PLG will kill your startup

I’ve spoken to a lot of founders who gave up last year.

And I’m already seeing signs of desperation in February.

Founders who have pivoted 5+ times in the last 18 months.

Folks who are building product but not getting customers.

They’re frustrated. Even worse, they feel like a failure.

When I talk to them, there’s usually two patterns I see:

1. They avoid sales like the plague

2. They’ve gotten bad advice from their accelerator program about chasing venture scale and getting demo-day ready instead of figuring out how to grow a business (which often leads them to try and scale from day 0, or chase PLG)

The problem with avoiding sales in the early days is that you don’t really figure out the emotional triggers and pains that lead someone to make a change.

And you can’t gauge willingness to pay.

And without focusing on these two things early on, you’re almost doomed to fail.

In this newsletter, we’ll dive deeper into why PLG sucks for most startups, and how to get started on the path to sales.

Table of Contents

• The fallacy of PLG

  • Buyers buy their way, not yours

  • You muddy your positioning

  • There’s no founder magic

  • You learn nothing

• How to get rid of your fear of sales

  • Overcoming the fear of rejection

• Your focus for 2025

The fallacy of PLG

PLG kills more startups than scales them.

Most technical founders I meet hate sales.

They've spent their whole life believing that salespeople are sleazy. I get it, I've been there too.

So they avoid doing sales in the early days of their startup.

They decide to build a PLG.

And end up not talking to buyers.

They code feature after feature. They build landing pages.

They try to launch on product hunt. They do SEO.

But they don't get any customers. So they think their product isn't good enough.

Here's the thing, in the early days, you don't exist. Prospects don't know how to find you.

Your onboarding likely sucks. There's no virality built into your product yet.

You don't know what the value points are yet either. Or what people are willing to pay for.

So you spend all of this time trying to optimize click funnels and launch the right features.

When in reality, you could figure this stuff out on 20 sales calls.

Yet the vast majority of technical founders won't do this. Even if it's what's best for their company.

Just because of their beliefs around sales.

Here’s why PLG is so hard:

Buyers buy their way, not yours

A lot of technical founders go the PLG route because they hate sales.

But reality is, you don’t get to decide how your buyers buy.

And for the vast majority of B2B buyers, they hate PLG.

PLG means a lot of time researching a bunch of free tools to figure out which one is the best. Then it’s a lot of time testing it out, figuring out whether or not their implementation is right.

Then it’s a lot of internal selling to get others on board.

Then it’s realizing that the way you set it up was wrong, and you have to re-do it.

Etc., etc., etc.

And this SUCKS for buyers.

Because you have to deal with execs, and your team. And your work. And meetings. And problems. And fires.

So you rarely have the time to actually mess around with this kind of stuff as a buyer.

And that means going through a short sales cycle, couple demos, is a lot easier than PLG.

So if you’re a technical founder who wants to do PLG to avoid sales, but your buyer is too busy to do PLG and prefers a short sales cycle, you’re already misaligned.

You muddy your positioning

It is really hard to differentiate software on features alone.

And what might seem different to you - because you built it and understand how to use it - might be one of the same for your buyers.

This makes PLG really hard, because buyers don’t know why they should choose you vs the 100 other options they have.

You might be able to clarify some of your positioning through messaging on your website, and maybe through onboarding videos/flows + email drips (although most folks spik these now).

But you won’t be able to ask questions, demo, share your sales story. Which helps a lot in a buying decision.

There’s no founder magic

One of the biggest advantages you have against legacy tools and sales reps is your founder magic.

Most folks who take a chance on an early-stage startup don’t do it because of features. They do it because they believe in the founder. They like your passion. They want to know that you’ve dedicated your whole life to this.

And if you run a PLG, you get no founder magic. Unless you’re onboarding every single self-serve signup (like Kondo did with its first 400 customers).

You learn nothing

Clicking on a button means nothing. Going through a funnel means nothing.

For any of that click analysis stuff to actually work, you need tons of volume. Which you don’t have.

Clicking tells you nothing about the prospect, what pain they have, what emotional trigger led them to you.

Tells you nothing about your messaging, positioning, what alternatives you’re being compared against.

Tells you nothing about use cases, who’s making a decision, what the buying process is like.

Just like a lot of founders get frustrated with email blasting 1000 leads with no responses, PLG is very much the same in the early days.

But doing sales instead of PLG means you have to put yourself out there, and face rejection. And that’s hard.

How to get rid of your fear of sales

I get it, I avoided being in sales for the bulk of my career. Until I figured out that sales wasn’t so bad (when I became a regular B2B software buyer).

I never considered myself a salesperson, even though I've been in sales for years.

Growing up, I hated anything sales. I felt like sales people were pushy, just trying to manipulate you into buying stuff you don't need.

I would rather spend an hour in a store, trying to find what I'm looking for on my own, than ask a clerk for help to avoid being "sold to."

Sales was never in my nature. I was never a "natural born salesperson."

But over the years, my perception changed. Slowly, but it did.

I started understanding the mechanics of sales. And what successful sales looks like in SaaS.

It became even clearer to me when I started buying software. It's hard to buy. And it's getting even harder.

There are too many options out there. SaaS pricing is out of whack for most companies (VCs are forcing price increases for better multiples).

If you do have budget, you have to weigh what's the biggest problem to tackle first, out of all problems. And you have to place a bet on which eliminated problem will lead to the best outcome, out of all possible outcomes. Which is mostly a guessing game.

Then you have others in your company that are trying to do the same. An execs that are trying to allocate resources as best as possible.

And then if you do get approval, you have to go through security reviews, legal reviews, procurement processes. If your procurement person is good at their job, they will crush the vendor in discounts, which will make you feel like an absolute piece of sh*t for treating a sales rep who's helped you like that.

The list goes on.

So my perspective changed. I started realizing that sales is about helping someone make a buying decision. Ideally it leads to you, but not always, and that's OK.

And when you start looking at sales like that, it suddenly doesn't feel pushy or icky anymore.

Will I ever consider myself a salesperson? Probably not.

Will I always do sales? Absolutely.

Overcoming the fear of rejection

One of the biggest fears I see with technical founders doing sales is fear of rejection.

I used to see this a lot with SDRs first getting into sales as well.

It's common. You're used to coding or building. And folks aren't really telling you no.

So suddenly putting yourself out there is going to be scary.

Here's a pragmatic way to think about it though:

1. Sales is a losing game. If you get a 10-20% response rate in your outreach, that's amazing. If you get a 33% positive response, that's amazing. If you get a 25% demo to close rate, that's amazing.

Most people won't need your stuff, or won't buy. Once you understand these ratios in sales, rejection is a lot easier to face, as it feels normal.

2. Separate yourself and your product from the rejection. This is hard to do, since you poured your heart and soul into building your thing. But 90% of the time, when someone says no, it's not because your product sucks. Or you suck as a founder. It's because your messaging sucks.

You haven't figured out the best way to position your product and articulate the value yet. Your messaging trickles into prospecting/outreach, demoing, discovery, pitching, follow-ups, proposals, onboarding, etc. So when they're saying no, 90% of the time they're telling you the messaging is not resonating. Which is completely different than the product sucks.

3. Don't swing the pendulum too far. A lot of founders also fear being salesy, so they avoid being direct like the plague. Which ends up working against them. Folks hate having conversations with strangers that go nowhere. So stay curious, ask your questions, probe for pain, be direct.

Your focus for 2025

So in 2025, go out there and do sales. Speak with folks. Really figure out their pain. Figure out the gaps in the market. Figure out what they’re willing to pay for.

The more you code, the less you’re speaking to prospects who will be paying your bills.

The more you try to do PLG, the less feedback you get.

PLG can work in some cases, if the buyer buys that way. And your time to value is measured in minutes.

Most B2B software is complex, and has a complicated buying cycle. When this is present, it makes PLG 1000x harder.

So as much as sales seems hard and daunting right now (makes sense since it’s a new skill), it will likely be a less bumpy ride than trying to find scale from day 0.

Let me know what you think of the newsletter, or what topics you’d like me to cover. Always appreciate hearing from you :)

For more practical early-stage sales tips, connect with me on LinkedIn.

If you’re looking for help busting through mindset and getting specific with sales tactics, reach out for coaching packages.