continue to improve the product, dont overspend on infrastructure and dont rent super expensive office space in the most expensive cities in the world. Enterprise is where SaaS companies go to die because they think that Microsofts of the world are just going to let them have the multi million dollar deals. That's a delusion.
- encoderer 7y ago
  I struggle to connect this to market facts. What big consumer SaaS tools exist? You could argue that Spotify and Netflix count. I disagree, but fine. You have networks like Tinder. You have a few tools companies like Carbonite, Dropbox, 1Password. These are niche. In the enterprise... Slack, Twilio, Stripe, Okta, Qualtrics, Datadog, Zoom, I feel like I could name 10 more easily. Enterprise is where SaaS companies get paid. Slack makes like half their revenue from 500 companies.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Slack is also not making a profit and is still losing out to Microsoft in the enterprise. I can’t speak to the rest of them.
  - notyourday 7y ago
    > You have a few tools companies like Carbonite, Dropbox, 1Password. These are niche. SmugMug. Carbonite. Mailchimp. Backblaze. It is quite literally, pick a niche and there's a company making money servicing that niche. Is it a billion dollar company? Nope. Will it ever be if it sticks to doing whatever the product that it had? Who knows. But are they going to lose money on "enterprise" while cannibalizing its B2C business? Pretty much guaranteed. Remember Borland? The one that created a market for $100 compilers it sold millions copies? It decided to replace those millions of customers paying $100 with a hundred customers paying a million? That was a total reversal of fortunes. > Enterprise is where SaaS companies get paid. Slack makes like half their revenue from 500 companies. And it still cannot make money.
nunez 7y ago
Not really. B2C is lucrative because it's tough to lose corporate contracts (at the Fortune 100) unless you do something completely egregious.

notyourday 7y ago

B2C is the place to be - it is a niche where an excellent product is going to continue to earn excellent money. Continue to reiterate and continue to improve the product, dont overspend on infrastructure and dont rent super expensive office space in the most expensive cities in the world. Enterprise is where SaaS companies go to die because they think that Microsofts of the world are just going to let them have the multi million dollar deals. That's a delusion.

encoderer 7y ago
I struggle to connect this to market facts. What big consumer SaaS tools exist? You could argue that Spotify and Netflix count. I disagree, but fine. You have networks like Tinder. You have a few tools companies like Carbonite, Dropbox, 1Password. These are niche. In the enterprise... Slack, Twilio, Stripe, Okta, Qualtrics, Datadog, Zoom, I feel like I could name 10 more easily. Enterprise is where SaaS companies get paid. Slack makes like half their revenue from 500 companies.
- scarface74 7y ago
  Slack is also not making a profit and is still losing out to Microsoft in the enterprise. I can’t speak to the rest of them.
- notyourday 7y ago
  > You have a few tools companies like Carbonite, Dropbox, 1Password. These are niche. SmugMug. Carbonite. Mailchimp. Backblaze. It is quite literally, pick a niche and there's a company making money servicing that niche. Is it a billion dollar company? Nope. Will it ever be if it sticks to doing whatever the product that it had? Who knows. But are they going to lose money on "enterprise" while cannibalizing its B2C business? Pretty much guaranteed. Remember Borland? The one that created a market for $100 compilers it sold millions copies? It decided to replace those millions of customers paying $100 with a hundred customers paying a million? That was a total reversal of fortunes. > Enterprise is where SaaS companies get paid. Slack makes like half their revenue from 500 companies. And it still cannot make money.

nunez 7y ago

Not really. B2C is lucrative because it's tough to lose corporate contracts (at the Fortune 100) unless you do something completely egregious.