There comes a stage early on in the B2B founder’s journey where they ask themselves: “Why aren’t people buying?”. This usually happens after they have exhausted their base of industry friends and contacts. The ones…
Sales is tough. And it is toughest for the first sales rep at any startup. Which in most cases, or at least those B2B startups which manage to get somewhere, happens to be the founder.…
The classic tension between Sales and Marketing teams makes each view the other as putting the cart before the horse that’s them. But if all you have is a hammer, which is all that a…
Conventional wisdom suggests founders should step back from sales as quickly as possible. This approach misses a fundamental dynamic: the founder’s unique advantages in B2B sales environments. Academic research demonstrates that founder-led companies consistently outperform…
Over the weekend, we observed Eid ul-Adha, honouring Prophet Ibrahim and the spirit of sacrifice he displayed in obeying Allah’s command. Religion isn’t considered the best place to derive business inspiration, especially in sales. Yet…
Following the collapse of Builder.ai, one of the most commonly mentioned quotes by its founder is where he said about wanting to make building an app as easy as ordering pizza. Could it really become…
In the summer of 2021, two B2B SaaS startups launched within weeks of each other. The world had started emerging from the global pandemic, but its effects were still reshaping how we work. Remote work…
My sales career started selling what we used to call dabbe. Originating from the Hindi word dabba which means box, it was a pejorative for cartons of a dumb product. Even in the naive cocksureness…
Over the weekend, I finally gave in. I just had to read the NYT profile of Elizabeth Holmes, the convicted founder of Theranos, to see what it was that had riled people so much. The…