The "Would I Buy From Them?" First-Rep Test
Hire your first two sales reps on one gut criterion: would you buy your own product from them?
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 95%
Founders' first sales hires fail because they optimise for logos on a resume (Twilio, Cloudflare, Snowflake) instead of the only signal that predicts performance in a pre-scale company: whether the rep can actually explain and sell your specific, feature-poor product. Lemkin's test is to interview roughly 30 candidates, ignore background, deal size and industry pedigree, and hire only the one or two you would personally buy your own product from. Because early leads are scarce, a mis-hire who burns them can kill the company.
Origin
Jason Lemkin's own experience as CEO/co-founder of EchoSign (later Adobe Sign), where his first rep — recently let go from another startup and living in his brother's garage — was the only candidate out of 30 who could describe the customer problem, and went on to close the company's first five-, six- and seven-figure deals. Lemkin has since repeated the pattern across his SaaStr portfolio.
Core principles
- 01Founder-led sales first: close the first 10 customers yourself before hiring anyone.
- 02Hire when leverage breaks, not before: once >20% of your calendar is sales, you need reps.
- 03Hire two reps, never one — with one rep you have no A/B test on the human variable.
- 04Resume pedigree is noise; product fluency and trustworthiness with a precious lead are signal.
- 05Look for 'pirates and romantics' — quirky, slightly over-qualified people who love a feature-poor product.
- 06Reps still need a couple of years of B2B sales experience and enough maturity that you can hand them a lead unsupervised.
How to run it
- 1
Close the first 10 customers yourself
As founder, personally sell the first 10-20 customers, however icky it feels. This is what produces the repeatable pitch, the objection list and the 10x feature story that a rep will later need.
Pro tip Prospects love talking to the CEO — early adopters will take a call from you that they would never take from a Salesforce rep.
Watch out If your first customers pay $5,000 and demand hands-on help, that is your DNA. Declaring yourself PLG to avoid sales is how a $5M ARR company shrinks to $1M.
- 2
Trigger the hire on the 20% rule
When more than 20% of your time is consumed by sales calls, hire. A founder-CEO should be spending roughly 20% on sales and 20% on recruiting; past that threshold your calendar dies without leverage.
Watch out Hiring reps before you can articulate a repeatable process just outsources your own confusion.
- 3
Interview ~30 reps and expect a brutal distribution
Source through LinkedIn, contingent recruiters and your network. Expect roughly 20 candidates who did zero prep and did not even visit your website, 8 who are 'sort of okay', and 1-2 magicians.
Pro tip The magicians ask the right questions about the customer's problem, not about territory or comp plans.
Watch out Do not hire an 'okay' candidate because you got tired. Keep interviewing.
- 4
Apply the single test: would I buy my own product from this person?
Discard background, deal size, industry and even whether they were let go from their last job. Ask only whether they explained your product and your customers' problems in a way you actually believed — enough that you would buy from them.
Pro tip Note the precision: not 'would I buy something from them' but 'would I buy MY product from them'.
Watch out The seductive failure is hiring the person with the great logo whom, in your gut, you would not have bought from.
- 5
Hire two, and concentrate leads on the best closer
Hire two reps simultaneously so you can A/B test humans. Give the precious early leads to whoever converts, and root out a mis-hire fast rather than letting them burn scarce demand.
Pro tip Two reps each closing $2M beats twenty reps struggling to close $100K — fewer, better reps is the early-stage default.
Watch out A mis-hire is not just bad for you; six months of failure is bad for the rep too. Move fast and be kind about it.
In the wild
Out of 30 candidates for EchoSign's first sales role, the winner had just been let go by a prior startup and was living in his brother's garage — nobody's idea of the number one rep at Snowflake. But he was the only one who could describe the customer's problem and how the product solved it in a brand-new category.
→ He stayed for a decade, closing EchoSign's first five-figure, six-figure and seven-figure TCV deals, and continued into Adobe after the acquisition.
A founder hires the perfectly-credentialed rep from a category-leading company. The startup generates three leads a month; the founder hands two to the rep. The rep, fluent in ACV and NRR acronyms but not in the product, closes neither.
→ The scarce leads are destroyed and the company's runway shortens — Lemkin's point that 'leads are so precious' and a bad rep can kill the company.
Common mistakes
Hiring for the logo on the resume
Founders get attracted to Twilio/Cloudflare/Snowflake backgrounds and to candidates who fluently speak sales acronyms. None of it predicts whether they can sell a two-year-old product with feature gaps against a bigger incumbent.
Hiring only one rep
With a single rep you cannot separate 'the rep is bad' from 'the market is hard' from 'the pitch is wrong'. Two reps give you an A/B test on the human variable.
Running from sales because it feels icky
Product-minded founders who declare themselves self-serve to avoid a sales motion their customers clearly demand do not become Canva — they shrink. Lemkin watched a portfolio company go from $5M ARR growing 100% to under $1M after firing its sales team.
Is it for you?
Best for
B2B/SaaS founders at $0-2M ARR who have personally closed their first 10-20 customers and are about to make their first sales hires
Not ideal for
True self-serve products where customers sign up with a credit card and never need to talk to anyone — there, hire growth people, not reps
From the transcript
“those first couple reps have to be people you would buy your own product from that's it”
“we're looking for pirates and Romantics in the early days”
“leads are so precious that's what folks don't get”
“you need 20% of each 20% in sales and 20% recruiting nothing else really matters”
From the episode
Building a world-class sales org
Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)