founder-led-sales
Applies when developers love your tool and live in the free tier but nobody pays, you have never sold and freeze on the actual conversation, or every deal dies on "let me think about it." Produces a first-deal motion you run yourself, from finding the champion to closing the buyer.
Do the first deals yourself
Nobody can sell it before you can. Your first ten to twenty deals are not a hire, they are how you learn what you are actually selling and to whom. You cannot outsource a motion you have not cracked; a founder who hires a rep at deal one hires someone to fail at a job that does not exist yet. And it is not slimy: selling a developer tool well is discovery plus helping a champion get budget. You find the people who already have the pain and make it easy for them to say yes.
Every real deal has four things
If one is missing, it is a conversation, not a deal. Your job is to find which:
- Champion — uses it, loves it, and will fight for it inside their company. Usually the developer who adopted you.
- Buyer — has budget. Often not the champion.
- Pain with a cost — a problem costing money, time, or risk now, not "this is nice."
- Trigger — a reason to act now: an incident, an audit, a deadline, a scaling wall.