Stages 1-2 (pre-seed and seed through Series A)
Start smaller than you plan to end up
A founder at S1 or S2 building a sales motion must decide which segment to target first because the segment shapes hiring, features, and cycle time.
Options
Sell to enterprise from the start
Win mid-market first, then build enterprise features
Chase several ideal customer profiles at once
What mattered
- Selling too large too early stalls the company
- Manager and director contacts have reachability, pain, and influence
- Ten discovery calls with no confirmed pain kills a hypothesis
What was done
The sessions concluded founders should crush mid-market for a couple of years, default first contact to manager level, and test one profile per quarter.
ClaimRun outbound against one ideal customer profile per quarter; ten calls with no confirmed pain means move on.
FAQ
- Which stage does this apply to?
- Stages 1-2 (pre-seed and seed through Series A).
- Where does this come from?
- Synthesized from FounderNexus founder sessions, with speakers abstracted.
FounderNexus convenes stage-matched founder groups around decisions like this one.