I’m a Founder. How Much Longer Should I Own Biz Dev?
Short answer: you’ll always be selling.
Longer answer: that doesn’t mean you’ll always be making cold calls.
Dear Level: I’m a founder, and I know I need to own sales and biz dev. But if I’m honest, I don’t really enjoy this part of the work – it’s not as interesting as product, in my personal instance – and I’m also just starting to feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of responsibility on my plate. How long, really, should founders own business development? Is there a world where I can hand this responsibility off and know my business will still grow? – Tired-But-Wired
Dear Tired-But-Wired:
Here's our short answer: you're going to be doing sales indefinitely.
We get it: this might not be the answer our more sales-averse founders were hoping to hear. But if you're founding a business, most of your role is sales and biz dev. Yes, you'll cast the vision for the product and own strategy. But your number one, most common day-to-day task is sales. Take your foot off that pedal and your business will stall.
Realistically, most founders under the $20M ARR mark should spend at least 50% of their time thinking about how the business will grow. Don't expect that percentage to drop, either; if anything, time devoted to sales will likely grow as your company does. When you launch, you'll handle everything from product to HR, but as you hire, look for folks to take on non-sales work so you can double down. Yes, sales responsibilities will remain with you and likely take even more time.
Why? Nobody will be as invested in your business's success as you are. You fell in love with the problem you're solving, and you're the brilliant person behind the solution. There will never be a better evangelist for it than you.
Importantly, though, there is no one right path towards founder-led sales success. Channeling your unique enthusiasm and skill set can turn sales work into an incredibly powerful and joyful part of your business. The trick is to find that alignment. Then practice, practice, practice.
This feels so prescriptive – and I can think of at least eight reasons why it can’t be true. Explain!
We can hear your objections through the ether. We’re sure there are exceptions to this rule – but here’s why, most of the time, those counter-arguments don’t stack up.
1. "This assumes all businesses scale the same way" As product-led growth companies prove, you can grow without sales people. But many product-led companies need intense founder sales early on. And as the PLG flywheel begins to spin, the most successful founders lean into selling the product vision to a diverse range of new audiences: investors, enterprise champions, integration partners, media influencers, and potential buyers.
2. "It undervalues building systems and processes" The best systems come from founders who stay close to sales. If you delegate before closing 100+ deals yourself, you're building systems on theory and your team will inherit a broken playbook you can't fix.
3. "Technical/product innovation requires deep focus" Your innovation is worthless if nobody buys it. Sales conversations are your best product development tool—they reveal what features actually matter and prevent you from building in a vacuum. Sales can be a great way to channel your enthusiasm for what you’re building: great founders evangelize their product all the time, to everyone. That’s selling.
4. "It's inefficient use of equity value" Your equity is only worth $500-1000/hour if the company succeeds. Early-stage founder sales have unmatched ROI because you're learning customer language, refining positioning, and building relationships that compound—delegate too early and you may never get there. Here again, founder passion is a huge value driver. A founder who is over the moon about what they’re building is infectious, and thus an incredibly powerful sales tool.
5. "Different growth stages need different leadership" Sales evolves, it doesn't disappear. At later stages, you shift from individual deals to selling board members, top hires, and strategic partners—but checking out entirely means losing touch with the market reality that should inform every decision.
6. "This conflates 'sales' with 'customer connection'" Nothing reveals truth like someone deciding to give you money. When you're responsible for closing deals, you hear different things than in advisory meetings where nobody has skin in the game.
7. "Burnout is real and founder health matters" Burnout comes from doing the wrong things badly, not from sales specifically. Being good at sales with efficient processes actually reduces stress through predictable revenue and model confidence.
8. "Our bottleneck isn't leads, it's delivery/operations" If delivery is your bottleneck, founder-led sales becomes more critical—you must be selective about customers. You can't delegate "strategic no's" to a volume-compensated salesperson who'll drown your team with bad deals.
Simply put, sales and biz dev work is about maintaining direct contact with the commercial reality of your business. The founders who succeed long-term are the ones who never lose their sales edge, even as the nature of what they're selling transforms.
Ok. I believe you. How do I get my head on straight about sales?
It can be so difficult for founders, especially founders with strong subject matter expertise, to make the appropriate time they need for sales to succeed. To put it simply, sales and biz dev doesn’t always have the same sheen of joy and excitement that working on the product might have. The trick is to find a way to live your passion alongside this non-negotiable. And it is possible to do both. Our best advice:
Sharpen your sales acumen and practice, practice, practice. When you have a replicable process and a proven method in place – which only comes from leaning into sales and learning how to do it better – sales gets less stressful and a lot more fun.
Have a co-founder who is equally as vested, and is good at and enjoys biz dev. This is a dream scenario, and solo-founders obviously don’t have this luxury. But if you know yourself, and you know you’ll need help with sales, finding a sales-oriented co-founder early can make all the difference.
Broaden your understanding of what sales means. It’s not all cold emails and intro calls. It’s also storytelling to investors about the impact of your nonprofit. It’s pitching strategic partnerships with research institutes. It’s about becoming a thought leader who is actively shaping – not just responding to – a market. Sales and biz dev can look a million different ways based on your business, industry, and you – figuring out what’s comfortable for you, and how you can channel your enthusiasm and excitement into business development is the secret to success.
With all of this in mind, when and how do I start building my sales team?
It’s hard to answer that question without knowing more – as one Pro put it, “I would ask a hundred questions depending on your revenue, capacity of owner, capacity of team, etc. before I could really give an answer that’s helpful.”
At minimum, we’d look at these three indicators:
Capacity: If the owner and the rest of the team are working 50, 60, 70 hour weeks, then yes; you need more hands on deck. The human body has limits, and burnout doesn’t facilitate growth.
Change: Are you trying to enter a new market or launch a new product? If so, you may need support for selling the legacy product while founders and senior sales leads focus here.
Growth: Is the pipeline overwhelming your ability to keep up with it?
What’s not necessarily a good indicator: changes to your pipeline and revenue in and of themselves. We see a lot of teams look to hire a sales person when sales become stagnant, drop, or even increase. But before you hire, you need to think hard about what, in fact, you hope a new hire will actually accomplish when they step into the role:
What are you expecting them to do in the first nine months?
Do you have tools and resources to give this person?
Do you have a method, a process, and a support network?
You need all of those things lined up for a CFO to be able to predict revenue and cover the cost of that hire.
What’s this have to do with us, the finance team?
We are your partner in all things revenue, and we can’t effectively do our job — managing the revenue stream — if we don’t have someone with their hand on the pulse of biz dev. We take your market knowledge and translate it into financial strategy and decisions.
When we both understand the revenue engine, we can make smarter bets together: knowing when to invest aggressively, when to pull back, and how to allocate resources toward what's actually working in the market.
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