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If every sale remains an exercise in business development and requires the driving force of a founder or similar key person, then the company is closer to failu
by phasetransition 10y ago
If every sale remains an exercise in business development and requires the driving force of a founder or similar key person, then the company is closer to failure than success.
While this type of biz dev feels like forward action in the trenches, in reality it means that you are only a few key deals or people from an empty accounts receivable.
Companies that bring process to the prospecting and sales cycle, and develop a path to closing business that is not highly dependent on a small pool of stakeholders have a clear path to growth.
- edoceo 10y agoSpecifics to very early stage start-up following the methods currently labelled as "Lean": In this case the exercise in BD is relabelled "Customer Development" and the founder is there directly to learn from and build relationships with the early (<100?) customers. The "Way of Lean" says to do these things that "don't scale" to help create a better refined, higher quality product that customers really do want. By deal #101 some processes should be in place, because now the customer is clearly defined an there is good market fit. Statistically, every early stage business is closer to failure than success...until they're not.
- phasetransition 10y agoI probably should have added the caveat of speaking about working in an environment that is not purely software. Here a few dozen clients/deals per year (or less) can keep a company moving and even feeling like it is progressing. Meanwhile the underlying fragility in the sales process is obscured.