[Kisil]

Your comment reminds me of this story: http://www.astatespacetraveler.com/have-you-ever-wondered-wh...

Broad strokes: Startups directly create new value, which by definition makes the world a better place, at least for someone. In contrast, the finance industry adds value indirectly by optimizing capital allocation. At best, finance increases efficiency, but it's very hard to measure whether it's helping or just exploiting the complex rules to skim off the top. In contrast, startups without a value proposition fail.

[yummyfajitas]

Only consumer product startups create new value, at least in the sense I think you are describing.

A B2B startup, much like finance, will only increase efficiency. If I build HRWeb (replace your human resources dept with the internets), all it does is makes a bunch of other companies more efficient.

[erikpukinskis]

A business is two things: an organization that sells something, and a collective of employees.

As you say, some B2B startups sell efficiency to the organization.

But there is also good money in selling products to the employee collective, even if they decrease efficiency of the organization.

For example, you can sell employees a product that gives them job security by making them appear more valuable. You could sell them a tool that will help them get rival employees fired.

Both of these would come at a cost of efficiency, but would be excellent B2B products. In the end, it's the employees who sign the purchase orders, not the organization.

I have a sneaking suspicion that these make up a much larger portion of B2B products than most people would think.

[Locke1689]

Heh, FYI http://HRWeb is the name of Microsoft's internal HR resources site.