Entrepreneurship Tutorial: How to Build a successful business-to-business company

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Editor's note: The author of this article, Romas Tannick (Roman Stanek), is GoodData's founder and Ceo,gooddata company that offers a range of business intelligence software and business reporting tools to help businesses profit through big data. Prior to that, he also founded Netbeans.org and Systinet, which was sold to Sun Microsystems, which was bought by HP. This article is the author's entrepreneurial experience to share.

I'm a serial entrepreneur and I'm used to taking risks. However, in all the companies I started, there has never been a very attractive new concept, nor has it brought me great wealth. I started a number of business (business-to-business) software companies, my companies are basically stable, the revenue is also more substantial.

It's fun to be the boss of a business-to-business company now. With the accelerating trend of Internet consumption, startups in SaaS and Cloud business-to-business look more like consumer companies because they are customer-centric. In addition, their achievements are also exciting, for the leader in this field, they have earned a lot of money. As a result, investors are flocking to the business-to-business sector, where start-ups that are thought to churn the IT market are getting higher prices for IPOs, while others attract huge acquisitions, such as Yammer, which Microsoft recently bought for more than 1 billion dollars, and workday, Workday currently has a market value of 8 billion dollars.

But while business-to-business companies have similarities to consumer-facing companies, business-to-business start-ups face challenges that consumer-centric companies don't have to face. These challenges include:

1. Because business-to-business users are enterprise-oriented, the security, scalability and performance requirements of the product are high.

2. The cost of recruiting engineers and salespeople and retaining talent is also higher than that of non-business-to-business companies.

3. Persuade customers to use their own products or services, so that they believe that our products can enable them to gain competitive advantage, but also to save costs.

4. Let customers believe that your start-up will always be there because business users want sustained support.

Here I give you entrepreneurs three basic skills to face these challenges, I have learned from the lessons of my career summed up on the basis of hope for you to help, so that everyone less detours.

Find a good engineer

It takes a lot of money to start a business-to-business company before it gets customers and a decent amount of revenue. Because it requires a team of highly professional developers who understand the needs of the business, we need excellent engineers to develop modern business-to-business platforms and robust applications to meet the needs of the business. Engineers with this level of skills and experience are not easy to find, and more importantly, those with the skills and experience of the engineers know their value.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, there are a lot of good giant companies, and startups have to compete with giants like Twitter, Google and Facebook, where competition for talent is fierce. Because the local competition is too intense, many companies like to recruit engineers from other areas, such as Austin, Portland, Oregon State, Boulder, Colorado State, and many talented engineers. Personally, I prefer to recruit in my hometown (the Czech Republic), where there are some skilled and commercially savvy people. In short, the competition is not so fierce place to find talent.

It is also worth mentioning that, in my experience, the best way to attract good developers is to give them a very interesting project and make them feel like they can succeed. After all, great engineers are the same as great artists, and they want others to see their work.

Hire a dedicated sales rep

It also requires skill and experience to sell the product to the purchasing department of the Enterprise, and this is where many people are not good at. This is because the reps need to know who owns the purchasing power within the client company, and how the customer works with the vendor, and how the company's new services can be matched with the customer's existing products. In addition, it is important to have a deep understanding of the customer's industry and to know that they need to address and worry about their concerns in order to compete better with their competitors. In fact, there is a certain correlation between the complexity of the solution and the price.

This is why today's business-to-business companies, including start-ups, still need to hire specialized sales reps. The sales representative can not only demonstrate the product, the value of the product and the company's philosophy, but also provide a competitive price positioning for the company, but also know how to deal with different customer procurement process. If you think that business-to-business services based on the cloud don't need a full-featured sales team, you might want to think about it. To prove this, we can look at the composition of the new recruits of the Salesforce.com from January 2010 to August 2012, and it is easy to see that the sales department has a large proportion of staff added, and it is alleged that Salesforce.com Q3 's recruitment data can be more positive when it comes to proving this.

In short, recruit some good salespeople, because it allows your customers to believe that you are selling quality products and services.

Convince customers that you have a strong stamina.

Next, you need to convince your clients that your company is in full steam. The average enterprise will only purchase from a few trustworthy suppliers, and generally will not change the supplier casually. Therefore, getting customers can be said to be a major challenge. After all, no one wants to bet on a supplier that could disappear in a year or two, no matter how impressive the new technology is, and will not use it casually.

In addition, it is clear that the company's founder and management team running the company and problem-solving experience can also play a huge role in persuading customers. However, I believe that the composition of the investors and the board of Directors also has a great impact, because it can be seen a company in the industry recognition. Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and elsewhere like Anderson Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz), Grayrauk (Greylock) and Sequoia Capital (Sequoia), because getting their investments means becoming star startups, meaning stability and continued stamina. Yes, getting their investment is like being awarded a Medal of Honor.

That's why startups with business-to-business businesses need to be cautious about choosing investors. Of course, the amount of investment is also important, but more important is the board members of investors. If they can bring you experienced managers, customer relations networks and business networks that are best suited to business-to-business markets, that's best. Investors in Anderson's Horowitz, for example, can help their investment companies meet with potential customers and industry superstars, and also help contact the media to advertise and even hire first-rate talent. When I decided to accept their investment, I saw the resources of their investment, and I was fortunate to have decided to invest in the gooddata I had created.

A speech

Entrepreneurial success is not easy to obtain, in the business-to-business market entrepreneurship is particularly difficult, because it requires not only a small upfront investment, but also need experience and expertise to meet customer needs. But for those who intend to enter this market, I would say that as long as you have the right funds, support and insight, the rewards are certainly greater than the pain. Personally, I'm hooked on business-to-business.

Article compiled from: Venturebeat