Archive
Articles & Insights
30 posts
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Small Business and Mid-Market is NOT Easier Than Enterprise It's a widely held misconception that targeting small and mid-market sectors is inherently 'easier' than engaging with enterprise clients. This overlooks the grave importance of the fact that they… Read →
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Founder-led Sales with Bryce Roberts Watch →
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11 Surprising Truths About Early-Stage Startup Sales Rushing too quickly to validate in the market can often be an ill-fated activity. Hint: It suggests you're likely falling victim to bias rather than learning (i.e., testing obvious points/truisms).… Read →
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Eight We launched JJELLYFISH eight years ago. Many have asked, "Is this some outsourced sales model?" In short, NO. We fundamentally do not believe anything can be delegated pre-product/market fit —… Read →
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A Few Tips For Getting Through Procurement as an AI Startup Before we get into the 10, an opening thought… Working with procurement is a far more creative process than many credit to. Your job is to educate Procurement just like you educated your Buyer,… Read →
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The Hardest Startup Leaps Free into paid PLG into sales-led Small business into the enterprise International expansion into the U.S. market These transitions are harder and take longer than expected as many founders think… Read →
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Customer Interviews Should Be Used For Testing, Not For Creating. I know that I might be becoming delusional regarding early-stage sales; spending enough time in any field can lead your mind to connect dots that may or may not be there. I have observed this over… Read →
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Invalidating Your Way To Product/Market Fit For early-stage startups, it's often easier—perhaps faster—to identify what's not working than what's 'sorta' working. You can invalidate your way to market truth by treating your go-to-market as an… Read →
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The Dark Side of Design Partners The distance between a "design partner" and a "formal paying partner" can be as wide as the Pacific Ocean. Turning a design partner into a formal customer is one of the hardest sales conversions,… Read →
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Tricks the Market Will Play on Early-Stage Founders Early-stage startups have to rely on imperfect information when making critical decisions. A mix of intuition, past experience, and market data becomes essential to navigating toward product-market… Read →
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Why The 'Founder-Managed Sales’ Step is So Critical (and Often Skipped) A rough mental model of the steps of a startup's sales journey when selling > $30,000 ACV Founder-led sales (~ $1MM revenue) Founder-managed sales ($1-$3MM revenue) VP of Sales (~ $3-5MM+ revenue)… Read →
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Mid-Market Sales Cycles Are Often Not Faster Than Enterprise ' We're seeking to target the mid-market because sales cycles are faster' - startup founder It's a common startup myth that selling to the mid-market is easier and faster than selling to enterprises.… Read →
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Landing an Enterprise Deal is Often Misunderstood There's a common misunderstanding among early-stage enterprise startups: "Enterprise customers want multi-value, bundled solutions." This notion is wrong, at least as it relates to ' landing ' within… Read →
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‘We're different’ is Far Superior to ‘We're better’ in B2B Sales When a company already trusts an existing solution or way of working, persuading them that yours is "better" may come across as an unsubstantiated, abstract claim — especially if you’re an unknown… Read →
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Invalidation Is Misunderstood Warning — this is more or less quick notes versus trying to craft a poetic article. It will read as such ;) +++++++ Startups are a game of trial and error, and market validation mistakenly takes the… Read →
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My Favorite Nuanced Insights From My Conversation with Ryan Denehy, 3X Founder and CEO of Electric.ai. Some of the most prominent startups are built on a business model/customer insight – versus – technical insight. There is incredible power in slight iterations of existing processes. All three of my… Read →
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Breakdown of US ‘Businesses’ Here's a quick spreadsheet outlining a breakdown of 'businesses' in the U.S. market. The following statistic has misled many founders, so please review the data closely. While there are approximately… Read →
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The Pocket Guide of Essential Early-Stage Sales Advice The post was 100% inspired by Michael Seibel's post re: The Pocket Guide of Essential YC Advice. Here’s link . 20 bite-size learnings I’ve collected from my sales experience. 0-1 sales talent does… Read →
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The Way You’re Thinking About Early Adopters Is Likely Wrong Let's clarify the definition of early adopters. Early adopters are … Decision-makers who take risks on people Willing to conduct quick and lightweight tests , likely seeing it as a ' project ' at… Read →
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Niche: Mocked & Misunderstood "It's good to start in a niche, but not to crawl into one." - Paul Graham A common misconception among first-time founders is that a niche is viewed as a limiting factor, a confining space that can… Read →
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Why Founders Fail to Find Product/Market Fit (YouTube Video) Watch →
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Interview with Rob Walling — Insights of 2X Founders Watch →
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GTM Guide - Cracking the Code Watch →
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Sales Deep Dive with Managing Partner at Prime Ventures, Amit Somani Watch →
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Why Discomfort Leads to Great Discovery Time and time again, I see start-ups make the same mistake. In their excitement about their product and showing it to the world, they blow through the Discovery stage to race to Demo. I get it — the… Read →
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Art of Cold Emails with Varun Mayya Watch →
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B2B Masterclass: Founder Sales with Startup Operator, Roshan Cariappa Watch →
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2X Founder Insight: Customer Development BEFORE Product Development Henry Ford's quote is often inserted in conversations when discussing customer feedback -" If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. " First-time (“1X”) founders… Read →
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Why Late-stage Startups Stumble When Expanding Into the U.S. Market Pre-read: Startups take one of two timelines for U.S. expansion: (#1) building for the U.S. market on Day 1 (seed-stage) or (#2) expanding post establishing a foothold/PMF in their local region… Read →
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GTM Observations in the 2023 Market Ok, so the music has stopped. Now what? This post outlines recurring discussion points across all the conversations we’ve had in Q4 and the first few weeks of 2023; it is not a post of prediction(s)… Read →