New Golden Age of Consumer
Why the fuck is everyone building B2B apps right now? One thing I’m seeing consistently is that the highest-flying, most-funded AI startups are B2B. But, why?
I think it’s probably some hangover of the last decade+ of startups and investing where the biggest things were geared towards B2B, but if you look at the winners so far in AI (primarily chat), it’s all consumer revenue. B2B is nice because it’s more predictable, but often times the biggest outliers are consumer companies.
Historically, most new-tech waves have been driven by consumer and expanded by B2B, this happened during the internet boom where the largest companies are things like Amazon and Google, during the mobile revolution (Uber, Airbnb), crypto (Coinbase), and now AI (chat). The funny thing about AI is that until January, it’s hardly been mainstream.
It’s very likely that the largest consumer companies haven’t even been started yet or are starting now, and there are some serious tailwinds:
Most VC funding in SV focused on B2B
Consumer social weakening in the US and around the world
Fully penetrated smartphone market
Cheap to build and test software
Good time to be a B2C founder.