Y Combinator: The Sales Playbook For Founders | Startup School

At YC, many first-time B2B founders get stuck in long, unpaid design partnerships that lack clear scope and customer engagement. These often drag on for months without generating revenue, despite the allure of having big-name logos on their site.

Design partnerships can be valuable for deep customer insights, but founders should focus on identifying narrow, automatable pain points. Offering to do the work manually or even going undercover in the customer's industry helps build a product wedge that solves a specific problem quickly.

Avoid overbuilding broad platforms early on. Instead, develop a narrow wedge product in 48 hours, test it with customers, and iterate until they love it. Selling a focused solution is more effective than chasing feature parity with established software.

After design partnerships, founders often move to free trials or pilots. These should be short, goal-oriented, and include agreed-upon success metrics. For example, proving your AI reduces 20% of customer queries can justify a $200k price by showing clear ROI.

Paid pilots are the next step, requiring upfront financial commitment to increase customer engagement. Keep pilots short, schedule frequent check-ins, and prioritize rapid delivery of value. Use simple integrations like Excel imports to avoid delays.

The ultimate goal is recurring revenue contracts with opt-out periods, eliminating the need for a second sales process. This approach turns pilots into automatic renewals, providing predictable growth and simplifying negotiations.

Post-sale, invest heavily in customer success to ensure implementation and value realization. Missing this can lead to signed contracts not translating into actual revenue, as seen in companies with millions in contracts but low implementation.

Key tips include starting security certifications early, treating your internal champion like a co-founder, mapping the customer's buying process, and driving it proactively. Physical visits and flexible contract negotiations speed up closing.

Use scarcity to create urgency, e.g., limited enterprise slots. Always set next steps before meetings end and be clear with investors about revenue reporting, especially during opt-out periods. These strategies help founders move from crawling to closing efficiently.

In summary, progress rapidly from vague design partnerships to well-defined sales processes with financial commitments, pilots, and recurring contracts. Focus on narrow solutions, customer engagement, and proactive sales management to grow your B2B startup successfully.