Not B2C, Not B2B, But B2D: The Growth of Marketing Straight to Developers

You know how I can confirm I’m an absolute NERD when it comes to marketing strategy? I just got excited at the prospect of building a whole new behavioral/geographic segmentation targeting audience in Facebook based on the growth of B2D (business to developer) startups.

I can thank Yoshi Yokokawa, CEO of Alpaca, for that one. After seeing how truly terrible so many broker dealer business tools were, as well as seeing the struggle developers were having quickly integrating new technology, he created Alpaca. At first, Alpaca let developers essentially paste in code enabling the buying and selling of securities. That was in 2018, and now, Alpaca is basically a leading B2D API startup that developers can easily build off of, bolstering hedge funds and startups everywhere by giving them an instant strong foundation.

Answers as a Fintech Marketing Agency

While they certainly face powerful competition from the likes of Interactive Brokers and Galileo, even with their new $6 million round of funding, they’re doing what Rock Candy Media in Austin has always harped on: never trying to be everything to everybody. And we say that as a growth hacking agency that loves (I mean loves) bold and rebellious technology branding.

We also know when not to push the limits, and we see our client’s competitors fail all the time for trying to be B2A (business to anyone) and therefore not being an expert in anything at all. While Alpaca’s competitors focus on building their own technology stack, marketing to developers, and branding new tools, Alpaca is focusing on the core of their proposition: building a developer community where their SDKs, documentation, and open source database can truly be optimized. Not to mention some pretty great brand storytelling about making fintech more accessible to developers everywhere, the way Robinhood made trading more accessible in the B2C realm.

Essentially, we see this growth of B2D businesses, API startups, and SaaS companies edging out on-prem software and simple B2B/C models. And that makes us stand behind more than ever the notion that emerging tech branding should focus on becoming niche experts and go-to names before becoming everything for everybody. We actually wrote about that in UpCity a little while ago, so you know we stand by it.

Just Call Us RCM 4 B2ABCDs+….. Or Something

There’s a lot to be developed in the ever-renewing emerging tech realm, meaning alongside the opportunity is an onslaught of competitors. Brand naming, productization, and marketing and growth strategies will play an even more crucial role in differentiating one startup from another. We might be inundated with acronyms now, but it’ll probably only get more overwhelming. Given all that… we’re ready, excited, and nerding out over the possibilities.

See the other startups we’re stalking from a Gen Z perspective here, or jump right in to learning more about our track record with other B2A/B/C/Ds.