BC Startup Sales Podcast – Building a B2B Business Within a B2C Company w Darren Shimkus (Udemy)

This week on the Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast we had Darren Shimkus, the General Manager of Udemy for Business, in the studio to discuss Building a B2B Business Within a B2C Company. Udemy is an online marketplace for education. It is aimed at professional adults who want to add new skills to their resumes or explore their passions and is also sold to businesses for corporate wide education. Darren has nearly two decades of experience building and growing high-performing sales, marketing, and product management teams. Prior to Udemy, he served as senior vice president of global sales and business development at Mophie, responsible for driving revenue across the Americas, EMEA, and Asia. Darren worked previously at the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), serving in various product development, sales, and general management roles. He received his BA from William & Mary and his MBA from Stanford University.

On our podcast, we dig in with Darren specifically on the B2B side of the business, which Udemy started about 3 years ago. During the podcast, Darren walks us through everything from the decision making process to ultimately launch a B2B business within a B2C company, to how they executed on it, and even shares a few blind alleys they ran into along the way. We also dug in on how to think about when the right time is to launch an entirely new business model, particularly when the B2C business is doing quite well, with over 13 million users in the case of Udemy. Finally, we talk a bit about the sales strategy on the B2B side, and specifically discuss selling strategies when the key decision maker is not necessarily the end user.

If you liked “Building a B2B Business Within a B2C Company” and want to read more content from the Bowery Capital Team, check out other relevant posts from the Bowery Capital Blog. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the podcast to get all our new content each week!