Hey friends,
A few years ago, I was working with a founder who had just closed his seed round.
Smart guy. Great product.
He had been doing sales himself for 6 months, and honestly, he was very good at it.
But the moment the seed came through - he said something that I have heard many times since:
“Matteo, we can finally hire someone and I can get out of sales.”
I understood the feeling. Sales is hard. Especially when you did not sign up to be a salesperson. Maybe you never wanted to be one.
You wanted to build a product, lead a company, maybe change an industry, raise money, hire people.
Sales were supposed to be temporary. Or to run itself, somehow.
But I told him something he did not want to hear.
“You are not ready to step back yet. And if you do it now, the company will die out of this choice.”
He was shocked.
There is an analogy I use with almost every founder I work with.
A startup in its first year of sales is like a newborn. Fragile. Dependent.
Running almost entirely on the energy and presence of the person closest to it.
If you leave a three-month-old baby alone in a room, even for a short time, something goes wrong.
Early-stage sales work the same way.
Until you reach somewhere around €200-500k in revenue, the founder is not just involved, the founder IS sales.
Pipeline runs thanks to your referrals.
Deals close because you know the product better than anyone in the room.
The market feedback you get helps you shape the product roadmap.
Nobody else can collect it the way you can.
One of my clients came to me when they were just past €100k.
She had closed all 100K herself, alone.
We built the first sales process together.
Documented everything. Hired the first SDR, then an Account Executive.
Both ramped up quickly; in less than 6 months, we had a team.
We went from 100K to 500K in less than 2 quarters.
The founder stayed involved, though.
Every week. Not doing all the calls, but showing up for demos, pipeline reviews, and coaching sessions with me and the team.
She was the guardian of the team culture, the person who knew what good looked like.
I hear this a lot.
“Matteo, I am not a salesperson. I never wanted to be.”
That is completely fine.
I have worked with founders who are technical and deeply uncomfortable on a sales call.
And they still had to do it.
Not forever, just long enough.
Because in the early stage, your presence is mandatory, not just important.
It is about protecting the culture.
It’s about staying close to your first customers and being obsessed with their success.
I can come in as a co-pilot. Build the frameworks and processes. Help with the first hires. Make the process real.
But I cannot be you. Nobody can.
The founder who builds a successful sales team is the one who guards their team until they are ready.
Stay in it. Build it properly. Then hand it over when it’s time.
And trust me, you will know when it’s time to step back.
Thanks for reading this far. See you all next week!
