Founders Must Do the First Sales Themselves

The most common early-stage mistake is hiring a salesperson to do a job the founders haven't figured out yet. Nobody else can sell your product in the beginning, because early sales isn't executing a playbook, it's discovering one.

Founders hold advantages no hire can match: deep product knowledge, genuine conviction, and the authority to change the product on the spot. When a prospect raises an objection, a founder can ship the fix. A salesperson can only log it.

Koomen and his cofounder sold Optimizely themselves as technical founders, through trial and error, with instant feedback loops between conversations and code. Hire salespeople after you've proven the model: you know who buys, why, at what price, and can write down the process for someone else to repeat.