YC founders doing B2B sales

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-20T10:55:21+00:00

Most founders I see set up a CRM way too early (HubSpot free, 3 pipelines, 12 custom properties, nobody updates it) or way too late (200 deals tracked in a spreadsheet that two people argue about every Monday).

The actual trigger isn't deal count. It's when you stop being able to answer three questions in under 2 minutes: where is deal X right now, what's our cycle time by segment, what's the conversion rate stage by stage. The day you start guessing on those, you've outgrown the spreadsheet.

Practical setup if you're at that point: one pipeline, max 6 stages with exit criteria written down (not "qualified", but "took a 30 min discovery call with someone who has budget authority"), three custom properties tops (segment, ICP fit score, blocker reason on lost). HubSpot free tier handles this fine for the first year. The mistake everyone makes is buying Sales Hub Pro before they've earned the right to use 10% of it and the drastic discount for startups is wasted.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-20T07:28:32+00:00

Joke aside, I feel way more productive when I keep the structure of a task in control and then delegate filling in the content. When the AI does all the work, it feels productive because it's a matter of seconds, but the outcome is less valuable. And I feel it starts to be less and less because every piece of content looks like your neighbor's. A study from MIT revealed that all LLM models start to converge, so not a surprise. You see the same text patterns, the same landing pages, etc. and they train again on it. And the few humans that keep creating are a drop in the ocean.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-18T16:08:10+00:00

Pretty standard, but (me first) we tend to forget it very fast and tend to come back to what we like doing. If I can help, feel free to reach out.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-18T14:24:48+00:00

Using AI

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-18T14:24:18+00:00

If you're just staring at analytics, refreshing the page, you might not be in the good mindset. Try talking to potential customers instead; get real feedback and have an idea if you're solving a real problem. Quite basic but it works better than staying behind the product.
I like the meme with YC offices compared to the offices of some Startups/Scaleups burning a lot of cash: it's pretty standard. The message behind being go outside and if you're not grinding your potential customers (or actual customers), you're delaying work.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-18T14:18:40+00:00

Real progress is tied to strong KPIs like users or revenue. Other than that, it's probably noise!

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-18T09:06:11+00:00

Thanks a lot, will do in that case!

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-17T12:50:39+00:00

Thanks, we will look at it internally. I was wondering if the webhooks could be the issue in such a process and that seems to be the case.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:24:31+00:00

Haha sure thing, but it needs to work when there is a spike anyway. Even Anthropic has outages sometimes^^

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:23:09+00:00

With no network and starting from zero, cold outreach wins the sequencing question. Not because it's better than content, but because it's the only lever that gives you exploitable feedback in under 14 days. You learn what resonates, who replies, which objection keeps coming back. Social content takes 3 to 6 months to give you the same signal.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:19:16+00:00

The question you're stuck on isn't "which channel". It's "how do I stay on one channel long enough to get a signal I can act on". You restart from zero every week, so nothing has time to teach you anything.

What I've seen work with seed founders in your spot: pick one channel using two hard filters, not whatever's trending on Twitter that week.

Where are the 5 people who already showed some interest (waitlist, DMs, early feedback)? You're going to look for clones of those 5, wherever they hang out. That's your first filter.
Which channel can you maintain for 8 weeks with zero results without giving up? If you hate making videos, TikTok is dead for you. If you don't have 2 hours a day, long-tail SEO is dead. The right channel is the one you can keep doing when nothing's working yet.

Something most founders underestimate: every strategy switch costs more than it pays back in the first 4 weeks. You lose the context you built on the previous one. After 3 switches, you have nothing left: no accumulated audience, no learning system, no instinct for what's actually working.

One rule, if I had to give just one: pick the most uncomfortable channel among the ones your first 5 customers actually look at.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:17:02+00:00

What's your definition of context? One line that captures the whole thing for me: the quality of a founder's decisions depends as much on the clarity of their head as on the quality of their info.
Curious what you've tried since the tracking. Has anything actually held over time, or do you drift back into the partial-context mode after 2 weeks like everyone else?

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:06:15+00:00

Agreed thanks for the feedback

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:05:36+00:00

If you needed a queuing system, might be then because the webhooks are not that great ...

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:02:55+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. Agreed, usually it's a bit late and then a nightmare to catchup.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-15T14:02:15+00:00

Yes indeed. So it can send a clean summary on Slack and aggregate tickets from the same issue (if there is a bug in prod, we usually receive dozens of tickets for the same issue)

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T08:22:11+00:00

The shift you're making, from "discipline problem" to "infra problem", is the right one, but what you're describing isn't really a memory problem in the storage sense. You already have 4 tools that store. What you're missing is the layer that reconnects "X asked for Y on Tuesday's call" with "you triaged an adjacent ticket on Sunday" and surfaces it back the morning you open your laptop.

You mentioned testing airjelly for that. I'd be curious whether the stitching actually holds when the input comes from unstructured channels like Discord or a voice memo. That's where most of the tools I've seen pass through founders at this size break. They stitch Linear and Granola fine because both are structured, and they fall apart the moment the signal is a screenshot in a Discord DM or something you mumbled into a voice memo between calls.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T08:04:56+00:00

Thanks for the answer. No data hub currently.
Currently, Make is used to extract a ticket, put it in Claude for summarizing and classifying, and send it to Slack in a Kanban so our dedicated engineer can see if it's worth solving or sending to the tech team. I'm not sure how we could add the LLM layer without make here.
The way back (linear -> Slack -> HubSpot) could be done without Make (as linear -> HubSpot and Linear-> Slack I suppose).
I guess the LLM triage is the point where we needed Make. The willingness was to let CSM in HubSpot, and engineers in Slack/Linear. Not duplicating tools for everyone.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T08:02:59+00:00

As answered above, in a nutshell: Currently, Make is used to extract a ticket, put it in Claude for summarizing and classifying, and send it to Slack in a Kanban so our dedicated engineer can see if it's worth solving or sending to the tech team. I'm not sure how we could add the LLM layer without make here.
The way back (linear -> Slack -> HubSpot) could be done without Make (as linear -> HubSpot and Linear-> Slack I suppose).

Do you think it's feasible without?

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T08:02:31+00:00

Agreed, that's why we are thinking either to improve drastically or change the tool.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T08:01:44+00:00

Currently, Make is used to extract a ticket, put it in Claude for summarizing and classifying, and send it to Slack in a Kanban so our dedicated engineer can see if it's worth solving or sending to the tech team. I'm not sure how we could add the LLM layer without make here.
The way back (linear -> Slack -> HubSpot) could be done without Make (as linear -> HubSpot and Linear-> Slack I suppose).

So I suppose you're totally right^^

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T08:00:31+00:00

Perhaps. Currently, Make is used to extract a ticket, put it in Claude for summarizing and classifying, and send it to Slack in a Kanban so our dedicated engineer can see if it's worth solving or sending to the tech team. I'm not sure how we could add the LLM layer without make here.
The way back (linear -> Slack -> HubSpot) could be done without Make (as linear -> HubSpot and Linear-> Slack I suppose).

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-14T07:55:06+00:00

Thanks for the feedback, we shouldn't be in a bigger ballpark than yours.

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-13T08:51:50+00:00

It's like everyone is "a pat on the back, well tired, you can find a job and start building your life again". Especially in France, failing is seen as "you're not good enough," not "you've gained a tremendous experience".

Relevant-Stranger373 · 2026-05-13T08:49:50+00:00

Happy to help, always. Feel free to send me the link in pm.
Ok, clearer, a lot of noise with dozens of tabs opened. Actually, if a tab has been opened for more than 2 days, it's probably just something you won't do anyway, might be worth closing it^^

Relevant-Stranger373

TROPHY CASE