One of the most important jobs for the Founder/CEO of an early stage startup is selling. We are talking to prospects, pitching the solution, gathering feedback, closing deals, and building the foundation of a sales process. When we start to see early success, our natural inclination is “This is working! Yes! If only we just could clone me so we could go faster…”
It’s at this point in the story where many founders make a critical mistake – a mistake I have personally made over and over again. We hire the “business hacker” – a hungry, ambitious, inexperienced person who we believe we can train in how to pitch, how to do cold outreach, and if they are good, scale from individual contributor to our future sales leader. We imagine that they will reduce our workload and enable us to sell more. Perhaps this person has some previous experience as a sales rep, but has never built a sales team or process from scratch themselves. Or, this person may have aspirations to be a founder – i.e., the “clone” that the CEO was hoping for.