Startup Sales — 5 Common Sales Mistakes by Founders
August 12, 2025
Founders are responsible for the first sales a startup will make. For many founders, this is one of their very first experiences of sales and mistakes are often made.
Today, we’re talking about product commercialization.
As you transition from building your product, to launching it to customers for the first time, you can expect to face some harsh realities. Here’s my top 3 product commercialization lessons:
While it’s tempting to build lots of features, for most businesses you’ll need to have one core feature that works really well — better than everyone else.
In order to retain new customers and keep existing, you’ll need to make sure the main flows, like login, onboarding, and other core actions — are smooth as butter. This requires lots of pretty boring iteration on the same flows over and over.
Once you’re live, you don’t really get to decide the product’s direction anymore. Instead, we’re now in the business of creating and testing hypotheses. Then we let customer behavior drive the ultimate path.
Best of luck out there.
