Building a Growth Engine for B2B Tech Start-ups

I am honored to have an article published on INSEAD Knowledge, co-authored with the outstanding Professor of Entrepreneurship, Rose Xiaowei Luo.

We both hope that you'll find the lessons learnt applicable to your B2B tech startup!

You’ll find the text of the article below and the link to the INSEAD Knowledge article: https://knowledge.insead.edu/entrepreneurship/building-growth-engine-b2b-tech-start-ups

Building a Growth Engine for B2B Tech Start-ups

B2B tech startups often stall in converting early interest into revenue. Here’s how to break out of the rut.

New ventures in the B2B technology space face a harsh reality. Despite possessing cutting-edge products and world-class technical talent, they often struggle to convert early interest into sustainable commercial traction. While some investors such as venture capital firm a16z have made a business out of helping first-time tech founders go to market, less attention has been given to how to enable these founders to change and adapt, especially in the B2B space.

We interviewed 26 B2B tech founders in the United States, Canada, Saudi Arabia and several European countries from October 2024 to June 2025 to discover common pain points. We found that B2B start-ups’ failure to launch often lies not in the technology they are peddling, but because founders underestimate the need to orchestrate a coherent growth system. They may use simple commercialisation tools but underestimate the impact of some obstacles, especially when selling to large corporations with complex and lengthy procurement processes.

Our work identifies three recurrent traps that block their growth trajectory and prevent even the most promising innovations from achieving scale. These traps represent strategic blind spots that can prove fatal if left unaddressed.

1. The Product Obsession Trap

The first challenge is what can be termed the “it will sell itself” syndrome. This trap is rooted in the entrenched belief that a product's technical superiority is, on its own, a guarantee of market success. Founders, often with deep technical backgrounds themselves, can spend years hunkered down in development under the assumption that "if you build it, they will come".

The reality, however, is that markets reward value, not just technical brilliance. Two years of development without rigorous commercial validation is often a fatal misstep. The antidote lies in structured, early market engagement. Without this, a start-up risks building a technically elegant solution for a problem no one is willing to pay to solve.

2. The Execution Misalignment Trap

The second syndrome emerges when a start-up begins its commercial journey without a clear system in place. This trap manifests in two common scenarios. In the first, the founder attempts to manage all business development personally. The result is predictable: overload, scattered efforts and a pipeline filled with unqualified leads.

What may ensue is the second scenario: the founder hires a dedicated salesperson. Yet, this often fails to resolve the issue. The new hire frequently lacks the technical understanding to act as a bridge between the market and the R&D team.

The core learning here is that growth is not simply about “doing sales”. The solution requires  prioritisation and synchronisation between sales and development functions.

3. The Proof-of-Concept Plateau Trap

This is perhaps the most frustrating trap for many founders. A flurry of Proof of Concepts (PoCs) with large corporate clients and some innovation awards – none of which translates into scalable revenue.

This trap stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the complexities of corporate buying processes. Selling to large corporations demands more than compelling innovation. It requires trust-building, alignment with procurement departments and tangible deployment credibility with business unit budget owners. Without a compelling business case for scaling, even world-class innovations become trapped in a "PoC graveyard".

Two cases in point

The experience of two founders, Sarah* and Mohamed* (all names and locations changed), illustrates these traps and their corresponding solutions.

Sarah, CEO of the Munich-based ConnectIQ, saw her team’s cutting-edge telecom hardware win innovation awards and a flurry of interest from large industrial firms. Yet, this activity never translated into scalable revenue. Her team was stuck in mastering pilots with innovation departments but failing to convert them into real-world deployments with business unit budget owners.

Mohamed, founder of a Saudi-based B2B platform called MobiTech, faced a different challenge. A brilliant technical founder, he initially believed his superior logistics technology would "sell itself" (the Product Obsession Trap). When it didn't, he tried to manage all sales himself, quickly becoming mired in the Execution Misalignment Trap: a swamp of unqualified leads, and intense internal friction on which opportunities to pursue.

The antidote

The solution for founders like Sarah lies in consciously transitioning from intuition-led opportunity chasing to system-led growth orchestration. Our “From Tech To Growth” framework provides a structured approach, helping founders turn their technical differentiators into sustainable business growth. The framework is built on the premise that a company’s true strength is a combination of what we call Tech Genius, Market Genius and Scale Genius. By systematically developing all three capabilities, founders can build a coherent engine to reach scalable business growth.

1. Your Tech Genius – Why You Exist

This foundational stage is the antidote to the Product Obsession Trap. It forces founders to systematically define why the company exists. This requires pinpointing the specific target market and ensuring the product strategy connects the start-up’s technical strengths and market needs. A start-up can then ensure that its technology is aimed at a real, solvable business problem, and save months on its go-to-market timeline.

2. Your Market Genius – How You Address Your Market

This second stage directly counteracts the PoC Plateau Trap with a methodology for targeting the market effectively. This means selecting the most relevant market segments, use cases and geographies with high precision. Crucially, it involves developing channels and accelerators specifically to avoid the PoC plateau. Finally, it requires differentiating through unique business or pricing models and operational agility. Mastering this stage enables a start-up to win the key deals that validate its business model.

In Sarah’s case, the Market Genius methodology helped her identify the decision makers, build a plan to engage them before the PoC, and build a compelling business case to move to a scalable, procured solution. In Sarah’s words: “The hardest part was to agree with the business owner on specific KPIs which would trigger a successful exit to the PoC. It was the key to sell to this large corporation.”

3. Your Scale Genius – What You Do to Reach Growth

The final stage is the solution to the Execution Misalignment Trap, where founders are overwhelmed by a swamp of unprioritised leads. Scale Genius defines what you do to achieve repeatable growth. It starts with creating a launchpad by aligning all internal and external resources with the go-to-market strategy, and by building a system which focuses efforts on creating scalable growth. Finally, it ensures that the company culture, portfolio management and delivery capabilities are oriented towards customer delight. This is the stage where you prepare the entire organisation to scale accordingly.

Mohamed’s solution lay in revisiting his Tech Genius and Scale Genius. The former forced him to pinpoint a specific market problem and select only those verticals which his platform could make the biggest impact to focus on. His Scale Genius helped him create a launchpad which aligned his sales and development teams and gave them a clear framework to prioritise the right leads. “The framework helped me to select the sales leads which truly matter,” said Mohamed. “Consequently, our win/loss ratio doubled in 9 months.”

 A holistic approach

Building a successful B2B tech company requires a holistic system. Founders must evolve from being an innovator to an orchestrator of commercial execution. Our “From Tech to Growth” framework provides the blueprint for this transformation. By integrating Tech, Market and Scale Genius, B2B founders can build not just game-changing innovation, but an unstoppable growth engine.

 Philippe Poggianti, Poggianti Insights, and Rose Xiaowei Luo, INSEAD

12 Feb 2026

About the author(s)

Philippe Poggianti

is a business consultant and founder of Poggianti Insights.

Xiaowei Rose Luo

is a Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise, and holds the Rudolf & Valeria Maag Professorship at INSEAD.