Jesse Pujji explains how founders can handle technical stakeholders who block deals by threatening to build solutions in-house. Request a private pre-meeting with the C-level executive to set expectations, explain what the tech team will likely say, and position yourself as the expert on the agenda.
We get intros through the CXO of a business. So CEO, COO, they always bring in-house tech person. And then when they see our product, they're either threatened because it's better than anything they've done in the past 2 years, or they say, let's try building this in-house. I'm not sure how to get past that.
The best firms in the world manage attendees very carefully. Like they think a lot about who's going to be in the meeting, what's going to be said, how it's going to be said. One version of it is if you are getting a C-level intro, sometimes you're the founder, I assume. Yeah. The founder has some unique rights when they're selling, right? That they can ask, hey, why don't you and I talk for 15 minutes first? You kind of go, look, this is what we do. I'm gonna tell you right now, your team is gonna have this kind of reaction. And you, you start to build trust by being the expert in exactly what's about to go down.
