B2B, B2C, B2Whatever … .

Speaking of startups the target customer might not be the first question asked.

It should come soon still with the “How do you make money” bit but look at a Twitter, an Airbnb, an Instagram and their pals, at first, they look sexy and their business orientation is not the urgent matter.

Startups are fun, entrepreneurs are crazy, business is boring.

My own reading of my early days in the startup world.

Still I was quite surprised, at that time, to find so little of them actually setting their sights on the business world.

For the first SmartCamp, held in Paris, I found myself getting applications from all over France but B2B startups would only amount to a very light 15 to 20% of the hundred+ applicants.

Also, as I mentioned from recent experience (see my “Camping” post) a noticeable number of French entrepreneurs still miss the actual business side of startups.

A move to the USA, for instance, does definitely help getting things right(er) on business planning and monetizing. That is the extreme (or lucky, from a startup side) solution.

Anyway, that said, it seems there is still a lack of regard towards business and B2B when it comes to startups. And the shadow of corporations and their corporate programs for startups loom in the back.

I am a supporter of corporations supporting entrepreneurship yet both do not go well hand in hand.

Just picture walking your teen kid to school. That is when there is no hand holding nor goodbye kissing anymore so to remain cool and strong in front of the crowd.

Startups and corporations do still face that kind of “It’s complicated” relationship.

Yet, the next business solutions are also to be found in startups. The B2B market is also still a field where opportunities are more than numerous.

Hence my happy face discovering the announcement of the B2B Rocks conference, due on March 27th, 2013, in Paris. See the dedicated site : http://www.b2brocks.co/

Organized by Alex Delivet and with a program strongly focused on the B2B approach (at least on paper), this event does appeal to me.

It sounds cool already, is dedicated and quite “open” (even if strongly supported by Microsoft).

Let’s see how this event delivers in the end but high-five Alex and the team already for putting this up.