Jason Lemkin: evaluation

Transcript context

…Okay. So you close the first 10 customers. What are other signs that, "Okay. Now is really the time we need to start hiring sales"? I think as soon as you've got those 10 customers and more than 20% of your time is booked up with customers, you need leverage. You need leverage. You've got to get ... If you do it too early, if you're not spending 20% of your time in sales and 20% of your time in recruiting, you're failing as a founder. You need 20% of each, 20% in sales and 20% recruiting. Nothing else really matters at some level as a CEO, maybe not as founders, but as CEOs. Once you cross the 20%, you need leverage or your calendar will die. So you need to hire one rep and you've got to hire two because otherwise, there's no A-B test. You have to A-B test humans. You have to A-B test humans. You've got to hire two as hard as it is, and there's just one cheat code to those first two. There's one cheat code. I talked to so many founders that screwed up their first sales hires, and they always nod when they hear it. Those first couple reps have to be people you would buy your own product from. That's it. Now we can talk about other criteria. We can talk about normalizing for deal size. We can talk about industry expertise. We can talk about all this kind of stuff, but when you go out as a first time founder and interview 30 reps, and you're going to have to interview 30, and 20 are just going to break your brain because they don't do any work and they don't do any prep and they didn't even go to your website. Then eight of the next 10 are okay, but you know it's not really going to work, but you might hire them if you get tired. If you're lucky, one or two of them, they're like magicians. They ask the right questions, which we could talk about. Then take a pause and say, "Look, no matter how strange their background was, whatever they did, it's not the right background. It's not our same deal size. It's not our industry. They actually weren't very good at their last job. They got let go at their last job, but I would buy from Lenny. I know. I've been doing this for a year. Every day, I would buy from Lenny because Lenny just explained to me my product and my customer's problems in a way that I actually believe. Forget about what's on her LinkedIn or his LinkedIn. I would buy from Lenny." That rep always works because you can trust them with those leads. Almost every first time founder hires someone because they worked at Twilio or CloudFlare or wherever, and they talk the talk and they can say ACV and NRR, and they can talk all these acronyms. None of which matter. None of which matter. We all get attracted to logos on our resume, but in our gut, I always ask them, "Did you know that Jason was going to ... Would you buy from Jason?" They're like, "You're right. I wouldn't have bought from Jason, but he worked at Twilio." So just wait, wait and interview 30 sales reps, however you find them through LinkedIn, through use recruiters, use contingent recruiters. It's exhausting. Do everything. Work your network and then be flexible in the beginning. rview 30 sales reps, however you find them through LinkedIn, through use recruiters, use contingent recruiters. It's exhausting. Do everything. Work your network and then be flexible in the beginning. We're looking for pirates and romantics in the early days. We are not looking for folks with massive sales operations teams and enablement teams. You're looking for that quirky one that's got a few extra IQ points, that for reasons that make no sense has fallen in love with your little product that is so feature poor and does nothing, but they love it, they love it, they love it. My first rep I had this back in the day, he had gotten let go by a prior startup and he was struggling and he was living in his brother's garage at the time. This was not your number one person at Snowflake, but of all the 30, he came in and what's now Adobe sign? EchoSign. He described the whole problem. He described how we would solve the problem for our customers in the early days of this category. It was clear, whatever it took we needed him and whatever we needed to backfill the garage or whatever, this was the only one that could sell the product, and he did it for a decade. Closed our first five-figure deal, first six-figure deal, first seven-figure TCV deal. Didn't scale completely. Inside of Adobe was harder to scale inside of a 20,000 person company than it was in a six-person company, but he was still there. He still made that far to the journey, but he was the only one that I knew that I would buy my product from, not that I would buy something from, but I would buy my product from. Leads are so precious in the early days. It's so hard to find leads. That's the problem. You hire this perfect person from Snowflake and you have three leads a month and you give him two and he doesn't close them, your company's going to die. Leads are so precious. That's what folks don't get. So wait, and I know it's painful, and I know most founders have hired this person with the right LinkedIn that they wouldn't buy their product from. Just keep interviewing. You need that quirky pyromaniac that loves your product and can sell it. They're out there.…

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