Always Be Closing

So we’re hiring a salesman. (I don’t want to speak too soon, but in theory he’ll be officially on board today.)

This is a pretty big step for the company, and most interesting for me: at Barefoot we specifically resisted getting a salesperson.

The logic to this was, in part, “growing too fast will kill the company”. And no matter how much you want to argue it, you know it’s true: growth and stagnation/decline are embody mirror images of almost identical challenges (explosive growth versus not having enough money for infrastructure, for example).

In the BFSW case it wasn’t the horrible margins and infrastructure issues of hosting, it was more along these lines, we feared 1)having to bring on a dozen people of highly variable quality that we then had to manage, etc and 2)how long can we keep that up, keep everyone busy, etc etc.

We talked and talked and talked, and went on endlessly about growth vs stagnation, the challenges of growth, the very real risk that too much growth could burn things out, and so on. We finally decided to do it: it’s better to die winning the fight than running from it.

Of course, there’s so many variables at play here, I can’t even count them. If nothing else, the New Guy could suck as a salesman, or $PRODUCT will be far harder to sell than he thought, or he’ll find some other greener pasture, or he just won’t like it; and we’ll do another round of interviews and keep playing this game.

Still; it’s an exciting but scary challenge, one that I never got to face at BFSW or subsequent tech positions that shall go forever unnamed.