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 founders making negative comments at the start of their pitch. There are no qualifiers in fundraising. Starting with a negative absolutely will not help.
Over and over again, I’m in a meeting and a founder will start by disparaging their own pitch before they’ve even begun! “These slides still need a lot of work”, “I haven’t had a chance to practice much”, “I wanted to have customer X or Y signed before we met today”. Those kinds of comments make me expect a bad pitch, which is probably not a good place to start.
Instead — start strong. Thank the audience for their time, tell them how excited you are to share your progress and get their feedback. Your confidence and passion is enough to make anyone believe they were lucky to be in that meeting.
