Investing in Sales for Startups
The general belief is that startups should invest in sales after finding product-market fit. This blog explores the example of Retool and how they found PMF through sales.
Rahul Mathur
Now: Building @Insurance_Dekho Earlier: Founder @VerakInsurance (YC W21; acquired) Hiring for Eng, Marketing, Sales & Ops roles
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The general belief is that a startup should invest into Sales after finding PMF - explosive organic adoption of product (e.g. Figma, Notion, Loom etc)
— Rahul Mathur (@Rahul_J_Mathur) June 24, 2023
However, this isn't always true - Retool ($3.2bn valuation with > $75M in ARR) is an example of a finding PMF via Sales: -
Retool today pitches itself as an easy way to build internal tools & software.
— Rahul Mathur (@Rahul_J_Mathur) June 24, 2023
But when they start in 2017, their initial hypothesis was that FileMaker developers would be a wedge into the market - which didn't work.. -
Then, Retool moved to cold outbound emails & calls (Sales strategy) to see where their general purpose software fit.
— Rahul Mathur (@Rahul_J_Mathur) June 24, 2023
After navigating a lot of NOs - they finally found one persona who kept saying yes - CTOs and VP Engineering of fast growing operational intensive companies. -
For context: I've run an operational intensive business at Verak - there are a ton of operation, sales & admin control panels (performing CRUD operations) which you need to build.
— Rahul Mathur (@Rahul_J_Mathur) June 24, 2023
Retool is truly a lifesaver (and cash-saver by improving developer productivity) -
Remember: NO organic traffic to their website - all the initial customers were pulled in AFTER they were reached out to by Retool (cold outbound)
— Rahul Mathur (@Rahul_J_Mathur) June 24, 2023
Sales initiatives found PMF for Retool! Sales can also help you find PMF for your startup. -
After you've built something - don't wait for customers to reach your webpage / try your product - start typing that email or place that call!
— Rahul Mathur (@Rahul_J_Mathur) June 24, 2023
Retool's founder went in-depth on subject of using Sales to find PMF in the Acquired podcast:https://t.co/jNWT4DA2b3