Early Stage Customers (The {Closed} Session Ep. 3.5)
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super{set} is in the business of solving real-world problems, meaning disentangling actual customer problems — not building a product in a vacuum because it looked cool to us. You can’t wait for every feature of your product to be built before you start having conversations — and testing the market-message fit. As your product launches, early customers are less about maximizing revenue streams (mistakes will be made along the way: customers will fire you) and more about earning valuable product feedback before the scale stage for your company. Metrics like ACV and ARR don’t matter in the earliest stages. What matters is losing the fear of failure to rally the entire company — not just a sales team in a corner — to land those customers and learn from them.
Tom and Vivek chat about how founders must experience the thrill of being in the sales arena, even if they aren’t from a sales background, and how entrepreneurs must show up to those early conversations with high conviction, even if the product isn’t there. They then discuss the staging and sequencing for building out the anthropological customer profile, ensuring a feedback loop to product, and evolving from founder-led sales to standing up a proper BDR function. Finally, special guest Matt Kilmartin, CEO of Habu, joins to give his perspective on operating as a former Chief Revenue Officer and his current role as a founder and CEO scaling a Series B cloud data technology company.
