Last week an entrepreneur emailed me asking for advice about building out a sales team. Knowing the entrepreneur, and his situation, I replied that he shouldn’t be spending any time right now trying to figure out how to build a repeatable customer acquisition process. Why? He hadn’t achieved product / market fit yet (see the four stages). Spending time on a sales team would take away from the more important task at hand.
Here are a few requests that should often be rejected:
- Will you introduce me to VCs? If the startup doesn’t have a serious user base or over a million in recurring revenue, VCs don’t make sense.
- Will you give me advice on hiring a VP of Sales? Resist the VP of Sales temptation.
- Will you help me outsource software development? No, a tech startup shouldn’t outsource the core of their business.
So, the next time an entrepreneur requests help that doesn’t make sense, reject it and point them in the right direction.
What else? What are some other examples of entrepreneurs asking for help on things they should be avoiding?
David Cummings on Startups 