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.
Even if your company is doing really well, you may still struggle to raise all the money you’d like. If that’s your situation, it’s usually best to stop fundraising completely and not continue conversations at a slower pace. Here’s why:
You’d be amazed how much excitement drives investment decisions and you can generate the most excitement when it’s a new conversation, or they haven’t heard from you in a while, and you’ve grown significantly. Fundraising perpetually destroys the excitement.
Fundraising is a big distraction. Even a few meetings a week will be enough to divert your attention, along with your co-founders and team. However, focusing on growing your business is much more likely to generate future investor interest.
A long fundraising process just looks terrible. Investors will assume you both desperately need money and other investors are seeing a problem. Taking the feedback and going back to building looks way better.
Best of luck out there.
