Zero to tens of millions: What I Learned About Early-Stage Sales (And The 3 Things I'm Doing Differently This Time)

‍

I spent 10 years building the revenue engine at Pipefy. In that time, the company went from zero to tens of millions in ARR. I went from their first sales guy to CRO, leading a team of over 200 people in customer services and sales.

At some point during that journey, I took a picture of myself, exhausted in the office. I promised I'd never start anything from scratch again. Then, I took a sabbatical.

It lasted exactly one month.

I’m now six months into the founding team of Camu. I'm applying everything I learned at Pipefy, including doing some things very differently.

So… If I were to do early-stage sales again (and I am), here's exactly how I'd approach it.

The Core Problem: We Never Nailed Our Best Strategy

At first, Pipefy was a horizontal workflow product, which means everyone could use it. That sounds amazing, right? Massive markets, tons of opportunity.

But it was a nightmare from a go-to-market perspective.

It took a lot of time to really nail our understanding around why, where, against who, and for who we were actually so much better.

That inefficiency made the journey a lot more challenging.

If you're spread too thin, there's not a lot of impact you're generating. You want to make sure you're applying energy to the highest point of leverage (where you can truly win).

Here’s how I’m actually doing it: obsessing about three things only. Hopefully, these can inspire you in your early-stage sales journey.

1. Focus: Your Learning Comes First

Find The Smallest Audience You Can Delight

Learning to say no and double down on a very small audience is a superpower at the early stage. It's also very, very hard to do.

There are many distractions because there are many opportunities. You don't know exactly what to go after. If you cave in and try to build a massive product for everyone, it's gonna take time and resources you don’t have right now.

Stop and think: what is the smallest area you can delight and monetize? What is your niche product use case, your first customers?

Try to find that optimal spot of “yeah, we can get this feature for this type of customers, in this industry, with this very specific use case”. That’s your first wedge inside a red ocean.

Why? Because The Wrong First Customers Will Slow You Down

If you get the wrong first customers, they can drastically slow you down.

Some companies make you deploy your scarce resources into a specific demand, somewhere that’s not your highest point of leverage.

“Oh, let's just add one industry to focus on. It's just one more industry, the product is similar...”

We constantly overestimate the amount of stuff we can execute at a high level. We're not good at assessing the exponential impact of trying to do several things at the same time.

One more industry means different content to do, different events to go to, different industry knowledge you need to develop, different competitors you need to understand, different selling value props, different use cases, and different features.

Sit down with your team and discuss.
Can you really do this? Probably.
But applying your energy and resources here…
Is this truly the best place you can go?

Everyone has a bunch of cool logos on their website. No one cares. What's really important is that you have true use cases and customers that have a lot of impact (working with that customer makes your product better for your target audience).

A Real Example

We had this same debate at Camu, when a famous enterprise knocked on our door. We decided we'd be better off applying our development resources to nail 5-10 features that a smaller audience of mid-sized companies would find way more valuable.

Instead of marrying with this large company that would have lots of requirements and we wouldn't delight, we could move much, much faster with a small audience we could actually win.

At Camu, we drastically decreased the hunting ground. We accelerated product development to really delight a very, very small pocket of customers: literally companies that have one range of revenue, that are on one ERP and one version of that ERP. SAP Business One customers.

It's very specific. But why? Because we created a hypothesis and found a very specific and underserved audience with an open door. Those guys don't have a lot of alternatives, and we can articulate why we are a lot better.

In the beginning, it sounds counterintuitive. You're talking to people in different ERPs, and everyone has the pain. You think, “Oh, there's so much opportunity, maybe we could sell to everyone.”

But the reality is that, when you double down and start to accelerate product development on that very specific group and understand their very specific pains, the level of credibility you generate is incredible.

Your customers understand that, “Hey, these people truly understand what my pains are and what I need, they’re actually building this for me.”

That gives you delight. Use cases. Impact that can be shown.

A Small Note: Don't Optimize For Pricing Right Now

After you get your first batch of customers, it’s normal to be caught up on these opportunities and stick to the pricing that’s working. After all, if you don’t, you risk not having any revenue.

In the early days at Pipefy, we went to our first investor to discuss pricing. He said something that changed my perspective about early-stage pricing.

He told us to break customers into four buckets and throw a different price at each. When I said that wasn't nice, that customers would get frustrated, he said: "Man, if someone gets frustrated, you just give them Pipefy for free for the rest of their lives. You're thinking the wrong way. Just optimize for learning. The revenue from those first customers doesn't really matter. What you should be optimizing for is to learn as fast as you can."

2. Leverage: Know Why Would Someone Be Crazy Not to Use Your Product

A couple years ago at Pipefy, we worked with a mentor who used to be the CRO at Airtable. He made this provocation: "Why would people be crazy not to use your product?"

You kind of get caught off guard. It's not the question you're used to thinking. It’s a whole different level of understanding value.

Finding Where You're 10X Better

Pipefy was a horizontal workflow solution. Why would people be crazy not to use us when we competed against so many players?

But at some point, we realized that, for large companies dealing with small, fragmented workflows across business areas, Pipefy was by far the best alternative.

There was much less dependence on IT, bringing a lot more autonomy for business. It was a strong value prop for both teams. And the cost of deploying was so much lower.

But it took us a while to understand this very specific area where we could articulate that we're the place to go, where we could say, "for this type of problem, in these types of companies, we can articulate that we are just so much better."

A Real Example

Here's the real story of what happened when we found our focus at Camu.

Three different funnels:

Discovery phase: 100 conversations, 3 turned into real opportunities, 2 closed deals. 2% full funnel conversion.

After refining our ICP: 30 conversations, 12 open opportunities, 5 closed deals. 17% full funnel conversion.

After focusing only on SAP Business One: 17 conversations, 12 opportunities, 6 closed deals. 35% full funnel conversion.

That's 17X better. The difference of finding this or not finding this is literally needing 500 versus 31 calls to close your first 10 customers. It can be extremely inefficient. Pipefy had a little bit of that, because we took some time to find where we could articulate our value super strongly.

A Small Note: No Delta, No Deal

I love this concept: If you can't articulate the delta between their current scenario and their future scenario, and why this delta matters, you're gonna have a lot of trouble.

If you hear "we need a more customizable solution," that's not business impact.

Ask: Why is an inflexible solution a problem?

They might say, “Because I always need to ask for a consultant to tailor it to my specific needs, and that delays my processes, and I end up spending a lot of money and time.”

Okay. Now you're getting closer to the deal.

Nobody gives a sh*t about your cool features: flexible, easy to use, great UX, etc. People wanna buy your product because it reduces cost, helps them sell, whatever it is you’re actually solving.

When we talk about explaining business impact, we're literally trying to get to: this is how you're making money, this is why this investment makes sense, this is how I make your life better.

A Quick Hack: Build an ROI Wizard

I literally built a custom GPT that is an ROI wizard. I throw in the transcript of the call (with some instructions), and as an output, it helps me generate ROI estimations. When you're a one-man army trying to sell on your own, everything you can do to optimize and move fast helps.

3. Demand: Build the Foundation of Your Demand Gen System

Honestly, if you haven't nailed the previous two, you probably shouldn't be spending a lot of time here. Spend a lot of time trying to generate a lot of demand when you haven't nailed who is the ideal persona is and… you're gonna end up in that scenario of having 100 conversations to close two.

It's much better to spend a little bit more time and really nail your focus and leverage first (your fast-moving water). A space where, for every person you talk to, you have a decent chance of converting, because you can truly explain why it matters for them.

But if you’re ready…

Driving demand in the early stage is literally a scientific project: have a few hypotheses, make small bets, measure what's working, double down.

A Real Example

I started doing cold outreach on LinkedIn for Camu, and that turned out to be very inefficient. In today's world, everyone's inboxes are completely filled with shallow outreach and a bunch of crap.

,You gotta lead with value. Very simple example: we sponsored an event for tax professionals that gave us 15 or 20 invitations. We leveraged that to invite people who had never replied to our outreach. We said, "Hey, actually have an extra ticket for this event. You wanna join? I'm inviting people operating in companies that are SAP Business One."

Everyone replied. In the end, we understood that the most efficient strategy was building tailored messages with early benefits, then sending them only to companies in our selected audience.

Don't get married to one strategy from the beginning. Make plenty of bets, understand what's working, and only then move on to allocating time where it matters most.

Final Thoughts on Early-Stage Sales

I really like this quote: "It's not what you don't know that gets you in trouble, it's what you know for sure, but just ain't so."

Keeping a super humble and open mind in the early days is super important. When you're too sure about something… That's when you close yourself to doing benchmarks, iterating, testing, listening to customers, and finally learning.

Most people are polite and not direct enough, especially in Latin America. They're not gonna say that your product sucks. They're gonna say, "Ah, this is interesting, this is cool."

You go out of that call saying to yourself that they liked it. (We also often think that our baby is prettier than it really is.)

But true validation comes from you leaving the call seeing that they want to buy, implement, and just get this thing going for them. This is what you're looking for.

At Camu, we're looking for this from day one.
The difference is night and day.