Founder perspective and strategic takes on AI, GTM, and the future of B2B growth.
98 posts
Founder-led sales works right up until it doesn't. The founder closes deals faster than anyone they'd hire — until the company needs to grow beyond what one person's calendar allows. Here's exactly where it breaks and what actually fixes it.
Outreach and Salesloft are the two dominant sales engagement platforms for B2B teams. Both do the same core job — manage sequences, automate outreach, track activity. The differences come down to complexity, pricing, and which type of sales motion each is optimised for.
Most startups structure their sales team in the wrong order — hiring AEs before the ICP is proven, adding SDRs before the message works, or building management layers before there's a team to manage. Here's the sequence that actually works.
Most startups hire their first SDR too early — before they have a repeatable sales motion to hand off. The right time to hire an SDR is when you have a proven message, a defined ICP, and a pipeline problem that's caused by volume, not by not knowing what works.
Cold email has a bad reputation because most people do it badly. The version that doesn't work is real: generic, high-volume, spray-and-pray. The version that does work is specific, researched, and consistent. Here's the difference.
I used HubSpot for years across multiple ventures. I understood it well. When I built Ektie, I made the deliberate choice to build the CRM from scratch instead. Here's the reasoning — and what I learned about why AI-native architecture actually matters.
I sent 100 cold emails manually before automating anything. Not to prove a point — because you can't build an AI outbound system without knowing what good outreach actually looks like. Here's what those 100 emails taught me.
Independent RIAs and wealth management firms do BD through personal relationships and referrals. Systematising it without a dedicated BD team — or without violating compliance rules — is the challenge. Here's the approach that works.
Solo founders in 2026 can ship a full SaaS product in weeks. That part is genuinely solved. What isn't solved: getting anyone to know it exists, trust it enough to try it, and pay for it — consistently, without the founder doing it manually every day.
Commercial real estate brokers operate on relationship capital and market timing. Consistent deal flow requires keeping a large number of contacts warm simultaneously — exactly the kind of work that breaks down without a system.
Insurance brokerages face a specific outbound challenge: the buying cycle is long, trust matters more than speed, and compliance requirements shape what you can say. Here's how to build a consistent pipeline motion that works for commercial lines and P&C.
Orion is Ektie's AI Sales Director. He reviews Morgan's outreach every cycle, writes coaching notes, and escalates to the human when something needs a real decision. Here's what that actually looks like.