BigCommerce 2024 Earnings: Everyone Off the Bus But B2B
This was supposed to be about earnings, but instead it turned into something else. Here’s the only earnings number you need to know.
Net Revenue Retention is at 99% for the only segment they care about: Enterprise. Enterprise NRR should be north of 110%.
One more number: Growth guidance at mid-single digit growth rates is not going to cut it.
The most freeing moments in life are the moments when you realize you have nothing to lose.
It is well established that BigCommerce’s only hope is in B2B. First, stop messing around. You literally have nothing to lose. Throw everything else off the bus. For the love of all that is holy.
After all, consider this: If you win, where do you end up? Private equity.
If you lose, similarly, where do you end up? Private equity. Just in a more “special situation.” At this stage, it’s just about valuation discount anyways.
As a result, BigCommerce cannot afford to divide its efforts.
Still, here is where I think it could win.
1 - Payments. A business model which does not rely on a percentage of sales will attract a lot of the lower-margin (but not low volume) folks in the B2B space. Many whom have several different business units over varying sizes and so cannot afford “per storefront” or “% sales” style pricing.
2 - Actual Service. If your platform is not the best platform in the world (like, if for example your platform has 10x less devs than your top competitor), your service better damn well be. If BigCommerce is going to hire experts to sell its software - as it said on its earning call - it better differentiate from its biggest competitor by not hiring bots in Customer Service. Old school distributors want hand-holding as they go through digitization.
While we are at it, why not a real actual professional services group if we are going to truly chase the Enterprise to incubate new ideas with your biggest clients?
3 - Marketing in Overdrive. Like Freaking Hyperdrive.
Safe to say, it’s hard to breakthrough in the platform space. Yet BigCommerce does have a name in some corners of the space. (Though not always the best one). This is a chance to reintroduce yourself to the world.
In my mind, all top execs should visit all their top 25 customers personally. Come clean, tell them you f’ed it up, and recommit to the business. Don’t play games with pricing, upsells or anything else.
Just reset the roadmap and service levels and hunker down.
Did I mention reset the roadmap? The story is too complicated. Are you a baby Commercetools (is this what is needed)? Or a more flexible Shopify (argument is like 3 years old at least)? Or something else? I can’t figure it out.
What so buyers care about? Ease of use. Cost of ownership. And the Ability to trust the partner and ecosystem they are with for the next 10 years. Those are the only elements that matter.
Everyone else? Please exit the bus immediately.
