New design partnership, physiology of sales, why most people fail
Sales
This lunch we had 3 booked demos, which meant spending most of the day prepping for them and analyzing them after.
In the morning I thought deeply about why people actually buy products. The answer is simple, yet most founders skip it entirely: can you solve their problem?
Nobody cares about the product, the team, or what scaling system you use to get the most accurate data. They care only about whether you solve their problem. Do you provide value?
What I also realized is that beyond explaining how you solve a problem, it's critical to say it in numbers. Before this, me and Luchi were selling on speed. Which makes total sense. Companies spend 4 to 5 days analyzing deals, while with us they can do it in 10 minutes.
Easy value prop, I thought. But after going deeper I realized I was wrong.
It's always great to think from first principles. The first question I asked myself was: why do these companies make deals in the first place? Obviously, to make more money. So selling speed is good, but not great. Reframing it as a money value prop changed the whole conversation.
For example: one analyst spends 4 to 5 days analyzing a deal, you pay them $35/hour. That's roughly $1,300 per deal. With us, it costs a few cents.
We were able to close our new design partner with exactly this framing.
Always use numbers as your value prop. If you can't express your product's value in dollars saved or earned, think twice about how important it actually is.
How to win
Sometimes me and Luchi just talk about growth. Our plans, how we see the company in a year, next steps. Unscripted, but always exciting.
Our biggest key mover right now is design partnerships. They don't just give us resources and real insight into what customers actually care about. They give us cash in the bank and get us ready for pre-seed fundraising.
Essentially, design partnerships are our survival metric. No design partners, we die.
Right now we have 5 demos scheduled for the next 2 weeks. Funny enough, the metric that decides whether we live or die, and we only have 5 shots at it.
In moments like this, it's critical to think clearly: why is this happening, and what exactly needs to happen for us to win?
We already know we need design partners. So how do we get them?
- We need demos.
- How many demos to guarantee one design partner? Around 10.
- We have 5. We need 5 more. How?
- From experience, Luchi books 1 demo per 50 cold calls.
- So to get one more design partner, we need 250 calls.
Sounds hard. But it's completely solvable. And that's the point.
Most people spend years wanting something, working hard, but never once ask: do I actually have a plan to get there?
If you want to reach something, there is a clear math. You find the milestones, you ask what you need to hit each one, and you keep going deeper. A 5-year plan to build a unicorn stops feeling impossible the moment you break it down into steps.
Most people skip that part. They just grind and hope.
P.S. One resource that actually helped today during sales prep: