6. Salesmanship is more valuable than intelligence.
You need to learn to sell:
• Yourself
• Your product
• Your vision
• Your ideas
My richest friends don't have the highest IQs. They just know how to sell. They aren't afraid of the no. They work until they get a yes.
I don’t think we’ve fully priced in what it means that a SaaS can be copied in 24h with AI and what’s that’s going to do to the $500B+ SaaS market
how it will play out:
new saas software pops up left, right and center at lower prices and creator-led
SMBs start to abandon their traditional saas providers
choosing between AI clones at 1/10th the price or creators-led brands they trust (why pay $100/month when a copy costs $10?)
enterprise stays with current vendors - they're buying stability, not features but even they demand 50% discounts when 100 competitors exist
10000+ new AI-first companies split $100B in SMB revenue
top SaaS companies keep enterprise but at lower margins
everybody pays less, market gets repriced and TAM expands
winners become indie hackers, bootstrapped founders and incumbents who move fast and break things
losers become complacent incumbent saas companies
the great SaaS repricing is coming
Huge mistake to start “scaling” before PMF.
In particular, don’t hire more than 12 people.
Why 12?
Because that’s about the max you can have without a person whose full-time job is "manager," and communication can still be "everyone ↔ everyone"
Planning to keep the team size as small as possible going forward.
All IC’s
All remote
Async
No managers
No dedicated support
Stay profitable
Ship fast
@realEstateTrent I have met very high quality people in the large city I live in via my kids. We spend a lot of time sober with those relationships. I’d say kids net positive for your social life, but it’s more dinners and daytime and less drinking and partying. I like it more.
@WizLikeWizard I live in Beverly Hills and there’s zero camping. It’s gorgeous and totally safe. I don’t lock my doors. I can get to SM and WeHo in 10 min. There’s no option like that in SF. It’s a zombie apocalypse everywhere.
Startup not growing fast? Learn sales.
Finding product market fit? Learn sales.
Got to recruit a talented team? Learn sales.
Need more paying customers? Learn sales.
Sales is basically 90% of a founders job.