If you’re trying to decide whether to build a consumer app or a business app, several venture capital firms suggest you’re better off building a B2B app. While a few consumer apps, like Instagram, Path and Foursquare, have become huge overnight successes, many more fail. By contrast, business apps are seen as less risky. “The hits are really big, but guess what? Then there is everybody else. That is the 99%,” said Kevin Spain, general partner at Emergence Capital. “We are starting to see a lot of entrepreneurs that maybe a year ago were starting to develop consumer apps that are now starting to think about business-oriented apps. You can still build really big, successful businesses here, by the way. Look at Salesforce, look at SuccessFactors and countless others.”
Spain added, “If you are successful in executing [a business app], there is a greater likelihood that you are going to be successful and have a winning outcome than if you go down the consumer path. Maybe the highs aren’t quite as high. There is not a B2B company out there that is worth the $100 to $200 billion that Facebook is going to be worth. Not anything that has been created recently, at least. That is OK. If you build a business that is worth $10 billion, that is still a pretty big win. If you can do that with a higher probability, I think for developers that seems like a smarter path to take.”
