My first year in sales as technical founder
fabiandietrich.com70 points by f3b5 5 days ago
70 points by f3b5 5 days ago
> Why do I even need to do sales?
> When looking specifically at bootstrapped (self-funded) SaaS startups, this is a valid question. There are many profitable startups in the low-end B2B space ($10-$50/mo) that exclusively rely on marketing. These are the perfect lifestyle businesses that the indiehacking community is dreaming of. But they’re very hard to pull off, and leave a lot of money on the table.
Fellow technical co-founder-turned-salesperson. I'd like to add something here.
In previous businesses I relied on marketing, SEO etc.I thought "they're the gift that keep on giving" whereas sales is effort in value out. Not only is that wrong, but SEO / ads take time. For an early-stage company / product where iteration is key, sales is the fastest way to get signal.
Imagine using web conversions as the driver for iteration. It takes at least a week to kick off some campaign, months to build up, and months to have interpretable data. Plus no one's going to just tell you "no"! With sales, you can send 100 emails and in one night get some real signal. You might even get an inkling of "that's not going to work" or "ok I'm interested". In a compounding feedback loop, that is often the difference between a company that pops off and one that fizzles
As a co-founder (tech background but haven't coded in a while), I got comfortable with sales best when I hired a sales coach. There are so many things to learn in sales and a coach is often the fastest way to assess your inherent weaknesses and address them head on.
I paid $2k/mth about 10 yrs ago; at the time I felt scared to spend so much but once I realized it was an investment in me, and I put in the time to learn, I can safely say it continues to pay off even now. I quite enjoy sales now. Not saying I'm good at it but certainly a far way from "I hate sales and would much rather code".
Do you think that sales is among the many realms where freely available quality instructional material has become ubiquitous in the past decade? Not that it would ever work as a full stand-in for a paid coach, but it might be enough to bridge the gap for some of us.
Yes I think possible. 1. sales aptitude assessment tools like Objective Management Group (the one I took) help you identify core weaknesses that are critical to understand and work on. 2. Recording your sales calls (assuming you're on the phone) and then asking AI to critique it and coach you, with the above assessment as context, could be very helpful.
If you're disciplined I think the above approach may be a pretty good stand-in for a real coach. Or at least help you evaluate a coach better should you choose to pony up for one later.
Its like acting. Some people can do it without acting coaches. But it’s best if you invest in them.
What’s your actual message while reaching out on LinkedIn? Do you send a note while sending a connect request?
This was super useful. As a technical person willing to learn sales, the numbers that you showed at the different stages of the funnel shows that is all a numbers game and rejection is the norm. From 487 connections to 2 paid clients. Great post!
There’s an abundance of public data on people’s interests (their comments and reactions to posts), which we evaluate with our in-house AI agent to build high-intent contact lists.
That's fishy and depending on the jurisdiction it could also be illegal. I wouldn't want to receive a personalized e-mail from someone who scraped my public comments on some platform. It would seem too fucking intrusive.
Back in the days, I did the first 2m in ARR at Stream myself, it was kinda hard :)
Nice to have a team in place these days, but I still show up for the largest deals to support the team as needed. (140 person company, i think this always stays part of the founder tasks)
Like poker, math only takes you so far in sales. You have to learn people if you want to succeed at selling. In fact, math is all but irrelevant for most person to person sales. Buying decisions are mostly emotional. Learning people is a skill that will translate to every other aspect of your life.
this is a bad analogy. at the highest level, poker is entirely math. the player with a better understanding of GTO will demolish someone who tries to "learn people"
playing "GTO" doesn't mean you will destroy people, this is a common misunderstanding of the term. It means that you are playing in a way that cannot be exploited - this does not mean you're also playing in the way that will win you the most money.
Also, there is no "better understanding" of GTO because poker is an unsolved game, and the assumptions you feed into a GTO playstyle can change quickly or be wrong. The thought you can sit there like an automaton with a set strategy and win is false.
been playing off and on professionally for 20 years
> The thought you can sit there like an automaton with a set strategy and win is false.
This is provably false.
You're absolutely right that GTO does not guarantee you'll win the maximum against a fish, but neither does exploitative play. In fact, exploitative play can't guarantee you anything, which is probably why old-school pro players are perennially going broke throughout their careers (that and bad bankroll management).
IMO, currently, over 90% of pro poker players (especially live and in the US) fundamentally do not understand how poker should be played (which is why they get so easily destroyed by the new generation in online heads up).
> This is provably false.
Where is the proof?
> You're absolutely right that GTO does not guarantee you'll win the maximum against a fish, but neither does exploitative play. In fact, exploitative play can't guarantee you anything, which is probably why old-school pro players are perennially going broke throughout their careers (that and bad bankroll management).
I'm not arguing in favor of one or the other, I am just correcting the misunderstanding. In reality, you should adapt to the conditions at the table and your opponents habits, because "GTO" is only possible against perfect play to begin with, so you're always going to be playing slightly imperfectly. so is everyone, because you cannot know everything. And again, it's almost never the way to win the most money. It's a distinction not a lot of GTO nerds understand. I'm not arguing against it at all - I use GTO solvers to work on stuff a lot.
And I also never claimed exploitative strategies guarantee everything, for the same reason "GTO" doesn't either. It's a game of incomplete information. The skill comes in using incomplete information in making good assumptions - that is almost nothing to do with math. And, there are pros that have been winning for long amounts of time knowing zero about GTO theory.
I suppose I should take your username into account and take you at your word, but wouldn't a player that entirely plays mathematically be easily exploited?
I assumed table talk was at least 10% of poker. Mind games, conditioning your opponent and making reads are present in most sports.
If you play game theory optimal (GTO) then you by definition can not be exploited. For poker a GTO strategy is extremely complex where each decision you make depends on the exact situation and includes varying your decisions over time. Like bluff raising 60% of the time and folding 40% of the time you’re in some very specific situation. It’s basically putting your opponent into a situation that they can’t make a profitable decision in the long term.
It’s not really practically possible to do. But if two people did they would have 0 expected value over time against each other. If one player slightly differed from game theory optimal strategy that would give the other one positive expected value. There is no way they can change from GTO strategy to exploit you.
However, this isn’t necessarily the most profitable way to play against real people. When your opponents aren’t playing GTO, there will be some non-GTO strategy that exploits them most effectively. Like if they call too much then you should raise for value more often than against a GTO opponent and bluff less.
There's a world of a difference between "at the highest level" and your typical casino poker game. (GPs general point still stands.)
This is exactly wrong. At the highest levels you play your opponent, not only GTO. No one can play pure GTO and you exploit how your opponent moves off GTO.
Maybe if you have a lot of hands and so are confident they're deviating in some hand, otherwise you risk getting exploited yourself.
The players who study GTO instead of trying to win these meta mind games have proven to do very well in online heads up while the old-school mind games guys keep going boom and bust.
Other than the basics, math is not going to help you win at poker over reading people. The shoot is shuffled after each round, you can’t card count your way to victory. Hand win probabilities are basic math that most poker player just learn instinctively because it’s not that complicated.
Your knowledge of the application of math to poker is very outdated, look up "GTO poker" on YouTube.
"1) it is highly scalable and you can easily send out thousands of emails per day, 2) it’s a fairly “democratic” form of outreach where you can achieve great outcomes with good offers sent to the right people, and 3) there’s no platform risk."
From a European citizen point of view, this framing ignores a very real constraint: GDPR.
In the EU, sending marketing emails is not just a growth tactic, it is regulated personal data processing. In most cases, you need prior, explicit consent before sending promotional emails. “We found your email online” or “legitimate interest” is usually not enough for cold outreach aimed at sales.
The risks are not theoretical:
Administrative fines that can reach up to 20M EUR or 4 percent of global annual turnover.
Orders to stop processing, which can immediately kill an outbound pipeline.
Domain and IP blacklisting by European ISPs and email providers.
Blocking or delisting of websites and services in the EU market after regulator or court decisions.
Complaints to Data Protection Authorities by a single recipient are enough to trigger investigations.
So there is very much platform and regulatory risk, at least if you want access to the European market. Email is scalable, yes, but in Europe it scales legal exposure just as fast if consent, proof of consent, opt-out mechanisms, and transparency obligations are not handled correctly.
This is why many EU companies invest heavily in permission based lists, double opt-in, and strict compliance processes. Growth without compliance is not “no risk”, it is deferred risk.
I hate to be an asshole. But is a person who converted 2/487 attempts someone to follow, someone to immitate? It's a numbers game.
A more constructive way to phrase your comment might be: “Is 2/487 conversions a good conversion rate? It seems like a low one to me.”
is sales really that hard for people?
you just talk to people and convince them lol its not that hard. i didn't know i was good at sales turns out i just have to be me and people like what i gotta say
It’s impossible if you’re scared of rejection, which an overwhelming amount of people are
I always thought selling a good product is easy.
Creating a good product that is hard.
And selling a bad product is hard so the people with this skill makes a lot of money.
Creating a good product requires lots of interaction with your target customers. You can call the "sales" in the beginning, but it's really understanding how to tweak your product from an idea to solve a problem into something that fits into the customer's workflows and solves their problems. The only way to really validate the product is to see who pays money for it.