New tools are emerging and focusing on *consumers* first. That’s because consumers today aspire to become businesses tomorrow. I’ll dub this the “enterprization of consumer.”
It used to be the case that software tools focused foremost on business customers, because they had business needs and could spend money on such products. In that vein, Canva, Shopify, Wix, etc. built multi-billion dollar businesses based on empowering and selling to a large number of SMBs.
Now, a new generation of tools have users that are initially just regular individuals, but who want to grow into businesses in their own right. There’s an opportunity to engage users pre-”enterprization”, enable their growth, and capture greater economic value as they professionalize.
The recipe is to start with a very basic offering — something that might even look like just a toy — and, as customers grow and start to earn revenue and develop new needs, get pulled into additional product capabilities.
By virtue of engaging users early and enabling them to start and grow their businesses, these products build deep workflow lock-in and loyalty, and have the potential to supplant existing b2b-focused platforms.
The undercurrent here is that digital platforms have enabled people to amass an audience, and so creates an opening to help individuals turn their unique skills/knowledge into a business, whether that’s through designing and selling merch, self-publishing, starting a podcast, or other means.
Some examples of the “enterprization of consumer”:
The “enterprization of consumer” is all about starting off as a lightweight, accessible consumer product.
But as those individual consumers grow into businesses — whether as influencer brands, writers, podcasters, streamers, etc. (jobs that don’t even exist now) — these tools can evolve to meet their needs.
See my thread on the influencer stack here for related thoughts [Tweetstorm]:
What else have you seen like this?
Originally published as “Enterprization of consumer"