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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

It’s always product market fit. If the product is right it will find users.

Nah, that's not the right answer. It puts focus on the product rather than the founders. You do NOT need PMF to get 1-5 sales. If you can't even get there, it's bigger problems. PMF is needed to turn 2k MRR into 50k MRR.

In my case, it heavily stemmed from our inability to do sales (at all). We had feedback early about how this was an $XXXXX product (and we were in sales process for that) and it put blinders on us. We should've been okay with $XXX and grabbed 5-10 customers early.

Why we couldn't do sales is something I'm not going to put on the internet because it affects people other than me. (I have no issue talking about my shortcomings.)

I left that company and started another with a proven sales/marketing type within 2 months. The story is much different than my first. It's because he can sell.

Funny enough, I have a license to use my old product w/o selling it, so we do. We've gotten at least 10 customers asking to buy it. And they're fairly emphatic about it.

>> Why we couldn't do sales is something I'm not going to put on the internet because it affects people other than me.

I can appreciate that but I am wondering if you can share what you think are core skills, habits, or personality traits that are critical in order to make sales happen for a new business/product.

Sure, I can do that. This isn't an exhaustive list, of course:

  * Don't be afraid to ask for the sale
  * Be comfortable "closed lost"-ing a deal instead of having non-productive conversations (SOGOTP)
  * Recap all meetings with prospects or customers (email sent to them with information such as about your product, your call with them, their painpoints, next steps, etc.)
  * Leave meetings with a tangible next step. Someone not wanting to schedule another meeting is a huge red flag
  * You don't need a sales process or methodology, but you might if you're not able to effectively manage your deals.
  * Be comfortable living in the present and future, as you want early prospects to help shape the future with you.

> Nah, that's not the right answer. It puts focus on the product rather than the founders. You do NOT need PMF to get 1-5 sales. If you can't even get there, it's bigger problems. PMF is needed to turn 2k MRR into 50k MRR.

It really depends on the product/market. I've worked in a startup with a competent founder who was great at sales, and which nevertheless, after 2 years, went bankrupt without making a single sale. Our product was targeting enterprises in a specific niche - there were perhaps 10-20 or so potential customers worldwide. Making even a single sale would've been huge.

Yeah, there's no amount of dedication that will make the business fly if you stubbornly want to do “your thing”. You have to do what the market can find and is willing to pay for. Many of such businesses can be discovered without starting full-time.

It seems as though a lot of startup founders and product managers succumb to this illness. I've worked for a number of startups that have always had a number of people who were building things for nobody but themselves. These features, and in one case - product, were not anything any customers were willing to pay for. Instead a lot of these founders think it's their sellers and double down on ineffective solutions like thinking something such as MEDDPICC will solve the "sales" issue, except what they should be doing is having honest conversations with prospects and customers.

Founders should be doing sales (not leading it, doing it) until at least 1M ARR. That solves a lot of that issue.

Maybe it's a difference between bootstrapped mindset and VC-fueled one.

I would argue there's a soft spot at around $10M ARR where founders turned full time CXO lose focus and touch with their product. They turn it over to folks who don't seem to carry the customer focus but instead have a focus on building their version. It doesn't seem to play out well and I'm curious why this seems to keep happening.

I agree with this, although the timeline differs a bit between companies. I was at Salesloft from 1M ARR -> 100M ARR, so I saw this roughly play out. However, I will say that the founders did an exceptional job staying close to the product well after 10M ARR.

I think a lot of it is due to the VC playbook. The question of "who am I building my business for?" looks a lot different between VC and bootstrap. Once you start getting into heavy hitter revenue (grain of salt, I've never done this as a founder), the machine starts working largely on its own. It's probably more impactful to spend time on the business systems instead of the product.

But bootstrapped founders seem more likely to stay close to the product for longer. Eventually they may want some sort of out, and you see the playbook execute much much quicker.

Now, I have other theories on why it doesn't play out well. Going from 10M -> 50M ARR is a huge hurdle. You have to really level up a lot of the business itself to do so. It might be that it's just not possible for a lot of companies to bridge the gap. I think it's easier to go 50M -> 100M than 10M -> 50M.

> Maybe it's a difference between bootstrapped mindset and VC-fueled one.

The bootstrap mindset understands that "idea man" isn't an actual job.

PMF is not only about the product being right for the users but also reaching the users who are interested.

Marketing / Sales can be a blocker too.

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