This week, we’re publishing the fourth installment in our new series on going from 0 to multiple millions in ARR. Today's guide tackles one of the trickiest transitions in startup growth: building sales repeatability.
0-$5M: From Random Wins to Repeatable Revenue
Every founder knows the feeling: You just closed another deal, but if someone asked you to replicate it exactly, step-for-step, you’d be at a loss.
Maybe it started with a random LinkedIn message. Then there was that impromptu coffee meeting. A few calls and product demos later (was it three or four?), some back-and-forth on pricing, a last-minute feature request, and somehow — miraculously — they signed.
Now multiply that chaos by your first 10 or 20 customers. Each deal feels like its own adventure, with different timelines, stakeholders and objections.
As you look to what’s next, what probably comes to mind is the same old go-to-market advice you’ve heard before: hire more reps, close more deals.
But without a proven process, adding headcount usually just accelerates your burn rate, not your growth. And when your first 10 deals all closed differently — through warm intros, random inbounds, pure founder hustle and maybe your sister's college roommate with spare budget — it’s tough to figure out where to even start.
That's exactly what First Round Partner Meka Asonye dug into for this month's installment of his 0-$5M series. As one of Stripe’s first AEs who now spends his days supporting pre-revenue founders as they hunt for PMF, he’s focused on crowdsourcing tactical advice to more thoroughly unpack the nitty-gritty GTM details that often get glossed over.
Today, he dives into how successful startups decoded their early sales chaos to find true repeatability, interviewing a stable of operators who've navigated this transition multiple times before, including:
- Sam Taylor (first enterprise sales rep at Dropbox, also scaled GTM at Quip and Loom)
- Mike Molinet (built Branch to $100M+ ARR, now doing it again at Thena)
- Marta Bralic Kerns (founder/CEO of Pomelo Care, early at Flatiron Health)
- Michael Loiacono (has been in the first 20 employees six times, recently heading sales at Testlio)
- Peter Kazanjy (co-founder of Atrium, who literally wrote the book on founder-led sales)
This group shares candid advice about turning scattered early wins into a repeatable sales playbook, including:
- A clear four-step framework for going from early wins to repeatable revenue.
- Practical guidance on avoiding common traps in headcount and compensation, and getting early sales hires to reverse-engineer that founder-led sales magic.
- Plus, a bonus waterfall forecast template from First Round’s VP of GTM.
Thanks, as always, for reading and sharing!
-The Review Editors
Meka’s already covered founder-led sales, making your first sales hire and finding your ICP. Got other GTM topics you’d love advice on? Just hit reply or find Meka at @BigMekaStyle.
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