In corporate sales (thanks dayjob!), you have the transactional sales and the relationship based sales. Transactional: e.g. used car salesman. The sales guy pr

In corporate sales (thanks dayjob!), you have the transactional sales and the relationship based sales. Transactional: e.g. used car salesman. The sales guy promises you the world to convince you to hand over a boatload of cash, even if he knows the car is crap. Why? Because after the paperwork is inked and the money is safely in his bank account, he's done with you and moving on to the next guy. Nevermind if the car breaks on the 31st day - just 1 day past the warranty date. Because all the effort is on that single transaction. He could care less about why you actually need a car. Relationship-based: e.g. System integrators, consulting firms. e.g. They sell you a firewall / router / set up your internal network, but it is in their best interest not to screw you over because your lifetime value to them as a customer is greater than the immediate gain (e.g. marking up the hardware or charging ridiculous installation fees). Plus, they want your respect and need credibility so that next time when you need something else, you will go to them first. E.g. Maybe aside from an email solution for your SMB, you now need, a simple internal collaboration tool installed. Granted there are also sleazy relationship-based sales people, but the difference is that it is not as transactional as a used car salesman. The reason why I mentioned that is because I'm not trying to be the jerk who says "gimme all your goodies now now now" and then conveniently forget how I got there when I get there. At the risk of aiming for too lofty of a loooong-term goal - just as Mark Zuckerberg said "these are my people" at the last YC SUS, I <3 startup entrepeneurs and I too, wish that I could one day be in a position to be like Paul Graham. To start a startup that helps other startups. But I realize that in order to do that I need to succeed at my own startup first. pg started YC to help the small guy, and I feel that I should stand up for the even smaller guy amongst the other small guys, since single founders get easily drowned out by the majority of non-single startups. Thanks for the opportunity to clarify.