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 the dangers of letting your inbox govern fundraising.
Just because an investor wants to meet with you, that doesn’t mean they’re the right investor for you, right now. For example, if you pitch at a demo day intending to raise a pre-seed round of $500k to $1M, you will still get a lot of meeting requests from large VC firms who usually write $5M+ checks.
You can take a few of those meetings but stay focused on getting meetings with investors most likely to say yes. I often meet founders who have done 50+ meetings but raised no money, the cause is usually being focused on the wrong type of investor for their stage.
Fundraising isn’t just about sheer volume of meetings, it’s about the right meetings at the right time.
