All of our Sales articles

Sales

0-$5M: How to Go From Random Wins to Repeatable Revenue

When every deal closes differently, how do you build repeatability? First Round Partner Meka Asonye shares proven tactics from founders and revenue leaders who've solved this exact puzzle.

Sales

0-$5M: How to Identify Your ICP — Lessons from Vanta, Clay, Retool

How do you spot the wrong customer before they burn your roadmap? First Round Partner Meka Asonye digs into how now-massively successful startups cracked the code.

Sales

0-$5M: When, Who, and How to Make Your First Sales Hire

Expert advice from Dropbox, Figma and Stripe on timing your first sales hire, finding the right candidate profile and creating effective onboarding to successfully transition from founder-led sales to a scalable revenue team.

Sales

0-$5M: How to Nail Founder-Led Sales

First Round partner Meka Asonye sits down with founders and first sales hires to unpack 6 specific tactics for learning to embrace founder-led sales instead of avoiding it.

Sales

Introducing 0-$5M

First Round Partner Meka Asonye introduces 0-$5M, a new go-to-market series on First Round Review.

Product

EvolutionIQ Just Got Acquired for $730M — Here's Their Playbook For Building an Enduring AI Business

We sat down with the founding team for the inside story of one of the first major vertical AI exits.

Starting Up

The GTM Inflection Points That Powered Clay to a $1B+ Valuation

How do you create a go-to-market machine that’s able to turbocharge (and then sustain) revenue growth? Clay co-founder Varun Anand shares the biggest lessons from the company's success, with growth advice for both product-led and sales-led startups.

From prototype to the Pentagon: How to find customers in the Dept of Defense | Steve Blank (Hacking for Defense)

Steve Blank created Stanford University's "Hacking for Defense" course, and in this episode he unpacks his playbook for founders building for the Department of Defense and government buyers.

Sales

21 Ways To Shore Up Your Customer Success Org

When operating in a downturn, founders have to make the most out of what they have in order to grow, including their existing customer relationships. This often means shining a spotlight on customer success orgs. To help, we spoke to over a dozen customer success experts for their best advice, pract

Sales

The Most Common Go-to-Market Questions This Expert Gets from Early Founders

Struggling to figure out your startup's early go-to-market? First Round's VP of GTM Emery Rosansky shares her expert advice and tactical templates for narrowing down your ICP, running a successful sales call, and accurate forecasting.

Sales

The Startup’s Guide to Customer Advocacy: How to Get Closer to Your Champions

Customer advocacy is more than just case studies. Kalina Bryant (formerly of Asana, Talkdesk and Marketo) shares tactical advice for turning customers into advocates, with tailored pointers for startups on a budget.

“Everyone wants a silver bullet” — Selling lessons from Sam Taylor, of Dropbox, Quip & now Loom

Today’s episode is with Sam Taylor, VP of Sales and Success at Loom. Previously, Sam was Dropbox’s first enterprise sales rep, and also served as Quip’s first sales leader. In today’s conversation, we dig into the key learnings from each stop in Sam’s career so far.