I write about validating and operating founder-led outbound: what's working, what's overhyped, and what I'd do in your seat. The essays live here. The day-to-day runs on LinkedIn.
Research-backed arguments, written to be useful before we ever talk.
More of a deal's return now has to come from growth, and the parts of the plan that need customers to do something new are go-to-market assumptions until customers act on them. Six steps to test the one or two that carry the most, with the team you have, before the hires and budget go in.
Read the essaySomewhere in your company a positioning argument has been running for a month, and every Monday it gets twenty minutes without ending. A positioning question is a go-to-market assumption, and those get settled one way: in front of the buyer group whose reaction decides it. Six steps, a few weeks, and a count of only the next steps with a date or a deliverable.
Read the essayTaking over sales can mean inheriting a book built through the founder's relationships, and a growth plan that assumes the team can produce every line of it. Last year's results can't confirm that on their own. Build a sheet of last year's deals, test one or two routes for a few weeks with the people you already have, and put people and money behind what you learn.
Read the essayCarta puts the typical wait from seed to Series A at two years, and a first sales hire needs 6.2 months of that before producing anything. Lay the two clocks side by side and the real deadline isn't the hire. It's proving the motion early enough that somebody else's ramp still fits inside the window.
Read the essayA validated sales motion isn't a feeling. It's four documents your first hire can work from on day one: the ICP that replied, the message that pulled responses, the channel math, and the playbook that binds them. If you can't produce them, the req can wait.
Read the essayThree kinds of people take a first sales job, and the motion-inventor every "founding AE" post describes is almost never one of them. Why you can't screen for invention, and what to hand your first hire instead.
Read the essayBefore you hire someone to run your sales motion, make sure there's a motion to run. Why a great rep can't out-execute an unvalidated motion, and what to prove before the offer goes out.
Read the essayPublished on LinkedIn, pulled in live.
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The writing is the thinking out loud. If you want it applied to your actual motion, that's what a strategy call is for.
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