Article

Early Stage Sales: Why Every Startup's First Customers Are Won, Not Found

DC · Medium Free Intermediate

This reframes early customers as something you win through effort rather than something you stumble onto, which directly counters the wait-and-launch mistake. It argues for starting sales conversations before the product is finished and treating those conversations as the main way to validate what you are building. A useful mindset shift for a founder who thinks selling can wait until the product is ready.

• First customers are won through deliberate effort, not discovered by luck
• Start selling before the product is done, use it to validate direction
• Product and customer development should run in parallel, not one after the other