Jason M. Lemkin advises founders that, even if they dislike sales, they usually must personally close their first ~10 customers. He emphasizes that customers prefer talking to the CEO and that founders typically understand the product and market well enough to be effective in early sales, even without formal outbound or closing skills.
Even if you hate sales, even if you think it's icky, even if you don't like it, as a founder you've 95 times out of a hundred, you've got to find a way at least to close the first 10 customers yourself. You've got to find a way and we could dig into how to do that if you don't like sales. The hack though is that even if you don't like sales, customers love to talk to the CEO. They the customers love it. And here's the other thing. As a founder, you're really good at the product in the market, hopefully even in the early days. So what I mean, so what's important is even if you don't know how to do outbound, even if you don't know how to send a cold email, even if you don't know how to do any of this stuff, and even if you don't know how to ask for a check, even if you don't know how to open or close, almost all founders are a plus middlers.
