Study the marketplace. Segment it into different customer types. Determine which segment is the least satisfied with their current solution and for whom your solution is the best fit. Concentrate all your sales and engineering efforts toward this segment. Land a few of these customers. Continue to focus on this segment until you dominate it. Only

The greatest risk of a startup is not that they moved too slowly in dominating the entire marketplace, but rather that they spread their scarce resources too thin and ended up securing few or no customers at all.

Generally, a qualified lead is one that feels the pain point that your product is solving, has the desire to solve that pain point, and has the power to purchase your product.

Generating leads is a game of breadth: it requires emailing and talking to a lot of different leads to filter out the nonqualified ones as fast as possible. Closing deals is a game of depth: it requires building deep relationships and understanding with the qualified leads in order to close the deal.

A recruit wants to feel loved. The easiest way to accomplish that is to have a fast process from start to finish. Each day of delay sends the message “We don’t have conviction about you.”

Think of yourself as a biographer (positive), not an investigative journalist (negative).

While it may feel difficult to say no to people, it is disrespectful to let them linger. The vast majority of people prefer a quick no to a slow one, or worse yet, no response at all.

Recruiters are not as effective as your own network. To be effective at all, recruiters need to know and understand your company and product. It is pointless to engage recruiters unless you bring them in, give them full access to your scorecards, and share every detail of your reaction to the candidates they propose.

each minute you spend with a candidate you don’t hire is a minute that you aren’t spending with the candidate you want to hire.