Problem · Startups
We need a pipeline before we can justify a sales hire.
You have a product, a runway, and a board that wants to see the top of the funnel move before it funds the bottom. The conventional answer is to hire an SDR. The SDR inherits an empty demand environment, ramps for four months, and leaves in fourteen. Build the environment first, at a price that fits the model, and hire the closer into a full calendar.
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Kinetic at $10,000 a month plus ad spend replaces the first marketing hire and the first SDR: the site, the content, multiple campaigns, and one outbound seat with a monthly meeting number you can paste into the board update. Pricing is published so the cost line is in the model from day one.
Why the SDR hire fails at this stage
An SDR loads to $70,000 to $90,000, ramps three to four months, and average tenure sits well under two years. They arrive to no list, no sequences, a website that describes features, and no content to send after a call. They spend a quarter building marketing and a quarter selling into silence, and the board sees a salary line with no pipeline line. Then you start over, with the same empty room.
What to build, in order
First, a site that says something a buyer can verify: the problem, the price or a range, the proof, the people. Second, one page per question your buyers ask, so the prospect who looks you up finds an answer rather than a mission statement. Third, one Google Ads campaign and a landing page per audience, read weekly by a person. Fourth, a list built from real data and an outbound seat working it with a meeting number in writing. Each step makes the next cheaper, and all four together are what the future sales hire will need on day one.
Rent the seat, keep the close
The outbound seat prospects, qualifies, confirms, and briefs. The founder takes the meeting, because founder knowledge closes and prospecting wastes it. When the seat books more meetings than the founder can take, usually around $3 million to $5 million in revenue, hire an account executive who closes into a full calendar with documented runbooks. That hire works because the room is no longer empty.
Questions on this problem
A 90 day ramp with deliverables in writing: pages live, campaigns at a stated cost per lead, and at Kinetic a monthly meeting number. Paste the agreement into the update and report against it.
Yes. Kinetic needs a closer on your side. Pre revenue, Baseline at $2,500 gives the company a voice; seed with budget, Catalyst adds paid demand.
After the ramp the engagement is month to month. Most startups keep Baseline running through a raise because visibility compounds and restarts slowly.
George Stoff, Founder and Lead Engineer
Thirty years building software, brands, and demand. On every account.