Lecture
Sales pre-PMF should be done by the founders.
- Early-stage B2B startup founders are the only individuals capable of successfully selling their products prior to achieving product-market fit (PMF).
- Founders who cannot sell their own products at the outset face high risks of being unable to hire external sales talent to do so later.
- Sales efforts conducted before PMF are fundamentally entrepreneurial, requiring vision, customer credibility, and extensive experimentation.
- Pre-PMF sales demand a tight feedback loop between sales activities and the product development team, a dynamic external hires typically cannot replicate at this stage.
- This sales model is distinct from post-PMF sales and differs from other early-stage roles (such as designers, lawyers, or accountants) where external hiring is standard practice.
- The speaker implies that waiting to hire a dedicated salesperson is a suboptimal strategy for early-stage B2B product validation.