Behind the Platform: Why Real B2B Network Effects Start With Infrastructure, Not Features.

A gentle rant on why your platform should act more like plumbing.

Let’s be honest. Most B2B marketing looks like a toddler yelling into a megaphone. On fire. While juggling LinkedIn carousels.

The logic goes something like this: “No one knows who we are, so let’s spam the internet into submission.” And for B2C, that kind of brute-force awareness works just fine. If you’re selling a new coffee brand or yet another DTC pillow, sure…just keep throwing ads at people until they click out of boredom or existential crisis.

But B2B? Whole different game. You can’t shout your way into someone’s infrastructure.

In B2C, network effects are elegant. You start with two users: a buyer and a seller. They interact. You add a third. A fourth. Suddenly, you’re scaling like wildfire, raising Series B money to hire people who’ll spend half their week “syncing” and the other half planning a launch party in Mykonos.

But in B2B? Try plugging two CFOs into a Slack channel and calling it a platform. You’ll be laughed out of the boardroom, politely, by someone who bills $500 an hour to tell you you’re wrong.

The real win in B2B isn’t being added to the stack. It’s being the thing that makes the stack work.

The goal isn’t to sit on top of the business like some cloud-based cherry. It’s to vanish so deep into the business that if someone tried to remove you, they’d have to shut down operations and sacrifice a goat.

You don’t want to be a feature. You want to be plumbing.

The kind of presence that’s not flashy, but fundamental. Like electricity. Or oxygen. Or that one guy in IT who knows where the passwords are.

The best B2B platforms are boring in the best possible way. They’re not loud. They’re not “disruptive.” They’re so ingrained that no one even questions them. They are the operating logic, the invisible mesh holding it all together. And once they’re in, removing them is like asking, “What if we just… didn’t use the internet anymore?”

Here’s the twist: getting to that point has nothing to do with how clever your tagline is. It’s about trust. Integration. Relevance. Being in so many workflows that uninstalling your product would require a 37-tab Notion doc, three all-hands meetings, and a week of mourning.

That’s the real network effect in B2B. Not just more users. More interdependence. More “If we rip this out, someone will cry.”

So while everyone else is optimizing their CTA buttons for marginal gains, I’m over here thinking: what if we just made something people couldn’t run their business without?

That’s the play. Not to be seen. To be assumed.

Are you chasing visibility? Or designing inevitability?

Happy to trade war stories.

Ross is CEO and Founder of Audalize, the company helping venues sound unforgettable. Learn more at audalize.com.