piggyback on whoever already has the relationship

It’s very hard to sell someone an iPhone if they’ve only seen keypad phones. They’ll tell you it has problems. They’re used to the keypad. Habit and relationship beat efficiency almost every time, especially in India.

So don’t replace the person they already trust. Sell through them.

An energy startup wanted to displace the factory’s existing audit firm. The factory manager has been calling that guy for ten years. Instead: message every energy audit company in the country and say here’s my product, take 30 percent, sell it inside your existing contracts. You’re learning their business, you’re earning the end customer slowly, and you’re riding contracts you could never win cold. This is how most B2B startups are actually born. Tally did it with chartered accountants. They didn’t sell software to companies. They sold it to the CA, and when your CA tells you what to use, you use it.

A persona-AI startup for creators had the same problem in a different costume. No moat against Instagram, 12 months before Meta does it. The move is not to build creator relationships one by one. Go to the founder of the biggest creator agency in India, get two hours in person, and say: invest 50 lakhs, take a piece of my company, and sell this to your roster. They already have exclusivity contracts with every creator who matters. For two years your revenue is locked in behind their paper. You can’t build that legal machine yourself in time.

Middlemen never do your dirty work for free. Coaching institutes won’t push your app to students because you asked nicely. Give them an affiliate link, 20 percent commission, 10 percent off for their students. The same applies to agencies, resellers, anyone between you and the buyer. Pay them or lose them.

The harder version: give the distributor equity. A cut of revenue makes them a channel. A piece of the company makes them a cofounder who already has the customers.

the call where i said it best

A founder with 1,000 crypto creators on a platform had no demand side. I asked who in crypto spends the most on creators. Anyone doing a token launch, that month. So go to every agency that handles token generation events (TGEs) and say send your clients to me, I’ll cut you in. Then I told him the honest part: nobody in crypto spends on creators consistently. Sign up a thousand football creators instead and go sell to brands who advertise in football. That’s a constant channel.

do this this week

Name one company that already sells to your customer and doesn’t compete with you. Call them and offer them half.

the line to remember

you can’t sell the future without comparing it to the past. or the easiest way is to just piggyback on the past.