If SMBs Are the Engine of the Economy, We Have to Build Systems That Work for Them

Small and medium businesses (SMBs) make up over 90% of all businesses globally. It’s a stat that gets quoted so often, it starts to sound like background noise. But behind that number is a deeper truth:

The global economy’s growth depends on how we build for SMBs, and the companies that do will unlock the next wave of digital progress.

I’m not just talking about the products we offer them, but the systems we design around them: onboarding flows, pricing structures, data models, support channels, and go-to-market (GTM) engines. Yet most of what we build, especially in tech, is still optimized for the enterprise.

Build for Their Context, or Nothing Works

Most GTM strategies for SMBs still borrow too heavily from enterprise playbooks: segment the market, assign territories, build pipelines, push through channels. But SMBs don’t operate on procurement cycles, they don’t have IT departments, and they won’t spend time decoding unclear pricing or setting up tools that don’t deliver obvious value right away. They move fast, operate lean, and make decisions emotionally, not organizationally. That’s why cracking this space isn’t just a marketing challenge, it’s a system design challenge.

At Santander, I led the strategy for a merchant cash advance platform built on POS data. No paperwork, no long applications, just real-time credit decisions based on transaction behavior. It worked because it was built around how SMBs already operate.

At Compago, we created a shared expense payment system designed for real groups of people (families, roommates, close friends), not abstract user personas. We didn’t ask people to adopt new habits, we built into the ones they already had.

At Winkel, we helped small-format retailers tap into retail media using tools that felt like extensions of their operations, not layers of complexity.

In each case, what made the model work wasn’t better messaging, it was better fit.

Designing Systems That Deliver

A real system for SMBs doesn’t just work, it feels right from the first moment. It respects their time, speaks their language, and solves a real problem without asking them to change how they operate. And when that happens, the GTM strategy doesn’t live on a slide, it’s embedded in the experience itself.

How you introduce, deliver, and sustain value, from first touch to long-term use, matters as much as the product itself.

Some SMBs are digital-first. But millions more operate in ways that challenge typical tech assumptions. They are resource-constrained, based in small towns rather than tech hubs, using pen and paper for tracking, and running their business by feel rather than by dashboards.

Most SMBs don’t drop off because setup is hard, they drop off because the value isn’t instant, or the product feels like it wasn’t built for them. Even tech-savvy SMBs want speed and simplicity. And for the majority, especially in rural or informal sectors, the GTM system must reflect how they actually live and work, not how we in tech wish they did. That’s why the companies that succeed here aren’t the ones that sell harder, they’re the ones that design better.

And over the years, I’ve built systems across fintech, digital infrastructure, and retail tech. And the lesson that keeps coming back is simple: clarity scales, complexity stalls. You don’t need a 200-slide deck to align cross-functional teams. You need shared definitions, clear rhythms, and a common understanding of what success looks like, across sales, ops, product, and finance. When that alignment exists, GTM becomes repeatable, forecasts become meaningful, and customer growth becomes sustainable.

And as GenAI matures, it can help amplify this clarity, by automating insights, simplifying planning, and customizing outreach at scale. But it can’t replace system design. GenAI works best when it’s layered onto an architecture that already understands who it’s serving and how.

The Impact Will Be Bigger Than We Think

When SMBs are served by systems that truly fit them, they grow. And when they grow, something bigger happens. They become easier to underwrite by fintechs, easier to onboard by SaaS tools, easier to support by platforms and governments, and more resilient, more visible, and more integrated into digital ecosystems.

This is the start of a virtuous cycle. And the catalyst for that cycle? It won’t be one startup, it won’t be one product, it’ll be an infrastructure-level player, one with the reach, the data, and the systems thinking to build for the segment that’s long been underserved.

When SMBs are better connected, structured, and cloud-enabled, the rest of the ecosystem benefits too. Fintechs can underwrite more precisely, SaaS companies can onboard faster, marketplaces can reach wider geographies, and local platforms can plug in with less friction.

The right system at the infrastructure level doesn’t just scale adoption, it multiplies opportunity across the entire digital economy.

And that’s the kind of catalytic role a company like Google Cloud can play: not just serving SMBs, but unlocking them for everyone else.

The Opportunity Ahead

That’s why I believe this is one of the most exciting challenges in tech today, not just from a business perspective, but from a societal one. Because when we build systems that truly work for SMBs, we strengthen local economies, improve employment resilience, bring millions of businesses into the formal digital economy, and create a more inclusive platform for innovation.

This is a win-win-win scenario. Big Tech companies like Google win by conquering a new frontier. Smaller tech players win by reaching a growing segment of SMBs. And society at large wins through economic growth, resilience, and inclusion. This is how tech should support the real economy. Because if SMBs are the engine of the world economy, the least we can do is build systems that run for them.