Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
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Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
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Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#2>We’re excited. When can you come back and show us a prototype?”
When you've put your hand in your pocket.
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#3One book I can recommend is "Gap Selling"
before I read that book and tried to sell some stuff I realized in org's there' more than 1 buyer.
in a typical b2b / gvt deal - you've 4 buyers at least.
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#4This is such good advice.
I think new founders are sometimes intimidated by customers, especially well-known brands, we don't want to upset or annoy them instead of being open about not being able to afford to run loads of pre-sales technical work. We also see the dollar signs for one large customer when we should be seeing smaller dollar signs for many customers.
For the customers, to be fair, they are partly trying to derisk the purchasing decision by making sure everyone and their dog has seen the demo, shown that it definitely does exactly what they want with their data and processes etc. and they have no skin in the game at this point, so why not?
Believe in the product you have built already and as the OP says, be certain of product market fit and ABC (always be closing).
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#5This is great advice (that we need to follow) but needs to be updated for 2026. The information value of providing (or receiving) a demo has dropped to roughly zero with vibe coding. Today, an apparently functional and useful product can be produced and demoed in minutes, but that demo provides absolutely zero information into the technical capabilities of the demoing team to follow through on promises with polish and at scale. It doesn't reflect a studied architecture or edge case handling. It basically only shows a vision, which can be tailored to perfectly mirror the recipient's expressed desire even though it's absolute vaporware. This makes it even harder to sell to enterprise in 2026 when the scene is awash in such noise.
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#6This is great advice (that we need to follow) but needs to be updated for 2026. The information value of providing (or receiving) a demo has dropped to roughly zero with vibe coding. Today, an apparently functional and useful product can be produced and demoed in minutes, but that demo provides absolutely zero information into the technical capabilities of the demoing team to follow through on promises with polish an…
>that demo provides absolutely zero information into the technical capabilities of the demoing team to follow through on promises with polish and at scale.
With vibe coding comes vibes-based capital. I'm only half kidding.
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#7>We’re excited. When can you come back and show us a prototype?” When you've put your hand in your pocket.
What do you mean by that? Promise some investment? Commit to something?
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#8Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#9As an aside, I love the website design. Very early 2000s vibe without costing readability (on desktop).
Re: Founders Need to Be Ruthless When Chasing Deals
#10This is great advice (that we need to follow) but needs to be updated for 2026. The information value of providing (or receiving) a demo has dropped to roughly zero with vibe coding. Today, an apparently functional and useful product can be produced and demoed in minutes, but that demo provides absolutely zero information into the technical capabilities of the demoing team to follow through on promises with polish an…
Right, and the story now shifts to: What's your customer service & support model? How can you prove this is stable and that you can maintain it? Who is going to handle the pages in the middle of the night?