Hariharan: Founders should only hire sales reps after demos become boringly predictable
Anu Hariharan · 5 Critical & Company-Altering Learnings from B2B Startups | Y Combinator MD Anu Hariharan · Sep 29, 2022 · at 18:15
This episode carries Anu Hariharan's own address, with nobody on the show putting questions to them. It still counts as said, and it is kept out of every score on their page.
Anu Hariharan, Managing Director at Y Combinator, advises early-stage B2B startup founders on why delegating early sales prematurely leads to failure.
0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.5s
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“You hire a salesperson when your sales call and demo calls become extremely boring and repetitive because that's when you've figured out what your go to market motion is.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
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Hariharan: Slow growth after hiring sales leadership usually stems from product deficiencies
“The most common mistake is you hired a VP of sales, they've cranked up your team, you have all these sales accountants, but your growth is slow. And the root cause of that is not that the sales motion isn't working, your product is not appealing enough.”
Hariharan: Startups with $5M-$10M in ARR should be default alive
“I usually say if you have hit five to ten million ARR, you cannot get killed. You should be default alive.”
Hariharan: Fast hiring before PMF creates resistance to product changes
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Hariharan: Startups lack PMF if under 40% of users would be very disappointed
“And if at least 40% of your customers don't say very disappointed, you probably don't have a good enough product. It's just moderately appealing. So we say a rule of thumb is at least 40% of your customers will be very disappointed if your product goes away.”