224K views · Jul 8, 2024 · 23:07 · 2 HN recommenders · 3 mentions · discussed 2024–2025
Y Combinator partner Pete Koomen, who led Optimizely to $100M ARR, walks through the enterprise sales funnel. Chapters cover prospecting, outreach, qualification, pricing, closing, procurement and implementation.
Why Hacker News points people here: Recommended as a compact, practical summary of enterprise SaaS sales for technical founders.
“I find this video about enterprise sales from Pete Koomen (YC Partner) to be the best summary”HN comment, 2025
“I find this video about enterprise sales from Pete Koomen (YC Partner) to be the best summary”
Best summary of enterprise sales from a YC partner
I’m a YC founder who did 0 to 2M ARR in founder led sales with absolutely 0 sales background. I’m basically a self-learned coder who had to take CEO role, therefore doing sales. I find this video about enterprise sales from Pete Koomen (YC Partner) to be the best summary: this video
“YC posted a pretty good, compact video on enterprise SaaS sales recently”
Compact overview of enterprise SaaS sales lifecycle with resources
The attention grabbing and objection handling pieces are discussed in Never Split the Difference, amongst other ways to negotiate a deal. Basically ask lots of what/how questions until the other party negotiates themselves to your position. The rest of the script is just qualification questions, which you can find written about everywhere if you look up BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) and MEDDPICC (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Paper process, Identify pain, Champion, and Competition). I wish I had a good book recommendation for qualifying, but it’s the easier part of the sales process: you’re just asking questions and listening, setting yourself up for the next stage. Once you know whether the prospect has a problem you can solve, then you launch into the real sale, generally a presentation or demo tailored to the prospect’s problems and goals. YC posted a pretty good, compact video on enterprise SaaS sales recently, which explains the typical sales lifecycle at a high level and contains further resources: this video
“YC videos (e.g.”
I spent the first chunk of my career doing sales (2nd half spent in software engineering). Theres a lot of good books out there but you're going to find a lot of the direct advice to be non-applicable (as I'm sure you can pick up from the comments). Most of the Literature out there is directed at professional sales people, who for the most part are non-technical, have the backing of a marketing org, and are also different than a founder. Anyway, heres a reading list. Most of the trainings I've been a part of were custom built to the org or market, and frankly I learned more from Rules of the Game by Neil Strauss. I did enjoy "the Wedge" training by Randy Schwantz... that one you should do the video not the book. It also sounds like you could use some marketing stuff so I'll throw some of that in there too. In no particular order, and please keep in mind this is off the top of my head: * Influence (the classic) * YC videos (e.g. this video , link , link , etc) * Thinking Fast and Slow * Purple Cow * Clayton Christensen stuff * Spin Selling * Challenger Sale * Guerrilla marketing (for the mental muscle) * Jeffrey Gitomer (basic but useful) * Lean Startup (for positioning) * Charisma Myth * Minimalist Entrepreneur (bits and pieces) * The presentation secrets of steve jobs (just a good book on presentations, framed around Steve Jobs to sell more) For what its worth this question comes up fairly often. It seems like technical people would like a "technical people" guide on how to
