The new B2B tech turf war
While AI is getting the headlines, there’s a less-talked about turf war going on in more traditional B2B tech categories. Companies that used to be in very separate spaces are now starting to compete with one another by integrating functionality that originated with more niche startups.
Here’s a look at some of them that come to my mind (not comprehensive I’m sure, but it illustrates the point):
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What’s notable?
Yes there’s a big land grab for generative text and visuals — companies in almost every category are giving them a go.
Mega-corps like Microsoft and Google are expanding their legacy offerings (productivity, collaboration, video conferencing) by incorporating functionality from startups like Calendly (scheduling) and transcription (Otter.ai).
While that’s not surprising, what is somewhat eye-opening is how Zoom, and to an extent Canva* and Figma, are quickly taking on those staid and familiar “office” categories with their own twists, starting from their own bases of video conferencing and design software. Zoom in particular is going on multiple fronts, and its recently-introduced whiteboarding tool is far more robust than Figjam, which has been out for much longer.
All this means that the startups that developed great experiences around historically niche offerings - easier scheduling, AI voice to text transcription, and collaborative virtual whiteboarding — are suddenly finding those have become like clocks: they’re getting commoditized and embedded into everything.
The voluminous number of gen AI startups (so many I didn’t even attempt to put in logos) are staying in their domains for now, which is understandable given their nascent and fast-moving status. For those that don’t just get acquired by one of the mega corporations, they will eventually likely have the same fate as the other niche offerings on this diagram unless they can scale into other domains.
*Just as I posted this, Canva announced a 300% price increase on plans for its larger customers, though for some it appears to be as much as 500%, using AI features as justification for the huge jump. Part of Canva’s appeal had been its lower price compared to Adobe, which this largely nullifies. Will be interesting to see how that works out for them…
