When I (or my team) close a sale, there is an amazing feeling, maybe the best feeling in startup life. Because closing any sale is hard, but closing your first 1, or 10 or 50 sales of a product that never existed before is even harder.
The contract is signed and I send the slack notice to let the team know and thank everyone who made it possible. This is the moment of maximum high. The shared feeling of achievement. The first couple of sales this feeling lasted a few hours. Now it barely lasts a few minutes.
What comes after is a feeling of emptiness, an emptiness that you need to fill. This is the language of addiction, but its genuinely how it feels for me. That feeling though is the greatest driving force in our startup. Shipping amazing features, closing rounds of funding and other wins are lovely, but they lack the sharpness of that empty post sale feeling.
If you are an early stage founder and do not feel that emptiness quickly after a sale then there might be a problem. Or you may have a healthier approach to growing your business.
I do know that I do not want to change this. That empty feeling is something I kinda love. It symbolizes that there is a never ending space to go after. The work is never done, a final sale will never happen and everyday is a new day where we drive the startup onwards.
