Design Partners - What Does It Look Like After Your First Customers?

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How should a founding team think about that work in their early days? It's funny you ask that, because i think it is one of the things that often gets most overlooked. You probably don't yet have a customer's success function built out, but maybe every first five or ten customers may be. So an air we haven't yet explored is what great looks like after you have your first few customers.

Today’s episode is with Meka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital. This week marks the one year anniversary since he joined, making the transition from seasoned GTM leader to full-time early-stage investor.

Prior to First Round, Meka served as the VP of Sales & Services at Mixpanel, where he ran the more than 100-person global revenue team and owned the customer lifecycle from first website visit to renewal. Meka also spent four years at Stripe as it scaled from 250 to 2000 people and matured its sales org. When he first joined in 2016, he served as one of the payments company’s early account executives, leading their first attempts to go upmarket and land enterprise logos. For the next three years, he headed up Stripe’s Startup/SMB business.

In today’s conversation, Meka starts by digging into his playbook for founder-led sales, from what a great first customer conversation looks like, to how to self-diagnose what went wrong. He also shares advice for founders making their first hire, including the leveling mistake that’s easy to make, and what to ask in the interview and in reference calls. He also offers thoughts on comp and the leading indicators to look for after onboarding.

We then dig into structuring early pilots, from what makes for a good design partner, to how to make sure your ICP is well defined enough. We also cover helpful tactics for customer success, which Meka finds is often the most overlooked aspect of go-to-market. Throughout the conversation, we also touch on how Meka’s experiences have translated into his first year as a VC. We end on his advice for startup folks looking to transition into venture.

To read more of Meka’s go-to-market advice for founders, check out his article in the First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/this-gtm-leader-turned-investor-crowdsources-early-lessons-from-stripe-figma-and-more

You can follow Meka on Twitter at @BigMekaStyle. You can email us questions directly at review@firstround.com or follow us on Twitter @firstround and @brettberson.