Table of Contents

• 👉🏻 Introduction

• 💰 Deals done this week

• Today's Deep Dive: Why Founder-Led Sales Isn't Jus …

• Want some 121 time with me?

• 🤖 AI in fundraising

• Interesting Things I Read

• Founders’ Guidelines

• About Raise Like a Pro

👉🏻 Introduction

Every week, I see another brilliant technical founder make the same costly mistake. They've built something genuinely innovative - a piece of software that could revolutionise an industry, or hardware that solves a problem everyone said was impossible. They've managed to close their first few deals through sheer determination and technical expertise. But they’re never really comfortable selling and seem to be treading water until they can get that experienced salesperson in the door.

It's a seductive idea, isn't it? Hand off the sales burden to someone who actually knows what they're doing, someone with a proper sales background and a track record of closing deals. Finally, you can focus on product development, scaling the technology, and doing the work that got you into this game in the first place.

Except do it too early and it almost always falls apart.

Not because salespeople are inherently bad at their jobs - quite the opposite. But because what works in established companies with proven products, validated markets, and hefty marketing budgets doesn't work when you're still figuring out who your customers are and why they should care about what you've built.

Even if you’re a technical founder you're going to be your company's primary salesperson for much longer than you think; because you are the founder even if you’ve never sold before. And that's not a bug; it's a feature. The question isn't whether you'll eventually hire salespeople (you will), but when you'll have built enough foundation to make that transition successful rather than catastrophically expensive.

This week, let's talk about why founder-led sales isn't just a necessary evil; it's your secret weapon.

Let’s unpack this in our deepdive below.

💰 Deals done this week

• EnsiliTech, a Bristol-based biotech developing room-temperature preservation for medicines, raised £4.5M in an oversubscribed seed round to replace costly cold-chain storage. (Read)

• Toppi, an Amsterdam-based HospitalityTech startup, secured €1M in its first round to scale AI solutions that help restaurants and hotels convert online interest into real guests. (Read)

• Detechgene, a Cologne-based biotech, raised €3.2M in seed funding to commercialize its “PCR to Go” platform for mobile, rapid molecular diagnostics. (Read)

• Vox AI, an Amsterdam-based conversational voice AI for quick-service restaurants, raised $8.7M in seed funding led by Headline to support global expansion and launch a San Francisco office. (Read)

• Maisa, a Valencia- and San Francisco-based AI startup developing hallucination-resistant “digital workers,” raised €21.4M in Seed funding led by Creandum, with participation from Forgepoint Capital, NFX, and Village Global, to scale its AI automation platform across Europe and North America. (Read)

Today's Deep Dive: Why Founder-Led Sales Isn't Just a Starting Point—It's Your Only Bloody Option

Selling isn’t the most comfortable job for many a founder particularly those from a technical or engineering background (even if they’re often better than they think).

Sometimes founders are trying to offload the sales function way too quickly and before it makes sense to do so.

If you’re a founder with a technical background - whether you’ve spent years building machine learning algorithms, developing software platforms, or creating groundbreaking hardware - you need to get comfortable with being your company’s chief salesperson for far longer than you think. And not because it’s some necessary evil you’ll eventually escape from, but because founder-led sales is your company’s single greatest competitive advantage.

The Engineering Founder’s Fatal Flaw

Most technical founders harbour a dangerous delusion: that their product is so brilliant it’ll sell itself. They’ve spent months or years perfecting their technology, solving complex problems with elegant solutions. In their minds, once potential customers see what they’ve built, the cheques will start flowing.

This is what I call the “if you build it, they will come” fallacy, and it’s killed more promising startups than I care to count.

The reality is rather different. Your revolutionary solution might be technically superior to anything on the market, but that doesn’t mean businesses will queue up to buy it. Customers don’t buy technology; they buy solutions to problems that keep them up at night. And understanding those problems, really understanding them, requires conversations that only you, as the founder, can have.

Why Experienced Salespeople Can’t Do What You Do (Not Yet, Anyway)

Here’s what sets you apart from any salesperson you might hire: you can adapt in real time. When a prospect raises an objection, you don’t need to check with the product team; you are the product team. When they ask for a specific feature, you can make decisions on the spot (although you probably shouldn’t!). When they want to understand the technical nuances, you can explain them with authority.

More importantly, you’re selling passion, not just product. Early customers aren’t just buying your solution; they’re buying into your vision. They’re taking a punt on a company with little track record, and that requires a level of conviction that only comes from the founder. No hired salesperson, no matter how experienced, can replicate that genuine enthusiasm for the problem you’re solving.

The Seductive Trap of Early Sales Hires

I get it. You’re drowning. Between product development, fundraising, team building, and trying to close deals, there aren’t enough hours in the day. The idea of handing off sales to someone else is incredibly appealing. But this is precisely when most founders make their most expensive mistake.

Salespeople are, almost by definition, exceptionally good at selling themselves. They’ll walk into your interview with impressive CVs, smooth presentations, and compelling stories about their previous successes. They’ll paint vivid pictures of the revenue they’ll generate and the deals they’ll close. And you, desperate for relief from the sales burden, will convince yourself they’re exactly what you need.

But the thing about great salespeople is that they excel at scaling proven processes, not creating them from scratch. They need target customer profiles, validated messaging, objection-handling scripts, and a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t. If you haven’t figured these out yourself, you’re asking them to do something they’re not equipped to do.

The Six-Month Financial Disaster

When the wrong salesperson doesn’t work out - and they often don’t - it’s not just the lost salary you’re worried about. The true cost of a bad sales hire can reach six figures, sometimes seven. You’ve wasted precious runway, damaged relationships with prospects who had poor experiences, and potentially set back your sales efforts by months. And in a world where a Lovable can hit $100m ARR in 8 months time is money.

But the financial cost isn’t even the worst part. The opportunity cost is what really stings. During those six months you spent managing an underperforming salesperson, how many deals could you have closed yourself? How many customer insights did you miss? How much product development was guided by secondhand feedback instead of direct customer conversations?

Even worse, hiring too early often creates a false sense of progress. You think you’ve solved your sales problem when you’ve actually just created a new, more expensive one. Meanwhile, your burn rate increases, your runway shortens, and you’re further from product-market fit than when you started.

When Cultural Fit Goes Wrong

The cultural mismatch between technical founders and traditional salespeople can be toxic. Most experienced salespeople come from environments with established brands, extensive marketing support, and proven products. They’re not used to selling vision and potential; they’re used to selling established value propositions with clear market validation.

When they join your early-stage startup and struggle to close deals, tensions rise quickly. They might blame the product, the pricing, or the marketing support. You might question their competence or commitment. The relationship deteriorates, trust erodes, and eventually, someone has to go. Usually, it’s the salesperson, but the damage to team morale and company culture can last much longer.

The Right Time to Hire (It’s Later Than You Think)

The general consensus among successful founders and investors is clear: don’t hire your first salesperson until you’ve personally closed a significant number of customers and talked to many more. Some folk suggest waiting until you’ve reached a significant annual recurring revenue milestone. Others say don’t even consider it until you’re spending about 20% of your time on sales and are completely overwhelmed by demand.

These aren’t arbitrary numbers. They represent the point where you’ve validated your product-market fit, understood your sales process, and can actually train someone else to replicate what you’ve done. Before that milestone, you’re not hiring a salesperson - you’re hiring an expensive experiment.

Building Your Scalable and Repeatable Sales Playbook

Before you even think about hiring sales help, you need to have these fundamentals in place:

A validated sales process: You should know exactly how long your sales cycle takes, what objections you’ll face, how many touchpoints are required, and what closing techniques work best. This knowledge only comes from doing it yourself.

Clear ideal customer profiles: Not just demographics, but psychographics. What pain points drive them to seek solutions? What triggers their buying process? How do they evaluate vendors? What’s their decision-making process?

Proven messaging: You need to know which value propositions resonate, which features matter most, and how to position against competitors. This understanding develops through countless customer conversations.

Documented processes: Your successful sales approach needs to be written down, teachable, and repeatable. If you can’t explain why something works, you can’t train someone else to do it.

Making the Transition Right

When you finally do hire your first salesperson - and you should, eventually - the process requires careful consideration. Don’t hire someone you wouldn’t buy from yourself. This sounds obvious, but it’s the mistake founders make most often. They get impressed by credentials and experience rather than asking the fundamental question: “Would I trust this person with my most precious leads?”

Consider hiring two salespeople instead of one, so you can run A/B tests and learn what approaches work best. Look for candidates who have experience selling at your price point and deal size, and who have thrived in startup environments. Most importantly, hire someone who genuinely understands and believes in your vision - cultural fit matters enormously in early-stage companies.

Your Competitive Advantage

Here’s what I want you to understand: founder-led sales isn’t a phase you need to grow out of - it’s a competitive advantage you need to leverage for as long as possible. While your competitors are struggling with hired salespeople who don’t understand the product or market, you’re out there having authentic conversations with customers, learning what they really need, and adapting your offering in real time.

Every conversation you have is market research. Every objection you handle teaches you something about your positioning. Every deal you close validates your product-market fit. These insights are invaluable, and they can only come from direct founder engagement with the market.

The most successful technical founders I know didn’t hire their first salesperson until they were absolutely forced to by demand they couldn’t handle themselves. By that point, they had such a deep understanding of their market and sales process that they could train their hires effectively and set them up for success.

The Bottom Line

Stop looking for shortcuts. Stop believing that sales is someone else’s job. If you’re not willing to sell your own product with passion and conviction, why should anyone else? Your technical brilliance is only valuable if you can communicate its worth to the people who need it most.

Yes, sales is uncomfortable for many technical founders. Yes, it takes time away from product development. Yes, it requires skills you might not naturally possess. But it’s also the fastest path to understanding your market, validating your assumptions, and building a sustainable business.

The transition from founder-led sales to a professional sales team will happen eventually, but only when you’ve built the foundation that makes that transition successful. Until then, embrace the discomfort, learn the skills, and remember: nobody will ever be as motivated to sell your product as you are. That’s not a weakness - it’s your secret weapon.

Want some 121 time with me?

I've recently been taking a whole bunch of calls from founders all over the world where either I don’t have the time to work fully on their raise - or just need some specific targeted advice around different areas of their fundraising campaign, be it GTM, market sizing, pitch deck, or whatever.

I've now opened up additional slots, which you can book here.

🤖 AI in fundraising

Fundraising is undeniably time-intensive and often pulls focus from the critical work of building your business. The good news? The landscape of AI tools is rapidly evolving, offering increasingly sophisticated ways to save precious time – whether you're summarising investor requests, meticulously preparing for meetings, or streamlining the management of due diligence materials.

This week, I've been diving into a few platforms that have truly impressed me with their potential to be game-changers for any fundraising effort:

Skarbe -  An AI fundraising assistant that captures and transcribes investor calls, tracks outreach across email, LinkedIn, and meetings, and auto-generates personalized follow-up drafts, all from one dashboard. Perfect for managing dozens of investor conversations without dropping a note. 

Altss - An OSINT-powered platform built to target institutional capital from seed to post-IPO. It provides real-time LP mandate tracking, co-investor insights, and verified contact data, helping founders source and engage with the right institutional investors.

Raizer - An AI tool that matches startups to relevant investors and crafts tailored outreach messages using public data. Great for founders needing fast, personalized investor discovery and outreach.

Interesting Things I Read

Female founders still face bias after failure 

A new NBER study finds that women entrepreneurs receive significantly less funding than their male counterparts after a failed venture, 30% less likely to get funded and raising 53% less capital on average, yet they often achieve higher success rates. Funding disparities persist even after successful exits. (Read)

Political risk threatens renewable infrastructure deals 

The U.S. halted wind energy projects in Rhode Island and Maryland over vague national security concerns, rattling investor confidence in renewable energy and infrastructure financing. (Read)

Silicon Valley launches AI-focused PAC ahead of elections 

With over $100M behind it, a new “Leading the Future” super-PAC—backed by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, is lobbying for pro-AI candidates in U.S. states like California, New York, and Illinois. (Read)

Generative AI is turbocharging startup growth 

An economic analysis highlights how AI is helping startups breach traditional milestones like $1M ARR more quickly, thanks to productivity gains and innovation. (Read)

Founders’ Guidelines

• The Perfect Pitch Deck – Lessons from analyzing 350+ startup decks: the 10 slides that matter most, common mistakes to avoid, and real-world examples of decks that closed rounds. Includes 100+ pitch decks that raised $2B+.
  🔗 View post

  Biotech Beyond the Bench – In early-stage biotech, science is only half the story. This guide unpacks IP strategy, competitive positioning, market access, and exit readiness—plus a practical Data Room Readiness Checklist.
  🔗 View post

  Diligence Works Both Ways – If you’re in term sheet discussions, don’t just let VCs diligence you. Talk to their portfolio founders, research independent feedback, and test how they behave when deals go sideways.
  🔗 View post

  Fundraising is a Funnel, Not an Event – Top-tier VCs invest in <1% of deals they review. Here’s a founder-focused fundraising funnel: how to target the right investors, prep diligence from day one, and build trust in process, not just the pitch.
  🔗 View post

  The Fintech Founder’s Guide to VC – A tactical breakdown of raising capital in one of the fastest-growing sectors: when VC is the right path, how to prep your team and metrics, alternatives like crowdfunding, and navigating term sheets.
  🔗 Read guide

About Raise Like a Pro

Raising a funding round isn’t rocket science. It’s not even brain surgery. But it's incredibly time-consuming, HARD and emotionally challenging.

As a founder, your time is better spent building product, finding product-market fit, signing up customers, and building your team. Yet fundraising demands an enormous amount of your attention and energy.

I've witnessed countless founders struggle with this balance. They get stuck in the cycle of endless pitch meetings, confusing feedback, and the dreaded "no's" that seem to pile up without explanation. Even successful companies like Canva, now valued at $25.5 billion, started with their CEO Melanie Perkins hearing "no" over 100 times before getting that crucial first "yes."

My promise to you

Every piece of advice in this newsletter comes from actual experience: deals I've closed, terms I've negotiated, and strategies I've refined through real-world application.

I'm not here to give you startup platitudes or generic advice. Instead, you'll get practical, actionable tactics that you can implement immediately in your fundraising journey. This is the playbook I use each and every day to help founders all over the world raise money from investors all over the world.

The type of things we have and will continue to cover:

• The actual processes I use to close deals.

• Step-by-step morning routines for effective fundraising.

• Real email templates that get responses.

• Meeting scripts that convert to term sheets.

• Pipeline management techniques that close deals.

• The stuff you really need to know so you don’t get screwed by investors.

The goal? To help you raise money faster, at better valuations, while protecting your interests and your time.

– David

Raise like a Pro is what David Levine does every single day though this business Glenluna Ventures. An exited founder, he raises money each and every day for founders all over the world from investors all over the world.