[windexh8er]

It seems as though a lot of startup founders and product managers succumb to this illness. I've worked for a number of startups that have always had a number of people who were building things for nobody but themselves. These features, and in one case - product, were not anything any customers were willing to pay for. Instead a lot of these founders think it's their sellers and double down on ineffective solutions like thinking something such as MEDDPICC will solve the "sales" issue, except what they should be doing is having honest conversations with prospects and customers.

[sb8244]

Founders should be doing sales (not leading it, doing it) until at least 1M ARR. That solves a lot of that issue.

Maybe it's a difference between bootstrapped mindset and VC-fueled one.

[windexh8er]

I would argue there's a soft spot at around $10M ARR where founders turned full time CXO lose focus and touch with their product. They turn it over to folks who don't seem to carry the customer focus but instead have a focus on building their version. It doesn't seem to play out well and I'm curious why this seems to keep happening.

[sb8244]

I agree with this, although the timeline differs a bit between companies. I was at Salesloft from 1M ARR -> 100M ARR, so I saw this roughly play out. However, I will say that the founders did an exceptional job staying close to the product well after 10M ARR.

I think a lot of it is due to the VC playbook. The question of "who am I building my business for?" looks a lot different between VC and bootstrap. Once you start getting into heavy hitter revenue (grain of salt, I've never done this as a founder), the machine starts working largely on its own. It's probably more impactful to spend time on the business systems instead of the product.

But bootstrapped founders seem more likely to stay close to the product for longer. Eventually they may want some sort of out, and you see the playbook execute much much quicker.

Now, I have other theories on why it doesn't play out well. Going from 10M -> 50M ARR is a huge hurdle. You have to really level up a lot of the business itself to do so. It might be that it's just not possible for a lot of companies to bridge the gap. I think it's easier to go 50M -> 100M than 10M -> 50M.

[gopher_space]

> Maybe it's a difference between bootstrapped mindset and VC-fueled one.

The bootstrap mindset understands that "idea man" isn't an actual job.