How do technical founders actually sell their product?
Technical founders excel at building products rather than driving sales, leading to wasted months with unreliable sales partners and no closed deals. Because they are comfortable making things rather than finding customers, they struggle to get people through the door on their own.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
- 1Learning to sell independently through outreach and trial-and-error
- 2Hiring a co-founder with sales expertise
- 3Partnering with a sales professional or enterprise salesperson
- 4Partnering with someone who understands advertising and content creation
- 5Partnering with an account executive or sales person for equity or high commission
- 6Running a small private beta with a tight group
- 7Reaching out directly via cold emails, LinkedIn, or coffee meetings
- 8Manually onboarding users and offering free data migration or heavy discounts
- 9Using Excel to record, analyze, and summarize sales calls
In their words
Unedited, most upvoted first, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I build, I don't sell.”source ↗
“I've spent the last 2 years building a CRM for entrepreneurs and small businesses. I'm a technical developer, I really love the product, and I know it has potential, but I have zero sales skills and I have no idea where to start.”source ↗
“tried bunch of free subscriptions, always ended up going back to my excel.”source ↗
“Also havent yet sold anything.. But did lots of discovery but cannot convert”source ↗
“went the sales partner route first, cost me 6 months and nothing closed.”source ↗
“There is some unclear psychological barrier between me, and selling and advertising.”source ↗
“I don't have the impulse to try to convince people, the idea scares me, I dont feel like I have the justification to take peoples money”source ↗
“Instead of being motivated to GTM, I feel an intense friction that makes it incredible hard to act and probably makes me see this wrong.”source ↗
“I am much more comfortable making things but I guess that alone does not really get customers through the door.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 6How to launch a physical product with zero audience
- 8How to figure out what product to sell online
- 4Why are software demos so long and boring?
- 2How to automatically deliver digital files to buyers on Amazon and eBay
- 4Why am I paying a monthly fee to sell software for commission?
- 2How to structure commission for lead generation contractors