Episode 81: B2B Investments

The Hard Truth About B2B eCommerce podcast treads onward this week with an in-house episode welcoming our new guest Jack Freeman, Partner at PeakSpan Capital, to discuss the state of B2B eCommerce today on both the vendor and client sides.

Jack Freeman is a partner at PeakSpan Capital, a venture and PE firm focused on technology that impacts B2B businesses through SaaS, fintech, and more. He is actively investing and helping companies grow and evolve in the B2B eCommerce space such as Shiphawk, Sales Layer, and others. The B2B eCommerce market is still so new that there is a lot to accomplish in order to help modernize the market, and Jack is solely focused on investing in this. He brings expertise on both the vendor and client sides.

Episode 81: B2B Investments

In this episode, co-hosts Isaiah Bollinger, CEO of Trellis, and Timothy Peterson, President & COO of Speir Digital, Inc, are welcoming Jack Freeman, the Principal B2B Visionary at PeakSpan Capital, to discuss:

• Investing into growing B2B eCommerce businesses
• Which eCommerce industry is the most mature and why
• Trends happening in eCommerce today and what to expect tomorrow
• Manual processes vs automation in B2B
• Two reasons why B2B companies are slow in adopting eCommerce 
• The role of digital transformation leaders within the company
• Shopify’s major update for B2B space
• Procurement and supply chain today and what is so challenging about it when it comes to digitalization
• Automation of serving your customers 
• Digitalization of B2B inventory
• The importance of investing into the long term brand value
• Ways to integrate new technologies with legacy systems
• How buyers want to buy today
• The power of digitization when presenting your products 
• The good and the bad about verticalization in businesses
• Trends like cutting the middleman and how it might affect distributors 
• Sourcing locally vs depending on international freight
• Which roles in the company should drive the strategic thinking around digital transformation
• What’s happening in the supply chain today
• The recent Gartner report and why leaders are the riskiest choice
• The most exciting about the payment supply chain in B2B

This podcast’s origin story

Podcasts are still a relatively new medium for content, but just because they are new doesn’t mean they lack power. In fact, it is quite the opposite. Podcasts have a unique ability to reach people on their time, whenever it is convenient for them – a way that previously did not majorly exist. Podcast listeners can take the information wherever they go and absorb it as they see fit. And that’s exactly what we are looking to do here. We want to reach a new audience of B2B eCommerce enthusiasts.

This podcast is all about B2B eCommerce. B2B is a different breed of eCommerce and it needs a different breed of Podcast. We get into the nitty-gritty of integrations, adoption, platforms, data and so much more regarding what makes B2B difficult to make successful for eCommerce!

We noticed that a few B2C podcasts exist on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, but nothing designed for the B2B eCommerce community. B2B and B2C eCommerce have a lot of overlap, but even more differences. Each has a different set of requirements and customer demands that impact project scope. Let’s call a spade a spade. B2B is harder, more complicated, and harder to market. But it is also a bigger piece of the pie. The eCommerce B2B roadmap to success is not as cut and dry as B2C and that’s why we have started this podcast.

B2C platforms like Magento and Shopify have large communities that support and have done the entre-level work of most projects. The same community does not exist for B2B, but we are starting to build it. The ecosystem may not be as mature, but as experts in the space, we hope this podcast will help some people wake up and reevaluate their online sales strategy.

The first podcast examines major trends around B2B eCommerce as well as answering all of the above questions.  Take a listen for yourself and let us know what you think!

We will be posting new episodes with special guests weekly. You can listen on our dedicated podcast website and download the podcast on all major channels: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, TuneIn, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Castro, Castbox, Podchaser, Podcast Addict, Deezer, Listen Notes, and RSS Feed.