The person who uses it is often not the person who pays. Building only for the user gets you loved and unpaid.
10 min read · Level 2
Building only for the user gets you love and no revenue, and it is the most common way a good B2B product stalls. The person who feels the pain and the person who signs are usually different people with different incentives, and the founder hears from the first constantly and the second almost never. Enthusiastic users without a case for the budget holder is not a product problem, though it will be misdiagnosed as one.
In B2B there are usually several people involved in a purchase:
The user — uses it daily, feels the pain The buyer / economic buyer — controls the budget and signs The champion — advocates for you internally The blocker — IT, security, procurement, legal
They care about entirely different things.
Because a product that delights users and has no answer for the buyer does not get bought. And a product sold to the buyer that users resent gets cancelled at renewal.
Most first-time B2B founders build only for the user, because the user is who they interviewed and who gives the warmest feedback.
The scheduling tool.
The ops manager (user) cares about getting Friday back. Their pitch is 'build the rota in ten minutes instead of three hours'.
The ops director (buyer) does not build rotas. They care about on-time delivery, overtime spend and not losing a manager to burnout. Their pitch is 'cut overtime by 8% and reduce scheduling errors'.
IT (blocker) cares about where the data lives, SSO, and whether this creates work for them. If you cannot answer, the deal stalls indefinitely regardless of how much the manager loves it.
Same product, three different conversations. A founder who only has the first one gets enthusiastic users and no signed contracts — and usually concludes the product is not good enough, when the actual gap is that nobody ever made the case to the person with the budget.
First-time founders often assume an enthusiastic user will do the internal selling for them. Champions need ammunition — a business case in the buyer's language, ideally something they can forward without editing.
The second mistake: not asking who signs. It is a completely normal question — 'who else would need to be involved in a decision like this?' — and asking it in the first call saves months.
The third: ignoring blockers until late. Security review is not a formality in most organisations; it is a gate that can add two months.
For your ICP, list who uses, who signs, who influences, who can block.
'Who else would need to be involved in a decision like this?' Normal, expected, and saves months.
User: time and frustration. Buyer: money, risk, outcomes. Blocker: compliance and effort.
Give them a one-page business case in the buyer's language that they can forward without editing.
A basic security overview and a standard data-processing answer prepared in advance removes weeks of delay.
The buyer signs the first contract; the users decide whether there is a second one.
Any B2B sale above roughly $200/month, where more than one person is involved.
Not relevant for consumer products or genuinely self-serve B2B where a user pays by card without approval. It becomes relevant the moment there is a procurement step.
Products that spread inside companies through individual users — collaboration and developer tools especially — still eventually meet procurement, security review and a budget holder. The companies that navigate it prepare the buyer-facing case in advance rather than discovering the gate when a champion hits it.
Bottom-up adoption delays the buyer conversation; it does not remove it. Have the business case written before your champion needs it.
Internal advocates are doing you a favour with limited time. The founders who convert them supply a one-page case written in the buyer's language — cost, risk, outcomes — that can be forwarded without editing. Champions who have to translate your pitch themselves usually do not.
Make it effortless to advocate for you. If your champion has to do work to sell you internally, the deal depends on their spare time.
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