Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by neilv | Hacker News Reader

I would've liked to hand articles like this to someone, when I was making related arguments about not pretending to be a big company.

One seed startup (where I had our prestigious flagship enterprise customer running with thus-far-perfect uptime in critical production, but we needed a second customer before we could raise), and which was down to a few people, I tried to convince a biz person to let me pitch in on sales.

(Seeing as how, although I dislike doing sales, it was what most needed help right then, or there wouldn't be a business, and I could also use product insight into what actually resonates with customers. And I've done a bit of sales before, and my dad was an engineer-by-training salesperson (osmosis!). My mindset is I don't try to pretend I'm not a nerd. I instead convey that I'm genuinely aligned with their success, I'll listen and understand, and I'll deliver successful solutions like competitors can't.)

Nope, we need a glossy Web site including video. Biz person needs to reformat our security assurances document into a brochure before it can be handed over to prospect's IT for vetting. And biz person needs to introduce me on a customer call as "one of our software engineers" (when I was the only one, working the usual technical cofounder miracles). :)

Like all startups, there were many mistakes, but I think one of the mistakes that time was thinking we had to fake it till we make it, when that undermined our strengths. (Well, slick artifice fit some of our sales prospects, but we didn't land those anyway.)

In hindsight, I think we should've focused on presenting ourselves as an exceptionally skilled and credible team that is 100%+ committed to the pilot project being a success for that particular customer (and for our champions there).

Competitors' salespeople couldn't deliver that, nor fake it very credibly, and there wasn't yet an obvious enterprise CYA alternative (nobody ever got fired for buying IBM).

I'm experience, that doesn't work if you main clients are big corporations. The average corporate drone mistrusts and disregards small companies. Not out of arrogance, I believe, but out of fear: a generalized version of the old "no one was fired for buying IBM" trope. Small companies are seen as higher risk.

Yes, I agree. I was honest with a large customer about how small we were and although _he_ was willing to take a chance on us, he said we absolutely needed look bigger to gain other customers.

> The average corporate drone mistrusts and disregards small companies.

"Garageware" is what we called that type of software. Because it truly was, often built using old protocols, outmoded security mindset, etc.

It did the job our staff required (and may have been the only piece of software to do so) but it wasn't our favorite to deal with from a technology perspective.

I mean, small companies are higher risk. When you're small, is it better to find customers who are explicitly accepting the real degree of risk, or customers who are underestimating it because of how you presented yourselves to them?

Agreed, but being a small company can still work for some big-company customers, depending on how you approach it, and mostly how lucky you are.

Our super-lucky big first customer, it probably helped that we spun out of an established small engineering firm that did notable R&D work for huge companies, and also that we partnered with a huge hardware tech company, who had an evangelist who put in a good word for us at times.

And after a successful launch for a prestigious big company, we could point to that, to increase our credibility with other big companies (especially those in the same and similar markets).

For some co-design work leading to pilot we landed (intending to lead to a pilot), we worked together with their in-house product design team, on big brand-involved technology changes to their non-computers-tech advanced products, and also planned out the manufacturing and distribution logistics integration. (I think this one probably would've gotten to a pilot, after some delays, but we'd stretched our runway until it snapped, and there were various reasons we didn't get a bridge and didn't raise.)

For some prospects, we got access to CEOs or other execs, and the message came downwards to work with us. (Which seemed to nevertheless often have people below thinking in the usual CYA ways. But our foot was in the door, and our size had at least a provisional OK. Though some of those devolved into too many stakeholders being roped into meetings, which meant more use cases to be satisfied, including by people who were half-hearted about it, and this probably wasn't on their KPIs.)

Other prospects included smaller companies in some categories (e.g., a founder grew a sustainable business designing and making a high-quality physical luxury product). I think those were probably fine with us being small, and that they liked the direct access and our willingness to work with them and adapt to what they needed. The challenge there might've been finding PMF with a customer who understood every aspect of their company, who feels every dollar, and who didn't get where they are by introducing costs and complexity they weren't sure they had to. (By contrast with large companies as customers, anyone who's had to use some of the products of enterprise SaaS purchases knows that large companies aren't always that discerning in what they spend money on or what complexity they introduce.)

Bigger companies were also easier for one of our sales tactics, because their products had the popularity and volume to show up significantly in some bespoke data acquisition stuff from osint that we developed, which we used to prepare reports for cold call prospects that showed a money-losing problem they had, which maybe they didn't know about.

In many markets, there are different kinds of customers. If you're the innovative upstart, you perhaps attract more innovative and open-minded customers as well. From there, when you've delivered value, it's then quite a lot easier to work with the more conservative ones.

What are the incentives for sales for allowing you to do that? What incentives do people in agile or product development or management have to let developers partake? There's nothing to gain and everything to lose. See, I would love to live in Disneyworld too.

The only lesson to be learned from all of this is when you build your next company, don't allow these people in. I'll keep beating that drum to eternity, because I saw first-hand how the work of tech people is leeched off by so many.

In an early startup, there shouldn't be fiefdoms nor (intra-company) empire building.

Everyone should be focused on the shared goal of the startup being successful.

What you're working on is triaged constantly, with everyone contributing what they can, learning as necessary.

Everybody wins, or everybody loses. And if you don't work together as a team, it's probably the latter.

(These are not just empty platitudes. For example, when I say everybody wins, that means I expect everyone to have meaningful equity shares -- not a successful exit makes the founders filthy rich, while everyone else gets a small consolation prize for contributing.)

Behind the anecdote, there were unusual and complicated reasons that someone felt and did some things as they did. I tried to carve out a standalone piece for HN, without getting into the more sensitive and irrelevant stuff.

Anecdotally this rings true. I'm currently watching a CEO destroy their startup by trying to build an empire in a team of 15, while everyone else just wants to make the company work together. No investor ever speaks to staff, nobody but CEO is ever allowed to pitch, or even be present at a pitch. All cofounders and most staff have quit because it's so ridiculous to try and rule over such a small team

Understanding this isn't necessarily my audience, I am not a startup, instead a freelance consultant. I could call it a startup, but that would be stretch, and I am not interested in VC funding.

If you don't value your developers perspective in the sales cycle, you are fundamentally doing something wrong. Developer's don't necessarily hold more product knowledge than anyone else, but they sure as shit can tell you how your company can make an extra 100k on a sale by just adding 10 more lines of code.

Sales are incentivized to sell, developers are incentivized to provide impact. Include them.

I honestly can't answer your questions.

I can say, from experience:

1. Everything gets better the more technical people are involved with customers. Sales, biz dev, tech supp, trade shows, etc. Probably not as the point person, probably not solo, but mosdef involved. And not every tech has the aptitude, or desire, to be customer facing. YMMV. Still, conversations are shorter, more productive. Customers respond very well. It's been a huge win-win, every time.

2. It's always been hard to convince (commission driven) sales people to loop in techs. It's two separate cultures. eg Upon success, sales person gets a new Porsche and the tech gets more work. Which causes resentment. I don't begrudge high rewards for sales (it's a tough gig). But some perks for the grunts would be nice too. Just saying.

When you've been saving the entire company on the reg and get a 1k Christmas bonus and the sales guy gets your entire salary as a bonus, yeah, it causes some fucking resentment!

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