👋 Hey, Sahil here — Welcome back to Venture Curator, where we explore how top investors think, how real founders build, and the strategies shaping tomorrow’s companies.

• The three sales frameworks every early‑stage founder needs.

• When Waitlists Work and Why They Usually Don’t?

• Raising a seed round 101: Templates, Tips and Strategy to Raise.

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The three sales frameworks every early‑stage founder needs.

Sales at an early‑stage startup often feel like wandering in the dark with a flashlight that barely works. You hear a lot of vague advice: “Just hustle,” or “Go get ‘em!” But when you’re the founder or first salesperson trying to land those critical first customers, what you need are tactics, not motivational quotes.

I came across an interesting post shared by Whitney Sales, founder of ThoughtForge, creator of The Sales Method, and one of the sharpest sales minds. She shared three powerful sales frameworks that I believe every founder should know and use.

So I’m sharing some key points, along with my thoughts on them:

1. Start with your own founder story

Why? Because at this stage, you are the first customer.

According to Whitney, “The inception of any company is inevitably linked to the challenge the founder first faced and addressed. This part of the narrative is too often forgotten, and it’s key to connecting with a customer.”

Before you’ve got fancy logos and metrics, you’ve got your pain and your reason for building the product. Use it.

The Exercise: Use this simple story‑building template to craft a value‑based founder narrative:

“[SUBJECT] [ONCE UPON A TIME], [SITUATION] [CUSTOMER PROBLEM]. [CUSTOMER] and realized [FEATURES OF PROBLEM]. [COST]. [SUBJECT] learned [IDEATION PROCESS]. As a result, [SOLUTION].”

This isn’t fluff. It’s how you relate, build trust, and show the human reason behind your product.

Example: The TalentIQ founder started his first company and lost time and money because a recruiter couldn’t send qualified candidates fast enough. He saw the chaos of 50 tabs open across scattered data sources, and realised recruiters lacked one clean source of truth. That pain led to the product.

You’ve already told this story to yourself, your early hires, and maybe investors. Tell it again, but now to your customers.

2. Tell value‑based customer stories

Why? Because the founder’s story won’t always resonate with every buyer.

Whitney says, “If you only have one customer, extract the elements of their use case that are most relatable to your prospect. A beta customer’s story can be as valuable as a paid customer’s story.”

This is where your product’s real‑world value starts to come through. It builds credibility and defuses objections.

→ The Exercise: Here’s Whitney’s customer‑story framework:

“One of my clients, [CUSTOMER NAME], who is in the same [QUALIFICATION CRITERIA], was having the same problem. When I met with their [TITLE], they mentioned that [CUSTOMER PAIN POINT]. [DETAIL]. We implemented [FEATURE], and enabled them to [BENEFIT]. They saw [RESULT].”

📌 Example: A client had onboarding emails that weren’t working; users dropped off. Whitney’s team implemented behaviour‑based emails that matched user activity. The result? 63 % more conversions and $4.2 M in revenue unlocked.

Even if you have just one beta user, document their story. Get specific. Then build a bank of these stories, segmented by company size, pain point, industry, or tech stack.

3. Structure your sales calls around stories

Why? Because stories make people open up.

Early sales aren’t about pitching features. It’s about using founder and customer stories to get a prospect to start talking. Whitney emphasises: “The best sign a pitch is working? The customer starts asking you questions.”

The Structure: Here’s her proven sales‑conversation flow (Image source: First Round):

1. Start human (5–10 min): Crack a joke. Be real. Show you’re not a robot.

2. Assert the agenda (2 min): “I’d love to understand how you do ___ today, then share how we might help.”

3. Ask value‑based questions (5–10 min): Learn their pain points. What’s costing them time or money?

4. Tell a customer story (2–3 min): Match their pain to a real use case. Share what worked.

5. Go deeper into ROI (5–10 min): Tie their pain to your product’s benefits. Use their own words to frame the solution.

6. Decide or qualify (10+ min): Ask about budget, timeline, and who else needs to be involved (the classic BANT framework).

7. Lock next steps (5 min): Don’t end the call on “we’ll be in touch.” Schedule the next meeting now.

If you’re an early‑stage founder, your sales pitch is not your deck. Your real pitch is your founding story and your first customer win.

Before you have a product that sells itself, you need stories that speak for it.

Whitney puts it best:

“The first sale founders make with these stories is with themselves. Then they use them to hire, raise money, and attract beta users. Scale happens when these stories are passed on to your salespeople.”

If you’re starting from zero, these three frameworks will get you your first few wins. And those first few wins? They’re what unlock everything else.

I highly recommend reading the original article that inspired this summary: https://review.firstround.com/the-three-frameworks-you-need-to-kick-start-sales/

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QUICK DIVES

When Waitlists Work — and Why They Usually Don’t?

Founders love the idea of a waitlist. It feels like growth. The optics are great: exclusivity, buzz, FOMO, and a line of people waiting to get in. But as Gaurav Vohra, former head of growth at Superhuman, explains, most waitlists don’t drive growth at all. They quietly kill momentum.

In his essay “The Waitlist Delusion,” he breaks down what founders get wrong about waitlists, when they actually make sense, and why they usually backfire.

He learned this firsthand running Superhuman’s massive 500 K+ waitlist, which, while great for early buzz, ultimately hurt conversion and slowed growth over time.

When a waitlist actually makes sense

The only valid reason for a waitlist is when you have a supply constraint that prevents you from serving new users properly.

• Hard product constraint: You physically can’t serve more customers (e.g., hardware units, limited compute, unsupported devices).

• Soft product constraint: … (content continues in the original article)

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End of article.