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GTM lessons from Founding Sales & The 20% close-rate pricing rule

Kieran Ryan

Kieran Ryan

— 3 min read

Validate, Monetize, Repeat.

Peter Kazanjy, author of Founding Sales, on taking your startup from first validation to repeatable revenue.

Peter Kazanjy is a repeat founder who taught himself sales by doing it. He founded TalentBin, a talent search engine and recruiting CRM, and later sold the company to Monster Worldwide. He then wrote the book he wished he had - Founding Sales - to help early teams land their first deals. Today, he’s building Atrium, and in his spare time, he coaches founders on turning demo interest into paying customers.

Over dinner at the Solo Founders Program, he shared how to go from idea to revenue. Here are the three biggest lessons:

1. The GTM of Founding Sales

Peter thinks of go-to-market as a series of steps. Each step forces proof before you climb higher; miss one, and you’re likely to lose your footing.

Step

Description

1. Validated problem

A real person feels costly pain.

2. Working solution (value KPI)

Clear before/after metric.

3. Willingness to pay

Stakeholder who captures upside signs the check.

4. Repeatability

Same pitch works over and over.

5. Abstraction from the founder

Someone else closes deals.

Why it matters:

  • Forces you to focus on must-solve problems.
  • De-risks hiring a salesperson — they have a proven script to follow.
Takeaway for solo founders: Put every prospect through the five steps and document it. If a teammate can close customers by following the same playbook, you’re ready to grow.

2. Stay Close to the Money

Start your pitch with the dollars — how much money the customer will save or make — and only afterward get into the product features.

Play it out:

  • Price the pain. Missed trade? Lost logo? Put a dollar tag on it.
  • Anchor ROI at ~4x. If you save a customer $400K, a $100K price tag will still feel like a good trade.

Why it works:

  • Leading with a clear dollar impact crystallizes the value for the decision-maker and shortens the path to a yes.
Field note: When you solve an urgent painpoint for a customer, deals can close in days. Vanta’s early customers couldn’t book their own revenue until they had SOC 2, so they signed off on Vanta’s $10K package in about five days.

3. Price with Confidence

Peter’s rule: Open with the price you want, discount in an intentional way, and then test higher prices gradually.

How to run it:

  1. Open with the price you want. This signals to customers the value your product delivers.
  2. Discount in an intentional way. Reward early adopters by giving them a time-boxed discount.
  3. Test higher prices gradually. Increase the sticker price for new prospects and track the close rate — if roughly one in five still buys, the higher price holds.

Why it works:

  • Protects margin while still feeling founder-friendly.
  • Gives air cover for multi-year or pre-pay deals without looking cheap.
  • Signals confidence; investors read price increases as a sign of market pull.
Takeaway for solo founders: A good rule of thumb is that if 20% of your first meetings result in a sale, you're in a good spot. People will often brag, "We win 50% or 75% of our deals." That's great, but it means you're charging too little.

Thanks again, Peter, for being part of Solo Founders and sharing your experience with the Program and this community!

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— Julian, Kieran, and the SFP team

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