Founder Led Sales

“The founders can often get traction that's not repeatable, right? Because, you know, the founders, obviously, they have the passion. They know the space. They know the product. They can say, we'll build this for you. And when you, when you're selling at that …”

“And I think that's really a worthwhile investment of, you know, I think you can kind of amplify The founder led sale thing quite significantly with just a few people. But you need people who have been successful in early companies where they just.”

“And that is why I think founder led sales in particular, where you're controlling sales, BD and product all at once. The only way that it really works in the beginning.”

“But if you're getting to a million in ARR and the set of customers you have look nothing like one another, you still have very much like an evangelist sale, very much founder led sale versus if you can say, Hey, I now have an ICP If you have an IP here or idea…”

“Founder led sales is great. I think founder led sales should always happen, especially when you're innovating on your product and you're learning. So I'm a huge fan of the founders being a part of the sales process, but ultimately I want the founders building …”

“I think particularly Canadian founders struggle with is founder led sales.”

“I'm like, I know you want the thing now, And this is your like objection to it. And I'm like, I think I agree with that objection. So I'm going to go remove that objection. And that, that to me is like, definitionally how you get a product market fit. And I ac…”

“So I think I would agree with that founders are going to be a part of sales essentially into perpetuity.”

“The biggest misnomer about hiring talent when you're going from founder led sales to the next level is the founder doesn't understand that they're typically seeing things that are much further down the pipeline. These are people who are already going to make a…”

“You need to be on the phones, learning, pitching, well past the first million.”

“And founder led sales is really, really, really important because in the very, very, very early days, when there is no brand equity, when there is no marketing engine running, when there is limited to no reference ability, the founder is the product, right? Be…”

“I don't think people realize how much of a competitive advantage the founder-led sales motion is for three kind of specific reasons. One is, is that the founder is the visionary. No one's going to be able to speak to it like they can. No salesperson, really no…”

“Founder-led sales is more about, is not about revenue on day one. It is about learning as fast as humanly possible to get to that pulse. So that you can earn the right to sell. There's this concept that I talk about, which is like, you're going out to run sale…”

“In mid-twenty-twenty-two, we kind of started to face retention issues. I think to one of your earlier questions, you know, our initial customer base at this time is still largely coming through founder-led sales, warm connections, and while that brings in that…”

“You, the founder, should be sending these. People are going to take them way more seriously when it comes from the founders or the CEO Much more so than if it comes from some account executive or some intern or some other automated process that you set up here…”

“I wouldn't necessarily advocate you going into a salesperson as a founder, because you'll end up doing it all the time, and you'll get sucked in, and if you do it once, your sales team will be asking you to do it all the time, and that isn't scalable.”

“I'm a firm believer that this, that the founder should be doing sales, and doing some other marketing for the first two years. They should be the one closing the first 10 accounts. If you're not doing the, I closed the first 40 accounts, because we were bootst…”

“And my diagnosis or the concept that I recommend here is from day one, be prescriptive on how to buy your product. And as you are introducing a potential customer to your business and product, you're going to do something like show them a product demo, hopeful…”

“I think for me, it was like, Hey, you know, I have actually, I feel like I've gotten to the point where now I'm doing first calls and I'm not really learning anything. Like I was, I honestly felt like I'm not really learning anything new. I'm just having the f…”

“In founder-led sales, unfortunately, you can't hire the diverse type of rep that a great CRO or VP of sales can hire. They have to be narrow. They have to be people that work on your wavelength, that talk the way you talk, that can do no look passes, that you …”

“I think that some level of repeatability needs to exist. And if you're doing Sales, and you're doing that founder led motion. You've understood what are the questions that you're asking these customers that will ultimately expose some pain or opportunity to th…”

“Founder selling works really effectively at the early stages. You start to run out of juice of that around fifteen million ARR, and then especially with great products, there's always pull from initial early adopters, and again, that runs out, and the key is t…”

“I think people try to leave the founder-led sales regime too early, and I think it's a big mistake.”

“I think if you exit founder led sales and vertical SAS before ten million, you fail.”

“Biggest fuck-ups would be, one is staying too close, right? I speak sometimes with founders who have, like, 10 sales reps reporting directly to them. That is, like, that makes no sense. Five sales reps reporting directly, makes no sense. It completely impedes”

“As a founder, it's going to be way easier for you to get good or like minimally viable good at selling by having like interactions with like non-friendly parties and like, you know, having commercial conversations and asking for money in exchange for their, in…”

“It's going to be like, you know, that you can reliably at like a, at a pretty okay win rate. So like maybe 15% or 20% or 25% turn first meetings into eventual customers, right? And like do that in a reliable fashion. It's not like, you know, I engage 10, Arm's…”

“The most important skill for a founder to have is learning to sell, because you're selling, first you're selling to your family that this thing is worth it. You're selling to co-founders, you're selling to customers, You're selling employees to join you for al…”

“From my experience of doing this, of just successful founders like yourself, they all figured out the sales process on their own, and they did not outsource it. They did not hire for it. They grew into it. You know, if you figure it out, you nail it, and then …”

“Founder-led sales isn't scalable. It's not repeatable”

“Initially, till that first, maybe even a million dollars, right? Like, it should all be done by the founders. And if the founders themselves don't have the skill set to do it, then either they should learn it, or they should bring another founder, co-founder o…”