Jon Low Jon Low

Founder-Led Enterprise Sales Notes: Observations Across 40+ Early-Stage Companies

This is a living, breathing compilation of founder-led sales expertise I have organized after working with more than 40 early-stage VC companies (Seed to C) over the past 5+ years. I have further enriched it with transcribed conversations I have had with CEOs who have generated revenues of up to 100MM per year. The patterns of what works and what doesn't are quite interesting. Below, I share these observations. However, they are not to be taken as truth since all heuristics have limitations due to context-specific nuances. 

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Founder Coaching Jon Low Founder Coaching Jon Low

Founder-Led Sales for Early-Stage B2B Startups

For early-stage B2B startups, founder-led sales is not just the default—it’s the differentiator. No sales hire can match your vision, context, or capacity to reframe customer problems at this embryonic stage. This post will guide you through why founder-led sales matters, how to systematize it without losing flexibility, and ways to transition when you’re truly ready. We are big fans of the principle “earn the right to elevate.” especially if you are a startup.

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Jon Low Jon Low

Relationship-Building: The Pitfall of Giving All The Time

Most people think that it is more important to 'give' than take in a relationship. Yes, having a ‘pay it forward’ culture is one of the things that makes Silicon Valley (SV) a special ecosystem. However, it's just as important to 'take' as it is to 'give' too— it must be balanced.

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Jon Low Jon Low

Culture = Patterns of Behavior

if it is not clear what behaviors your company values and expects, then people are left to their interpretations and personal biases of what behaviors are expected of them. Their behaviors could be aligned or misaligned with what you expect. However, they are only doing the best they can with what they know, drawing on their historical experience of what those words mean.

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Jon Low Jon Low

The Emotional Cost of Capital: Reset Your Relationship with Money

Money influences far more than we often admit. It shapes our choices, our self-worth, and our sense of possibility. But most of us carry subconscious beliefs about money that create fear, tension, or limitation—especially in the high-stakes world of startups. In this post, you'll explore a powerful exercise to surface and shift your personal relationship with money—so that you can use it as a partner in creation, not a source of anxiety or constraint. Whether you're a founder, operator, or someone navigating big life decisions, this process helps you trade inherited scarcity for self-authored agency.

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Jon Low Jon Low

The Hidden Messages In Every Emotion: How to Decode What People Are Really Saying

Emotions aren’t noise — they’re structured signals. Beneath every emotional expression lies a pattern, a message, a map of how someone’s internal world is making sense of their experience. Whether it's anxiety, anger, sadness, or hope, each emotion has a logic — and if we learn how to listen for it, we can connect more deeply, ask better questions, and create real psychological safety.

In this post, we explore how to work with emotion as information — not something to fix, but something to understand. We show how common emotional states are built, what they’re trying to communicate, and how you can engage more skillfully with the people around you. Especially when the stakes are high.

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Jon Low Jon Low

Founder Performance: Levers for Excellence

As a founder coach and facilitator, nothing brings me more joy than identifying and working with levers for excellence. What do I mean by that? The conditions upon which their X-Factor reveals itself. In my experience, there is a spectrum of 4 distinct types and we could all generally fall into multiple buckets to varying degrees (more below).

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Jon Low Jon Low

Exponential By Choice: Beyond Conventional limits

Most founders and core teams hit ceilings not because they lack effort or intelligence, but because they’re trapped inside assumptions they haven’t thought to question. Exponential thinking breaks that loop. It’s a way of seeing that turns limits into leverage—helping you dissolve roadblocks, accelerate outcomes, and operate at a scale that looks impossible from the outside. In this post, we unpack the practical tools and mental frameworks that top-performing founders use to think 10x beyond their constraints—and show you how to build that muscle yourself.

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Jon Low Jon Low

Feedback without Fallout: Critique the Behavior Not the Being

You give feedback with the best intentions—but it lands wrong. Your teammate shuts down. Your co-founder changes the subject. Your manager stops asking for your perspective.

When feedback is misread as judgment, even great teams break down. In this post, I break down the 3 essentials that make feedback land with clarity and compassion—so you can build trust, not tension. Whether you're managing, leading, or partnering, this is how you stay honest and connected.

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Jon Low Jon Low

Clarity Before Tactics: 5 Meta-Questions Every Founder Should Ask Themselves

Startup founders are great at moving fast. But when speed outruns clarity, they risk building toward the wrong outcome. What if the thing you think you want isn’t what you actually want?

In this post, I offer five deceptively simple questions I use with founders to cut through noise, reconnect with true intent, and re-anchor to their North Star. These aren’t productivity hacks—they’re mental frameworks that shift your trajectory at the root.

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