

Selling to the wrong customers will kill your startup - SteliE
http://blog.close.io/selling-to-the-wrong-customers-will-kill-your-startup

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HillRat
Oh, god, yes. I've worked with multiple enterprise-oriented software companies
whose founders hustled to make early sales at any cost, and then ended up
creating massive long-term costs that far outweighed the value of the initial
sales. "Poison chalice" customers are common in the enterprise space -- they
look great up front, manage to ameliorate your burn rate, and then you end up
mortgaging the future of your company to support a small number of contracts.
It's incredibly hard to turn down those contracts, though, especially as they
often come in as relationship sales, and because the companies in question
rarely staff up sales at the beginning.

I consider this a good example of why founders need to onboard professional
sales as soon as reasonably possible; it's a whole lot easier to turn down
those poor-fit sales when you've got an active funnel, and it's very hard to
build that funnel when your entire company is trying to keep those poor-fit
contracts happy.

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gk1
Somewhat off topic: I'm glad to see more startups using gag cartoons in their
blogs. I built a platform[0] where you can find and license more cartoons like
this for your posts to make them more enjoyable and engaging, while also
helping the artists earn money from licensing.

[0] [https://www.gagcartoons.com](https://www.gagcartoons.com)

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trevelyan
It seems that there are an awful lot of things that will kill your startup.
But paying customers is probably not really in the top ten.

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isergio
Brilliant: "Rather than trying to bring as many customers as possible on
board, start with just a few perfect customers: the kind who you can build
your product for and who will adore your product once they put it to work.
Until you have that handful of fanatical customers, you shouldn't focus on
scaling your customer base."

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Im_Talking
Don't agree fully. Maybe these 'wrong' customers are actually telling you to
shift your focus in another more profitable direction. You need to be flexible
as a start-up and listen to the customers. They are in the trenches, not you.

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joeblau
Great post. I also wonder about the ops thoughts on free versus paid from a
consumer perspective. I wonder what the cost of a free customer is when you
have a consumer product with a freemium business model.

