Micro pivoting to B2C 🔄
by Oliver CordingleyBefore launching the investment campaign, ourGen achieved considerable B2C traction with £0 marketing spend and built internal systems to scale content for students. It was assumed that universities (large groups of students) would be the ICP to monetise the platform. It was decided that in order to sell to universities, a technical product must be built alongside the current student offering.
So, it began its investment campaign in May 2022 with the ambition to digitise university career services. Its primary model was to sell directly to universities on a B2B2C model by providing access to the platform for £0.2 per user per month.
As an opportunistic team, the company took new business where it can explore models and get a better understanding of the market. Whilst building a pipeline of deals, the sales team experienced typical industry barriers, such as long sales cycles and low CAC/LTV ratios. After reporting to our board, other partners and potential investors, the general consensus feedback was that the current model is high risk and low reward for a startup of ourGen's size.
After reflection, it was realised that the company's business plan had adapted to the opportunities explored ad-hoc, and not with the core vision in mind. The management team went back to the drawing board and assessed the company's current strengths which were:
- Extensive partnership network with vast student influence
- Agreed distribution partnership which covers 525 cities
- Proven sales strategy that scaled effectively to acquire societies
- Extremely high engagement rates vs average industry in events
After 4 weeks of internal preparation, ourGen is raising investment to deliver the following plan:
Phase 1 - B2C (1-12 months)
- Build multiple acquisition channels for free B2C users
- Achieve critical mass and switch on monetisation to convert into paying users
- Launch B2B an monetise from B2C data collected previously
Phase 2- B2B (13 - 24 months)
- Adopt optimised B2C strategy and scale users
- Explore the best B2B channel for monetising data
- Build B2B products to use data
Phase 3 - Scale (25 + months)
- Build Career AI
- Reduce B2C CAC
- Increase revenue and profit
