When should I hire my first salesperson?

When you have closed enough deals yourself to write down how, and you have more qualified pipeline than you can work. Hiring before that asks the hire to invent the playbook.

How do I count CAC when founders do the selling?

Include a fair cost for founder time. Leaving it out makes CAC look far better than it will be once you pay someone to do the job.

The nine GTM dimensions

The go-to-market engine: from founder-led sales to repeatable

The go-to-market engine is how the company finds, wins, and pays for new customers, and it matters because investors fund growth they believe can repeat without the founder in every deal. Most first companies start with founder-led sales; the question is when that becomes a process someone else can run.

The parts of the engine

Pipeline is the qualified opportunities in front of you. Conversion is how many become customers, and how fast. Cost is what sales and marketing spend to win each one. Together they say how much new revenue a dollar of go-to-market spend produces.

Founder-led sales is a stage, not a plan

Founders sell well because they know the product and can change it on the spot. Write down what works while you do it: who you call, what you say, what objections come up, what closes. That record is what your first sales hire starts from.

When it is repeatable

Signs that the engine can run without you in every deal:

Someone other than a founder has closed deals from the same playbook.
Pipeline comes from a source you can increase on purpose.
CAC payback is short enough that growth does not drain the bank.

Key takeaways

Pipeline, conversion, and cost make the engine.
Write down the founder-led playbook as you run it.
Repeatable means someone else can close from the same playbook.

Questions founders ask

When should I hire my first salesperson?: When you have closed enough deals yourself to write down how, and you have more qualified pipeline than you can work. Hiring before that asks the hire to invent the playbook.
How do I count CAC when founders do the selling?: Include a fair cost for founder time. Leaving it out makes CAC look far better than it will be once you pay someone to do the job.

Score your company on the go-to-market engine

Rate how repeatable your go-to-market is, beside the other eight dimensions, in a few minutes. Your own view, unsigned, to test against pipeline and payback.

Start your GTM Pressure Test

Free calculators for the numbers in this lesson, each with its formula and a worked example.