The Monzo founder's blunt guide to closing your first B2B contracts, YC's canonical sales lecture.
The Sales Playbook For Founders | Startup School
Y Combinator (Tom Blomfield) 2024
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →The founder still does the selling, AI does the grunt work around it. A modern motion looks like: AI-assisted ICP and list building, signal-triggered personalized outreach, the founder taking every call, an AI notetaker capturing it, and AI drafting the follow-ups and CRM updates. The judgment calls, discovery, pricing, and closing stay human, because in early-stage sales the buyer is buying you and your conviction, not your tooling.
19 resources.
The Monzo founder's blunt guide to closing your first B2B contracts, YC's canonical sales lecture.
Y Combinator (Tom Blomfield) 2024
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →One of SaaS's best sales leaders coaching a YC batch on founder selling, in under an hour.
Sam Blond (ex-CRO Brex) 2023
Watch on YouTube youtube.com →The audio version covers cold outreach channels, messaging structure, and pricing conversations step by step.
Lenny's Podcast Nov 2024
Listen on Spotify open.spotify.com →The sequel: what changes in the motion once early deals start closing.
Lenny's Podcast 2025
Listen on Spotify open.spotify.com →Listen-while-commuting version of the definitive founder-led sales interview.
Lenny's Podcast Dec 2022
Listen on Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com →Founders who just finished the journey share what worked, recorded while the lessons were fresh.
Pete Kazanjy 2023
Listen on Spotify open.spotify.com →Directly tackles the doubt every technical founder has about doing sales themselves.
Steli Efti & Hiten Shah 2020
Open thestartupchat.com →Founder-to-founder sales advice for people who never wanted to be salespeople.
Indie Hackers 2019
Open indiehackers.com →Kazanjy retelling the motion as a practitioner story rather than a framework lecture.
Dock (Grow & Tell) 2023
Open dock.us →Sharpens the pitch itself, the piece of the motion AI cannot do for you.
First Round Review 2023
Open review.firstround.com →A second angle on Kazanjy's playbook with more focus on mindset shifts for founders.
SalesIQ Global 2023
Open salesiqglobal.com →The single best written walkthrough of 0-to-1 sales, from someone who has coached 300+ founders through it.
Lenny Rachitsky with Jen Abel (JJELLYFISH) Nov 2024
Open lennysnewsletter.com →The whole founder-led sales framework compressed into one scannable thread.
Lenny Rachitsky Nov 2024
Open x.com →Kazanjy literally wrote the book on this; here he compresses it into an actionable conversation.
Lenny Rachitsky with Pete Kazanjy Dec 2022
Open lennysnewsletter.com →The full founder-led sales handbook, free online, covering prospecting through closing and scaling.
Pete Kazanjy 2020
Open foundingsales.com →The written companion with the design-partner-to-recurring-revenue progression laid out.
Y Combinator 2024
Open ycombinator.com →A technical founder who reached $100M ARR breaks down the enterprise funnel stage by stage.
Y Combinator (Pete Koomen) 2019
Open ycombinator.com →Evergreen answers on founder selling from the person who taught a generation of startups outbound.
Stripe Atlas with Steli Efti (Close) 2018
Open stripe.com →Shows what comes after founder-led sales, so you know when and how to hand the motion off.
Sam Blond / Bessemer Cloud 2024
Open cloud.substack.com →The same ground, over in Get your first customers, our Starting Up track.