B2B vs B2C
B2B (Business-to-Business) refers to products or services sold to other businesses. B2C (Business-to-Consumer) refers to products sold directly to individual consumers.
In depth
B2B vs B2C affects almost every product and business decision:
Sales cycle: - B2C: seconds to minutes (impulsive buying) - B2B SMB: days to weeks - B2B Enterprise: months to a year
Pricing: - B2C: $5–$50/month (high volume, low ARPU) - B2B SMB: $50–$500/month (moderate volume and ARPU) - B2B Enterprise: $2,000+/month (low volume, high ARPU)
Product differences: - B2C needs virality, habit formation, and low friction - B2B needs integrations, admin controls, SSO, audit logs, and contracts
Marketing: - B2C: social media, influencers, paid acquisition - B2B: content marketing, SEO, outbound sales, LinkedIn
Most successful B2B2C companies (Slack, Zoom, Figma) started as B2C-ish products adopted bottoms-up into enterprises.
Real example
Stripe is B2B — they sell payment infrastructure to other businesses. Netflix is B2C — they sell directly to consumers. Figma started as B2C (designers using it individually) and became B2B (selling enterprise licenses) — the classic PLG motion.
Tools & calculators
Related terms
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue)
Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) is the predictable, normalized monthly revenue generated from all active subscriptions. It's the north star metric for SaaS companies.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is the total cost of acquiring one new paying customer, including all marketing and sales spend.
LTV (Lifetime Value)
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV or CLV) is the total predicted revenue you'll earn from a customer over the entire duration of your relationship.
SaaS (Software as a Service)
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a software distribution model where applications are hosted in the cloud and provided to customers over the internet on a subscription basis, rather than installed locally.
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