Building an All-In-One SMB Platform With A ZenBusiness CoFounder

I’m back from a whirlwind two weeks to London, Paris, Berlin and Madrid.

In Madrid, I did a main stage fireside chat with JC Glancy the unicorn cofounder of ZenBusiness (a former portfolio company of mine at a previous firm), and one of our venture partners at Fluent (the VC fund I cofounded).

Here are a few takeaways for me from JC’s talk on what was critical for ZenBusiness to scale:

• Personal Passion: ZenBusiness was a long 10-year journey to seemingly becoming an overnight success. JC’s passion is helping small business owners, like his father, make their lives easier. This kept him going throughout the journey.
• Surround Yourself With Partners: So few founders I know hire their own boss. Early on in the ZenBusiness story, JC had the opportunity to bring in Ross Buhrdorf, the founding CTO of Homeaway, as an investor, and ultimately as CEO. As JC said: “You can either be rich or be king.” JC jumped at the chance to grow his founding team and get a mentor along the way.
• Diversity starts with the top: ZenBusiness is nearly 50% female. In JC’s view this starts with the leadership team which has a similar ratio.
• Cross-sell is hard: “Being a platform is like being a mall with many doors.” You need to have a reason for customers to keep coming back to you. In ZenBusiness’ case, they are the all-in-one platform for SMBs, starting at the point of formation.
• Fintech is a key enabler to expand LTV: ZenBusiness leverages fintech to scale their LTV. It also helps lower churn. “Customers that use banking churn at half the rate to customers that do not.”
• Remote is powerful but at the beginning, being close together was powerful. But being remote lets you attract the best talent from anywhere. “Remote first mindset while creating opportunities to work together in person is the way to go.”

What do you think?

One of the reasons I like models like ZenBusiness so much is the opportunity to support small businesses. I’m taking the opportunity to repost a piece I wrote in my Forbes column a couple years ago on the role of SMBs in the US.

There are 30M Small and Medium Sized Businesses (“SMB”) in the US, accounting for 99% of US businesses, and growing. Covid-19 has shown us two simultaneous and seemingly opposite truths about this segment.

1.????SMBs are fragile — massive external shocks can cause devastating effects.

2.????SMBs as a sector are the future — they have proven to be one of the most resilient aspects of our economy.

--> Read the rest of it HERE.