Conference Presentation, Keynote
Growth, Sales, and a New Era of B2B
- A specific trend utilizing bottom-up growth and sales motions is expected to shape the B2B landscape for the next 10 years, occurring faster and with greater value than previous iterations.
- Startups leveraging this model are predicted to require significantly less capital than traditional approaches, with successful modern companies likely employing a combination of bottom-up growth and sales, as seen in entities like Dropbox, Twilio, and Atlassian.
- Startups will be able to originate from diverse global locations beyond traditional hubs like Silicon Valley, New York, Berlin, the UK, and France, whereas incumbents such as Cisco, IBM, HP, and SAP are expected to lack defense strategies and face being unseated.
- Growth efficiencies are predicted to be far better than ever seen before in B2B when executed, though founders must balance applying consumer-world learnings to B2B sales while avoiding the complexity that causes the majority of companies attempting both motions to fail.
- Founders are advised to be highly proficient in product development rather than sales channels, as core IT and security buyers are inundated with calls requiring bottom-up access, though successful startups must eventually transition from simple horizontal products to complex vertical solutions to sustain growth.
- Significant risks include the complication of managing the interaction between growth and sales motions, the potential for sales engines to overtake growth engines (affecting 70% of open-source companies), and the danger that excessive focus on growth may leave insufficient value to sell.
- Predictions indicate that startups without this strategy will be at a disadvantage, and while growth alone yields slower growth absent network effects, holding back too far on the growth phase may prevent the creation of an independent engine.
- Challenges in collaboration tools and vertical SaaS include the common problem of sales engines interfering with organic growth and the risk that users driving a bottom-up engine may not be the ultimate purchasers, requiring careful calibration of what is given away during the growth phase.