Andrew Chen Archives

Subscribe · Featured · Recent · The Cold Start Problem 📘
Dear readers, I have moved to Substack and I will be writing here from now on:
👉 andrewchen.substack.com
In the meantime, I will leave andrewchen.com up for posterity. Enjoy!

Your ad-supported Web 2.0 site is actually a B2B enterprise in disguise

Doing a B2C is more fun than a B2B right?
A lot of folks are doing consumer internet startups because they think Web 2.0 startups are more fun. You can focus on the end user, make them happy, get traction, and go from there. Enterprise software companies (or their equivalent brethren, SaaS companies) are perceived as annoying because:

  • You have to hire a big, inefficient sales team
  • Your numbers depend on closing key deals (usually at the end of the quarter)
  • You have to deal with annoying suit-wearing people who don’t talk geek
  • You have to make your product better not through superior technology, but often through superior PR, sales operations, or other non-geek issues

Turns out that ultimately, you can’t escape all of the above, even in the consumer internet world. Let’s talk about why:

A quote from a guy who’s been there, done that
Ted Rheingold, CEO of Dogster and Catster, recently commented on post How NOT to calculate ad revenues:

I can still recall our early heady days when we forecast revenue
based upon our (over-calculated) pageviews and our expect (also
over-calculated) network CPM. You can imagine our frustration when the
network CPM was half what we hoped and they could only server us a
fraction of the impressions we requested. Note to anyone: only sites
with massive page serves can run a business on direct response ads.

In other words, unless you are a ridiculously huge consumer internet site, you have to build up your revenues through brand advertising sales. It’s very hard to just use ad networks like Google AdSense to sustain yourself – just do the math using 10 to 25 cent CPMs and you’ll quickly see why.

And brand advertising sales looks and feels exactly the same as enterprise sales, and has all the same annoying characteristics, including:

  • You have to hire a big ad sales team, potentially with an expensive office in New York
  • A small percentage of advertiser/agency relationships will supply a large chunk of your revenues. This means that "key deals" matter, and you will jump if they ask you to – for example University of Phoenix was worth $200MM/yr for AOL
  • Everyone you talk to in the ad industry are not nerds – many come from traditional media backgrounds, again with a NY bias
  • And fundamentally, brand advertising isn’t a tech game – it’s one based on great execution and great teams – so Silicon Valley tech companies often are at a disadvantage

The key thing here is: The users of your website are not really your customers.

Instead, the entire process of gathering eyeballs is just to sell to your ACTUAL customers, who are the ad agencies and advertisers. Get it? Your Web 2.0 consumer startup is actually a B2B that sells inventory to brand advertisers.

All your hard work is just to create B2B ad inventory
At an extreme, all the love and effort you put into your consumer internet product ultimately generates a commodity. All it does is generate ad impressions, which are sometimes rare enough to be sold at a premium to ad agencies. While many companies are able to exit with the monetization potential there, but not fulfilled (i.e. YouTube), for most companies that want to hit it big, they have to focus on the transition point between generating ad inventory and monetizing ad inventory.

This transition point is a big sticking point for companies, because the folks who are best at creating product specialize in consumer-centric skills like user experience, technology, and operations, whereas the skills needed for successful B2B ad sales revolve around issues like being able to sleep on airplanes, schmoozing with advertisers, speaking at panels, and other soft-skills.

How to avoid this mess
Of course, one way to completely sidestep these issues is to directly monetize your users – this is pretty hard, because you have to deal with transaction processing, coming up with something so compelling people will pay for it, and a number of other problems.

Net/net, the approaches here that align you directly with your customers are business models like:

  • Subscriptions
  • Virtual goods
  • E-Commerce
  • etc

While putting off ad monetization might be the easier thing to do in the short-run, the above business models may have useful characteristics of their own in the long-run.

PS. Get new updates/analysis on tech and startups

I write a high-quality, weekly newsletter covering what's happening in Silicon Valley, focused on startups, marketing, and mobile.

Views expressed in “content” (including posts, podcasts, videos) linked on this website or posted in social media and other platforms (collectively, “content distribution outlets”) are my own and are not the views of AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) or its respective affiliates. AH Capital Management is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply any special skill or training. The posts are not directed to any investors or potential investors, and do not constitute an offer to sell -- or a solicitation of an offer to buy -- any securities, and may not be used or relied upon in evaluating the merits of any investment.

The content should not be construed as or relied upon in any manner as investment, legal, tax, or other advice. You should consult your own advisers as to legal, business, tax, and other related matters concerning any investment. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Any charts provided here are for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, I have not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation. The content speaks only as of the date indicated.

Under no circumstances should any posts or other information provided on this website -- or on associated content distribution outlets -- be construed as an offer soliciting the purchase or sale of any security or interest in any pooled investment vehicle sponsored, discussed, or mentioned by a16z personnel. Nor should it be construed as an offer to provide investment advisory services; an offer to invest in an a16z-managed pooled investment vehicle will be made separately and only by means of the confidential offering documents of the specific pooled investment vehicles -- which should be read in their entirety, and only to those who, among other requirements, meet certain qualifications under federal securities laws. Such investors, defined as accredited investors and qualified purchasers, are generally deemed capable of evaluating the merits and risks of prospective investments and financial matters. There can be no assurances that a16z’s investment objectives will be achieved or investment strategies will be successful. Any investment in a vehicle managed by a16z involves a high degree of risk including the risk that the entire amount invested is lost. Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by a16z is available at https://a16z.com/investments/. Excluded from this list are investments for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly as well as unannounced investments in publicly traded digital assets. Past results of Andreessen Horowitz’s investments, pooled investment vehicles, or investment strategies are not necessarily indicative of future results. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.