1. [ ]FOUNDER LED SELLING
A design pattern for iterative startup GTM development & execution

2. Pete Kazanjy
Product Marketer / Product
Manager turned Sales Leader
Founder of TalentBin
• First “rep” (founder turned rep)
• First “sales manager”
• First “VP of Sales”
• 20 sales reps ; 20 CS reps
@kazanjy
(Find me on LinkedIn too.)
Acquired (‘14) by Monster
• New Product Sales Leader
• 600 sales reps
Author
Founde
r

3. Why the sales confusion, founders? https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Oh.
Experience with
selling limited to
caricatures of sales
from movie and TV.
That’s why.Personal
predilection away
from selling
behaviors.
Fond memories
of those dicks who
went into sales…

4. Founder Led Selling - Seductive, Yet Crappy, Antipatterns https://twitter.com/foundingsales
“We just publish
docs, and they
buy, right?”
“We don’t have
salespeople.”
These misconceptions can lead to believing seductive antipatterns.

5. Founder Led Selling - Seductive, Yet Crappy, Antipatterns https://twitter.com/foundingsales
“We don’t have sales people…” - BULLSHIT!

6. Founder Led Selling - Seductive, Yet Crappy, Antipatterns https://twitter.com/foundingsales
sales!
“Let’s just sprinkle some sales bro on it.”
(Dead VP sales in 12 months)
“Quick! Everyone sell to your batchmates!”
(Fake traction. Churn. DOA A Round)

7. Why the disconnect?
Founder Led Selling - Founders & Sellers
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

8. Founder Led Selling - Where do founders come from? https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Where do Founders
come from?
Engineering, product, business school.Background
Market / product opportunity. Discovering a
widespread problem. Fitting a technological
solution to it in a valuable way. Explaining how
that works to a third party (maybe). High
analysis (high paralysis?)
Skills / Attitude
Engaging non-friendly parties. Scalably
engaging prospects. Aggressively pushing
that forward. Parallel threading many
concurrent conversations.
Absent Skills

9. Founder Led Selling - Where do sellers come from? https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Where is selling typically
learned from?
Business / marketing / liberals arts
degree. “Apprenticeship learning.” SDR
> AE > Management > Leadership
Background
Persuasion. Multiplexing. High Activity.
Extraversion. Persistence. Persistence.
Persistence.
Skills / Attitude
Process engineering. Metrics / Excel /
Tableau. Product Marketing Messaging.
Absent Skills

10. Implications of this confusion
(and upside if you nail it!)
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

11. Founder Led Selling - Failure to launch https://twitter.com/foundingsales
“We don’t want to do sales! It’s gross!” Acquihire. Opportunity cost.

12. Founder Led Selling - Sloppy growth. https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Why are you guys so
f##king bush league?
Why 20 reps? You guys
got to get your heads
out of your asses and
start focusing on going
big here.
“
”
What if we just doubled
the plan?!“
”
“50% off sale” on
valuation. Screwed
common shareholder.
Fired founder. Fired
sales leader.

13. Founder Led Selling - Sloppy growth. https://twitter.com/foundingsales
(Former Zenefits sales ops.)
Why are you guys so f##king
bush league? Why 20 reps?
You guys got to get your heads
out of your asses and start
focusing on going big here.
“
”
What if we just doubled
the plan?!“
”

14. Founder Led Selling - Drop the hate. Sales has changed. https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Sales was about:
• “Good with people”
• “Always be closing”
• Charisma - Right-brain persuasion
• Proprietary information / relationships
• Selling to a “mark”
• Lone wolf / eat what you kill.
• Opinion
Sales is now about:
• Some of those previous things, and..
• Pain Discovery
• Business analysis
• Value argumentation - left-brain persuasion
• Targeted engagement with ideal customers
• Consultative value trade
• Systematized go to market / Collaboration
• Math

15. Despair not! There’s a better way!
Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

16. Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
After each step the organization is
better at converting customer value
into revenue.
And thus more valuable.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Business
Motion
Inflection
points.

17. Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Entry and exit
criteria for
incremental stages.
“Do we know
what problem
we’re
solving?”
“Does it actually work?”
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
“Yes!”
“Will someone pay?”
“Will many people pay?”

18. Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
“Do we know
what problem
we’re
solving?”
“Does it actually work?”
“Will many people pay?
“Can we build a mini sales team?”
“Can we max out a
small sales org?”
“Can non-founders
sell this?”
“Will someone pay?”

19. Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Later stages unlock even more
scalable, parallelizable activities
that create more and more value.
“Can we build a mini sales team?”
“Can non-founders
sell this?”

20. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Founder Led Selling Stages
Customer Development
“What are we solving? How?”
Existence Proof of Value Creation
“Does it actually work?”
Existence Proof of Value Exchange
“Will someone pay?”
Small Scale Repeated
Value Exchange
“Will many people pay?”
Beginning Value Exchange
Specialization & Abstraction
“Can non-founders sell this?”
Proof of Cohesive Unit of
Revenue Product
“Can we make a mini sales
team?”
Initial Revenue Team Maximization
“Can we max out an initial sales team?”
Revenue Team Abstraction & Scale Out
“Can we make a successful team of sales
teams?”
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

21. “What problem are we solving?”
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

22. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Engage potential customers
with hypothesized pain points.
Interview them about pain
points, current solution paths &
willingness to pay. Transcribe
& digest interviews, aggregate
potential feature set. Survey
interviewees for reactions to
proposed features. Build initial
feature set.
Who does them? Ideally both business & tech founders, together to drive better
problem / solution space intimacy. Later can split.
Key Activities:
Exit Criteria A statistically significant count of prospects with completed
interviews, a cohesive minimum viable feature list, and a built minimum viable
product.
Tools used Target users / buyers, ideally of differing personas (users, buyers,
managers, etc.). Customer development “deck.”
Anti-pattern Start building product and features without pain point and current
solutions understanding. “XYZ is broken” / “Build it and they will come” mentality.
GOAL
Discover and validate pain points in the market that can be solved with a unique application of
technology. Build that technology.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

23. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen Interviewing / Documenting
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Business Founder - “The Lone Ranger”
IC
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

24. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
CUSTOMER DEVELOPMENT
Other
resources:
Michael Sippey
First Round Review
“Get in the Van”
Eric Ries
Lean Startup
Steve Blank
Startup Owner’s Manual
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
“Customer Advisory Panels” Peter Kazanjy - First Round Review

25. “Does this shit work?”
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

26. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Elicitation of a dozen or so key
beta customer targets.
Onboarding and
implementation of a handful of
customers (likely from
customer development group) .
Instrumentation of their use
and value outputs.
Presentation of that to
customers for validation.
Tools used A group of beta customers (perhaps selected from your customer
development group. Early messages / sales deck to engender buy in.
Implementation checklist. Value instrumentation capacity.
Key Activities:
GOAL Prove your solution improves the KPIs you set out to improve.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Who does them? Founder (business).
Exit Criteria Demonstrable proof your solution positively impacts the KPIs it was
designed to improve. This proof can now be used to demand money in exchange
for your solution.
Anti-pattern Hiring a “sales guy” to figure it out. Throwing the product “over the
wall” to someone who was not involved in customer development to execute this.
“Sprinkle some sales on it.”

27. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Still...Business Founder - “The Lone Ranger”
IC
Lead Gen Selling Success
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

28. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE CREATION
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Founding Sales
Sales
Narratives1
Founding Sales
Ideal Customer
Profile2
Founding Sales
Sales
Decks3
The Zuora
narrative deck4
Founding Sales
Deck on Sales
Decks5
Founding Sales
Customer
Success6

29. “Will someone pay?”
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

30. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Presentation of an ROI case to
the potential customers, their
agreement that this is likely to
be attained, the project
management of that agreement
through the entire process of
procurement, followed by
successful implementation.
Tools used Pricing with ROI rationale. Sales narrative messaging, early sales
deck articulating sales narrative, demo , implementation process.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Customer(s) gives you money in exchange for the value the solution provides (namely, in terms of
the KPI improvements that were sought).
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Who does it? Founder (business) doing appointment setting, selling, and onboarding.
Exit Criteria A customer (or set of customers) paying money in exchange for
the value your solution provides, and after being implemented and using the
solution, continues to believe that the solution provides the promised value
(which value provision is demonstrable through KPI improvement.)
Anti-pattern Primary anti-pattern is not charging for the solution, thus not
proving the actual value exchange. Secondary antipattern is selling the
solution, but not investing sufficiently to prove that the customer attains the
promised value (that is, you got money, but they did not get value.)

31. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Still...Business Founder - “The Lone Ranger”
IC
Lead Gen Selling Success
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

32. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
EXISTENCE PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Founding Sales
Pricing
1
Demo
scripts2
Founding Sales
Pitching
& Closing3
Customer
Success4
Sequoia Capital
Sales Ready
Product5
Founding Sales Peter Kazanjy
Customer Advisory
Boards6
Peter Kazanjy

33. “Will many people pay for this?”
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

34. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen Selling Success
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE (cont.)
Sales Development Rep Business Founder
IC
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

35. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen Selling Success
An alternative pattern can be the business founder continuing to do the appointment setting and selling,
but then adding leverage with a CS rep who can take some of the labor of CS of the founder’s plate.
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE (cont.)
CS RepBusiness Founder
IC
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

36. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE
Engagement of a number (30-
50+) non-beta prospects who
are then run through the sales
process, and a proportion of
whom (10-20) turn into paying
customers, who are onboarded
and get to value.
Tools used Ideal customer profile prospect lists - companies and target contacts.
Messaging. Qualification criteria. Email outreach materials and messaging. Sales
presentation (deck) and demo script. Pricing (that likely increases over time).
Onboarding checklists. Beginning CRM for keeping track of sales activities.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Refine & document the “sales motion” - the process of prospect identification, engagement,
presentation, closing, & onboarding. Discover failure modes and areas of resonance. “Product
manage” and package the sales motion so someone else can do it.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Who does it? Founder (business) does selling and customer success. Can be
accelerated through the addition of a “sales development rep” junior sales
helper who takes over engaging inbound leads, and engaging in a proactive
fashion with target prospects, setting selling appointments for business
founders. This can give business founder more selling repetitions in a given
time frame with which to refine the sales motion.

37. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE
Engagement of a number (30-
50+) non-beta prospects who
are then run through the sales
process, and a proportion of
whom (10-20) turn into paying
customers, who are onboarded
and get to value.
Exit Criteria One to two dozen customers, and a clear, repeatable, documented
sales motion ready to be tested on a new, non-founder, seller. Unit sales KPIs like
win rate and attainment per time period look healthy.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Refine & document the “sales motion” - the process of prospect identification, engagement,
presentation, closing, & onboarding. Discover failure modes and areas of resonance. “Product
manage” and package the sales motion so someone else can do it.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Anti-pattern Again the anti-pattern here would be trying to get someone else to
do this for you. Hiring a “sales guy” or even worse, a VPS to prove out that this
is repeatable a handful of times. Another is acquiring a bunch of customers,
only a fraction of which get to success. Spraying and praying.

38. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
SMALL SCALE, REPEATABLE VALUE EXCHANGE (cont.)
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Founding Sales
Prospecting
1
Founding Sales
Email materials
2
Founding Sales
Outreach and
Appointment Setting3
Founding Sales
Pipeline
Management4

39. “Can non-founders sell this?”
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

40. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen Selling Success
Account Executive
Account Executive
Sales Development
Representative
Business Founder | Evangelical Sales Manager
IC
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

41. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
The hiring, training, and
management to success of
one or more “sellers.”
Continued selling activity by
founder, but with more time
focused on proving someone
else can also sell in a
repeatable fashion. Training,
management, coaching,
inspection, correction, and
tooling are the focuses.
Tools used All tooling from above, but now an ideal hiring profile, hiring process,
and onboarding process. More mature CRM for orchestration of sales efforts and
collaboration. Documented stepwise sales motion. Management and inspection
harness - one-on-ones, team meetings, metrics review, etc.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove the sales motion refined & cemented previously can be learned and executed by someone
other than the founder. Prove beginnings of “scale out.”
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Who does them? The founder now in role of a beginning player-coach sales
manager. Hire one or two AEs, founder onboards them, and manages them, as
the person who was closest to selling before. The SDR continues to handle
inbound and outbound prospecting (though he may be being groomed for selling).

42. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
The hiring, training, and
management to success of
one or more “sellers.”
Continued selling activity by
founder, but with more time
focused on proving someone
else can also sell in a
repeatable fashion. Training,
management, coaching,
inspection, correction, and
tooling are the focuses.
Exit Criteria One or more “sellers” are engaging, presenting to, and closing ideal
customer profile customers, who are then getting to success. They are selling at
least as efficiently as the founder was previously and are successful “revenue units.”
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove the sales motion refined & cemented previously can be learned and executed by someone
other than the founder. Prove beginnings of “scale out.”
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Anti-pattern This is a “goldilocks” scenario. You want to do it “just right.” The first
anti-pattern is too much “leverage” by hiring too many, too fast. Hiring too many
raises burn rates without proof of success and too many reps makes it difficult for
the manager-founder to get each to critical mass. Instead, you “boil the ocean”
and get none of them to success. The second anti-pattern is non-leverage.
Instead of focusing on proving AE1 and AE2 can get to success, founder spends
too much time still “playing” instead of “coaching.” Doing so robs the future of the
company by slowing the process of “packaging” and “distribution” of the sales
motion into something that can be dropped into 5, 10, n reps in the future.

43. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF VALUE EXCHANGE ABSTRACTION & SPECIALIZATION
(cont.)
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Sales
Hiring1
Sales
Onboarding2
Sales Meetings
and Management3
Founding Sales Founding SalesFounding Sales

44. “Can we make a mini sales team?”
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION & RETENTION
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

45. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen Selling Success
Business Founder | Evangelical Sales Manager
Account Executive
Account Executive
Sales Development
Representative
Customer Success
Manager
Unit of Revenue Production “Revenue mitochondria”
IC
MGT.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

46. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION &
RETENTION
Continued orchestration
refinement and management.
Continued sales tooling
creation. Hiring of a dedicated
customer success staffer.
Founder is spending nearly all
time hiring, onboarding,
training, and managing.
Tools used All previous, plus refined managerial playbook. A set of meetings for
operational cadence. Sales process, handoffs, and CRM.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove successful performance of a “complete unit” of revenue production, including lead gen, selling
& closing, & onboarding.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Who does them? Founder is now out of day to day selling. A single unit of
“revenue production” - whatever that is for your organization. A common example
is one SDR, two AEs, a one CSM. This is where you might hire a sales manager /
leader, as the next step is to clone this unit a handful of times.

47. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION &
RETENTION
Continued orchestration
refinement and management.
Continued sales tooling
creation. Hiring of a dedicated
customer success staffer.
Founder is spending nearly all
time hiring, onboarding,
training, and managing.
Exit Criteria The unit is producing revenue at a predictable rate, all members are
hitting their goal KPIs, with smooth handoffs & proper backchecks to prevent
dropped balls. You are confident you can now clone this.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Prove successful performance of a “complete unit” of revenue production & retention, including lead
gen, selling & closing, & onboarding.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Anti-pattern In that this pattern is more flexible, it’s harder to concretely
define an anti pattern. Probably the worst would be scale out of one function,
out of line with the others. That is, five AEs, but only one SDR, and one
CSM. Or no CSMs. Balance is the key.

48. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF COHESIVE UNIT OF REVENUE PRODUCTION (cont.)
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Beginning Sales
Management1
Founding Sales

49. Founder Led Selling - Enterprise Value Creation in Startups
Enterprise Value Creation in B2B Startups
enterprise value
time
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Later stages unlock even more
scalable, parallelizable activities
that create more and more value.
“Can we build a mini sales team?”
“Can non-founders
sell this?”

50. Pete Kazanjy
Product Marketer / Product
Manager turned Sales Leader
@kazanjy
(Find me on LinkedIn too.)
petekazanjy@stanfordalumni.org
Killer rep performance
analytics @ atriumhq.com
“B2B sales for dummies”
for founders (other first
time sellers).
Amazing sales operations
/ sales leadership peer
education community.

51. “Can we max out an initial sales team?”
INITIAL REVENUE TEAM MAXIMIZATION
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

52. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
Lead Gen Selling Success
Sales Operations
SDR AE AE CSM
Biz Founder / Early VP Sales
SDR AE AE CSM
SDR AE AE CSM
IC
MGT.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

53. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
INITIAL REVENUE TEAM MAXIMIZATION
Same as previous step, but
with more managerial
complexity.
Tools used Same as before, but with more focus on orchestration and managerial
tooling & process. Particularly investment in analytics.
Key Activities:
GOAL
Demonstration of the successful performance of full team of teams. Full complement of AE team,
SDR team, CS team, working under one manager.
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Who does them? If you haven’t yet hired a sales manager, this is where you
might. Alternatively, you might wait until you understand the playbook, and
then bring in someone.
Exit Criteria The complete unit is producing revenue at a predictable rate, all
members are hitting their goal KPIs, and you are confident you can now hand
a unit like this to a manager to manage, and start to clone this unit.
Anti-pattern Unclear. Potentially handing the beginnings of this unit off to a
manager before fully baking it yourself. Or by racing through this stage to the
next one before proving that this stage was successfully achieved.

54. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
INITIAL REVENUE TEAM MAXIMIZATION (cont.)
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
SaaS Sales
Staffing Model1
Scaled sales
onboarding2
Matrix Partners VCFounding Sales
Predictable
Revenue3
Aaron Ross & Marylou
Tyler

55. “Can we make a successful team
of sales teams?”
PROOF OF REVENUE TEAM ABSTRACTION
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

56. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
AE AE AE
AE AE AE
AE AE AE
AE AE AE
SDR SDR
SDR SDR
SDR SDR
CSM CSM
CSM CSM
CSM CSM
SDR Manager 2x AE Managers CSM Manager
VP Sales & Success Sales Operations
Lead Gen Selling Success
IC
MGT.
Leadership
https://twitter.com/foundingsales

57. Founder Led Selling - Stages, Goals, Exit Criteria
PROOF OF REVENUE TEAM ABSTRACTION (cont.)
Other
resources:
https://twitter.com/foundingsales
Sales
Hiring1
Sales
Onboarding2
Sales scaling
model3
Founding Sales Founding SalesFounding Sales