BioWorkWriting

Most people don't understand B2B SaaS

Portrait of me, Lukas HermannLukas Hermann
  • Bootstrapping
  • B2B SaaS

Most people don’t understand why I like B2B SaaS, or even what it is. My product stagetimer.io is 3 years old, makes €200k+ revenue per year, and is B2B. It has some real advantages, but also drawbacks. Let me spitball a bit:

  1. B2B does not mean sales! People think you always need outbound sales. You don’t! Self-checkout works fine. Some of our biggest customers use self-checkout. Most people in large companies have R&D budgets and can make <$5k/year purchases on a credit card. No sales calls required.

  2. Selling to businesses is chill. Our business clients value Stagetimer a lot. They tell us so. They send us pictures of them using it and offer to write case studies. Even if Stagetimer doesn’t meet their needs, they are very friendly.

  3. Clients pay more! People complain when $11.99 Spotify goes to $12.99 a month. At that price, you need 85k paying users to get to $1M revenue. Business clients pay $45/mo per seat for a team of 10. That’s $5400/year for one customer! We have customers like that. It’s normal.

  4. Support is easy! Our clients are happy when we answer within one business day. They feel comfortable using email and don’t expect instant on-site chat. They take the time to report bugs and mostly answer follow-up questions.

  5. Clients are loyal, for years! If Stagetimer fits someone’s needs, they usually stick around. “I don’t need it anymore” is our most common cancellation reason. Often the same users come back if they need it again, even after years!

  6. Marketing is hard! Maybe 5 of my 11k Twitter followers are my users. There’s very low search volume for most of our high-converting keywords. It’s nearly impossible to find copywriters with knowledge of our niche. We grow slowly. It’s hard for a bootstrapped B2B business to grow fast.

  7. Finding B2B problems is hard. It’s much easier to find B2C problems; we all encounter them in our lives. There’s no playbook for finding good B2B problems. Research, observation, asking questions, thinking outside the box - some creative approach is required. Here’s an example of how I got the idea for Stagetimer: https://stagetimer.io/blog/building-stagetimerio/

What’s your take on B2B SaaS? Anything I missed?