If you're going to charge for a product, it needs to be self-serve and frictionless for users. Many startups fail because they rely too heavily on founder involvement for customer acquisition.

To build a successful business model, design your product to reduce costs and friction in the go-to-market process, ensuring it aligns with market needs.

It's important to avoid creating a product that requires excessive consulting time from the founder, as this indicates the product isn't truly scalable. If you're solving a small, rare problem, even a billion people in the addressable market may not be inclined to pay real money for it.

Bottom Up sales start with the user, focusing on building a self-serve product that can be adopted without direct interaction with the company. This approach works well for startups that solve pain points for individuals or small teams, as products need to be easy to adopt and can spread virally within an organization.

Many startups think they can rely solely on self-serve flows and ads for sales, but this approach often overlooks the need for direct sales efforts and effective messaging.

Sales is a numbers game; you need to reach out to many leads to close a few customers.

To succeed, you need to demonstrate that you can effectively sell your product and convince customers, rather than just focusing on product development.

Discounting your product can be detrimental; instead, structure discounts based on value and urgency to encourage sales.

A major downside of Top Down selling is the risk of creating one-off features for large customers, which can lead to consulting relationships instead of scalable products.