Business leaders are wondering what 2023 will bring. The war in Ukraine, the lingering effects of the global pandemic, layoffs at major tech companies, inflation, rising interest rates, artificial intelligence, the collapse of cryptocurrency, the worry around a recession, and a host of other issues can impact your startup. Enough to give an ulcer to the tech founder with even … Read More
When you are on a journey, it’s always helpful to have a map. It’s no different for B2B tech startups. Through our experience, research, and interviews with leaders in the startup space, we have developed an easy way to understand the growth cycle of startups. There are three distinct phases for B2B tech startups, with each phase requiring a specific … Read More
Even experienced leaders can get their first sales hire wrong in a B2B tech startup. “Eric”, who had been in the tech world for more than 20 years, was brought into a new California Bay Area-based startup by its founders to be CEO. At the time they had nearly zero revenue. So, he knew his job was to start landing … Read More
You did it. You hired your first salesperson. Whether to get yourself out of the frontline of Sales or, maybe, to get the business more proactive in its go to market, you’ve done it. Now you can focus on other things. Maybe, more fulfilling things. Sure, you’ll still have to ride shotgun on some sales calls but the future is … Read More
Quick. Think of a salesperson. What comes to mind? How do you feel about that person? If you are like most of us, we’re suspicious of salespeople. They are the ones that try to get us to buy a car we can’t afford, pitch ethically questionable extended warranties, and seem to hover over us in certain stores. Throw in the … Read More
Scaling Sales at a startup is a three step process: Prove product/market fit by achieving founder-led sales and proving that someone will pay, Hire a Pathfinder salesperson whose role is to develop a predictable, repeatable, scalable, profitable Sales process (a.k.a. a Playbook), Build out the Sales organisation to implement the Playbook at scale. Note: your Sales leader for this stage … Read More
You’ve successfully built and launched your product and made some initial sales. You’re probably like most Founders and looking forward to getting out of the Sales front line and wondering when you should hire your first Sales rep. If that’s you, then you’ve already passed two of the three major milestones to hiring your first Sales rep: Established product/market fit … Read More
Regular readers will recall that our product development was outsourced to a Ukrainian firm called Go Wombat. We started the design phase of the project in December 2021 and moved into the development phase at the beginning of February. The goal was to complete the project by end of March, 2022. Then the invasion of Ukraine happened (something we’ve covered … Read More
My thanks to ex-colleague Greg Head for highlighting the often missing simple startup math in startup investor pre-pitches. He’s highlighting companies that are (generally) pre-revenue but who are articulating making it big without a supporting plan. On the valuation curve, he’s talking about businesses effectively at time zero and asking the questions: How are you going to get your first … Read More
Welcome to part 5 of The Right Five journey, from concept to product. In an attempt to provide continuity between these posts I re-read the last one and noticed the comment, “in a world of [almost] unprecedented uncertainty”. That just got ratcheted up! Indeed, regular readers will know we outsourced the development of our product to a software development firm … Read More
