People love to make fun of B2B SaaS for being boring, repetitive and niche. But people are building so much B2B software for a good reason: Building consumer tech can feel like going to war: 

• You’re competing with giant corporations. 
• Cautionary tales like Quibi and Clubhouse are reminders of how hard it is. 
• Monetization is hard because consumers expect apps to be free. The barrier to pay for something is higher for consumers than for businesses. 
• It takes longer to start making money, which requires you to raise more money, spend more time and stay in hair-on-fire mode for longer. 

B2B is easier to monetize because there’s a clear ROI for customers: If you save/make a company more money than they give you, that’s an easy sell. You’ll also make more money per customer: $100/month is expensive for consumers, but cheap for businesses. Making more money more easily is a pretty good pitch to a business.

That’s why building in B2C is doing startups on hard mode. But if you win on hard mode, you get a bigger reward: If a consumer startup takes off, it really takes off. Consumers are a far bigger market, products tend to be more viral and building a brand far more valuable. 

Think about Airbnb ($81.4B), Doordash ($58.70B) or Instacart ($10.4B) — all of them have transformed their industries and created massive value. This is no $10 million acqui-hire. If you win in consumer, you win big.

To highlight some of the brave founders toughing it out in the consumer market, we analyzed 3 brave startups who are still building for consumers — and succeeding. In this, we’ve found 3 timeless strategies to find product-market fit.

Here they are: 

Saturn: Bootstrapping a new social media network

Remember when Clubhouse was the next big thing? It soared to a $4b valuation — and then fizzled. Since then, there have been few big wins in social media. BeReal’s $537m exit might be a great payday for the founders, but can’t hold a candle to Facebook (now Meta), Twitter (Now X) and Snapchat (now Snap). 

Even when it comes to features on already-successful networks, I can’t think of anything beyond bombardment with short-form video. (Remember Twitter Fleets and Meta Live Audio Rooms? Neither does anyone else.). 

It feels like the opportunity to build new social networks is over. 

Not for Dylan Diamond and Max Baron. They built Saturn, a social app which helps high school/university students manage their course calendars, organize events, and connect with each other.

Saturn is a high school and college calendar app that makes it easy to stay on top of classwork and layers a social network on top with class chats, DMs, coursework trackers, etc.

Founder Dylan Diamond first built the calendar when he was in high school — and realized others might benefit from the app as well. When Saturn launched at one school close to Diamond’s alma mater Staples High School, more than half of the student body joined in the first three hours.

Since then, it’s been up and to the right. Their growth and accolades don't stop there:

• $62M in funding with investors like Ashton Kutcher
• millions of students in monthly user acquisition
• integration in 20,000 schools
• fourth place in the App Store above the big social giants
• in Forbes 30 under 30 list at age 22

How did they achieve success from so much risk?

Build your network on an existing network

Saturn built an app for students, an existing network that was already alive with events, schedules, course work, timetables, extracurriculars etc. They connected all the dots and became the first calendar/social network hybrid.

Instead of hoping a network emerges if you just launch and tell enough people, find a targeted niche audience that's already connected. Facilitate connection and make those day-to-day tasks within that community audience easier. That’s the power of building for a network that exists, but doesn’t have an app yet. 

Create built-in virality

Saturn has all the benefits of a viral app:

• It reduces customer acquisition costs since users themselves are doing much of the marketing.
• It builds a more engaged and loyal user base, as people are more likely to trust and use a product recommended by their classmates.
• It increases user retention as leaving the platform means losing access to a valuable network.

But this only works because it’s not gimmicky. A ton of apps try to become viral with invite codes and social features that don’t need them (no, I don’t want to be your friend on Walmart’s online shopping app). But school is already multiplayer, which makes the social features work.

Focus on a user behaviour competitors miss

Saturn is a fun social network, but it’s also productive. Here’s what co-founder Dylan Diamond had to say in EdTech Digest, “ Unlike other social platforms that serve as time sinks via an endless feed of content, our mission is to give students time back in their day so they can focus on spending more time doing things they love with the people who matter most to them.”

This means Saturn counter-positions to TikTok and Instagram. It’s social media without the guilt and time-wasting. But with extra utility (the school calendar). That utility also makes the app useful even when people aren’t using the social features. 

The takeaway? Build a product that solves a problem and then build a network around it. 

“We believe that the next generation of social platforms will inevitably be more utility-oriented. We are very focused on building social value around a utility you rely on every day. We see that by connecting that smaller, more intimate community, we can drive better connections.”

The strategy Saturn’s founders pursue is compelling. One big question remains: How will they monetize? Meta, TikTok, X and Snap all rely on increasing how much time users spend in the app so they can serve them more ads. Like it or not, that’s what makes them great companies. If Saturn doesn’t want to do an infinite scroll, I’m curious how they’ll become a big, profitable business.

Reflect: The prosumer strategy

Prosumer is a hybrid between producer and consumer B2B or B2C. Prosumer means selling to individuals who aren’t businesses, but use the software for productivity or business-like activities. 

Let’s say you want to invest in professional growth by learning to code in your spare time. Because the generic notes app lacks a lot of features, you look for something that helps you structure your knowledge better. 

You might find Reflect, a minimalist note-taking app that does just that. It’s a product for individuals that aims at making you more productive by improving how you interact with your knowledge. 

That’s the genius of productivity apps —they’re pretty much an essential for work or personal life, so consumers don’t mind paying, knowing the ROI for it is: peace of mind, getting stuff done, feeling clean and organized —basically having your shit together.

That’s a type of ROI you might expect to be a selling point for businesses, but applied to consumers. This is why Reflect can charge $120 a year while Apple Notes is free. 

So how does Reflect make their product resonate for prosumers?

Replicate existing product - unscramble bad functionality

Alex MacCaw, the founder of Reflect, built a personal-note taking app when he was overwhelmed, but needed functionality that went beyond Apple Notes.

Alex built features that stemmed from a pain point we all have: disorganization. Drafting silly, intimate little thoughts on the Notes app is chaotic—from grocery, baby names, email drafts, emotional poetry about an ex, top 5 murder list, that sort of thing.

Reflect saw an opportunity to unscramble this chaotic functionality. Sam Claassen, Head of Growth and Marketing, told us about it:

“One particularly nice aspect of Reflect's philosophy is that we believe in "append-only" note-taking. That means you don't have to spend time cleaning up and organizing your notes. You can dump everything into a daily note and work from there. If you want clean and organized notes, the AI assistant can do much of that with the built-in prompts. In fact, you can voice transcribe your notes and then organize them with the AI assistant without ever really needing to type!”

This is smart because it removes the difficulty of intricate note-taking systems without reducing the functionality of advanced note-taking tools.

Instead of a user scribbling in a note and never finding it again, Reflect built features to solve this. This is a smart way to get users to pay extra for something that exists for free: Solve the biggest con users face and build your product around it.

Be ruthless with features - scrap the rest

One of the worst things is seeing an app you love become unusable because the company keeps adding features. This matters especially in prosumer, where people aren’t forced to use your app for their work.

Sam Claassen told us Reflect's approach:

“The team is intentionally wary of adding any new features that might clutter the design. We are ruthless about what gets added. If something gets added, it's been deemed absolutely essential. Instead of focusing on customization, we focus on security and performance. Choosing to make it non-collaborative makes growth more challenging but ensures people treat their notes like their own brain. You'd never want to give someone access to your own thoughts; otherwise, you start self-censoring.”

As fans of unshipping, we approve. Sometimes, this means being patient when user behaviour is messy:

"The hardest thing from an adoption standpoint is getting people used to backlinks instead of folders. This takes a bit of getting used to but really matches how our own brains work. In that sense, it's really about giving people enough time to adjust. We officially offer a 2-week trial but pretty freely extend that trial as long as people need when requested."

The Reflect team is opinionated about their product. This is a good thing when you’re targeting a productivity use case. All too often, users need to be saved from themselves.

What’s the product strategy takeaway here? You can succeed in consumer by targeting prosumers who use your app for productivity use cases. 

That's how you woo your customers.

Dupe

Nobody wants to pay extra for a dropshipping store or a “brand” that slaps their label on something you can get cheaper on AliExpress. 

That’s why Bobby Ghosal built Dupe, a tool to help people buy items they see online for a lower price (Sometimes like 80% lower) if they’re offered elsewhere.

If you could pay less for the same thing, you’d do it 100% of the time. 

Dupe is a viral success. They received 88,000 site visitors in their first month of launch, over 350,000 the next month, and 670,000 the next. This would be almost inconceivable in B2B, but it’s what happens when you win in consumer. Here’s how the team did it:

Admit when things aren’t working

Dupe started as Carrot, an extension that saves your carts for you. Finding “dupes” (duplicate products you can buy cheaper elsewhere) started as a feature of Carrot, but became the main reason users used it. 

That’s why Carrot bought a great domain (Dupe.com) and relaunched as Dupe, a product focused on that one feature. And then it took off. This is often the case: A feature you build as part of your product eventually becomes the product. 

But this requires humility. It requires the willingness to accept that your initial vision wasn’t it — and to unship that and go all in on what’s working.

Dupe also removed all barriers to usage. There are no email sign-ups, annoying pop-ups or bots (we might be in love). This lower Time to Value increases positive user experience and pushes a viral tidal wave of product adoption through word of mouth (AKA Instagram and TikTok).

As a consumer, it almost feels criminal to say no? But that’s the whole point.

Don’t sleep on the pendulum swing of cultural trends

In this economy, people are looking to save money more than ever. With 2 billion views on Tiktok for #dupe, consumers are proud of themselves for paying $12 rather than $100 for a luxury brand like Lululemon.

Dupe built a product that solved a problem (overpaying for the same product), saved people money and did so in an effortless way.

This led to giant virality: Headlines on TV morning networks and viral videos on social gave the company 30 million views in 60 days to be exact. It helped that Bobby built the app after overpaying for a cheap piece of furniture. A revenge story always plays well.

The best product strategy takeaway: Be willing to re-package, re-launch, or re-start a product based on a user feedback loop and emerging trends. 

B2C building starts with embracing failure quickly

Consumer is far from dead. It’s still possible to build successful consumer tech products. You just need to be more strategic. 

These success stories of Saturn, Reflect, and Dupe demonstrate that building consumer-focused startups in 2024 is challenging but rewarding.