Startups Stories Series: The Pivot to B2B Is Not the Promised Land

Angels and venture capital firms considering investments in travel startups salivate at the prospect of a winning consumer startup because historically that's where the vast majority of the enterprise value has been created. In our Skift Startup Stories series, we document travel startup issues, solutions, and lessons from a variety of angles, hoping to shed light on what separates the winners from the losers.  You can read all of the stories in the series here. In travel, notable exceptions in the form of success stories on the business to business, or enterprise, side of the ledger include flight-pricing engine ITA Software, which Google acquired for $700 million in 2011, and hospitality-software firm Micros Systems, which Oracle bought for $5.3 billion in 2014. But these are the exceptions. In light of the torrent of consumer-startup failures in travel, many newbie companies pivot to a business to business focus out of desperation and with the thought that this can't be as difficult as the consumer side. Search-engine marketing to build a consumer audience and stand out from the competition is prohibitively expensive in travel, and now that Google regularly populates the entire top half of its search results' pages with sponsored links or Google's own flight, hotel and Google+ products, search engine optimization becomes very complex, takes a considerable commitment in personnel, and can often be relatively futile. So why not pivot to the enterprise side of the business and sell services to hotels, corporations, travel management companies and airlines, for example? Tweak the product, revamp the leadership team and you are on the way. Well, it isn't that easy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with travel startups pivoting. In fact, there is something amiss when a startup hasn't change direction or focus. When startups'  trajectories are a stubborn, straight line, often they haven't been willing to learn anything or are wedded in their emotional and irrational enthusiasm to a particular business theme. Investor Erik Blachford Urges Caution and Careful Consideration Erik Blachford, an avid angel investor, advisor and venture partner at Technology Crossover Ventures who previously was executive chairman of Couchsurfing and CEO of Expedia, says many travel startups that have faced immense marketing challenges as a consumer business pivot to the enterprise side of the market and run smack into another huge obstacle -- the s