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STEP BY STEP: The Consumerization of B2B with Kirsten Green, Forerunner Ventures

Future Commerce
Future Commerce
Episode • Nov 22, 2022 • 39m

Venture Capital has been powering brands in the modern era and has also shifted with the changing times. How has Forerunner experienced those changes over the past decade and what opportunity is there ahead? Kirsten Green, General Partner at Forerunner Ventures joins this episode of Step by Step to talk about the evolution of eCommerce, the massive monetary potential of the B2B industry, and the role of data and research in eCommerce. Listen Now!

Table Stakes

  • “The customer wants what they want, where they want it, when they want it, how they want it, and the job of a business is to understand what that means for them in the context of all the channels that are available.” - Kirsten
  • The evolution of eCommerce has now also led to the expectation of delight and excellent experience from business tools and software that used to be mostly about functionality
  • One of the original promises of direct to consumer was to take out the middleman because middlemen were expensive, but did that work?
  • “The transformation of this industry happens in partnership with the evolution of consumer behavior and expectation and the technology that allows those expectations to be met.” - Kirsten
  • The word is that 12 - 25 trillion dollars is the opportunity that B2B transactions offer within the next few years, which is enormous
  • “Staying grounded and where there are those kinds of big opportunities and seismic shifts in business and investing into those is what we spend the lion's share of timing consideration around.” - Kirsten
  • Kirsten believes we are in a pre-data era, not a post-data one, and actually we really need to be sharpening our worldview through research and engaging and getting ongoing feedback about what's going on with the consumer, the user, the mindset, and behavior, which is evolving at a breakneck speed
  • “One of the biggest challenges to work through in the evolution of business, whether it's a B2C company or a B2B business is really bringing the user, the human, along in that journey in how they use and leverage the technology and their willingness to do that.” - Kirsten

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