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- 33 Things I'd Tell My Younger Self About Building To $1M ARR
33 Things I'd Tell My Younger Self About Building To $1M ARR
...he would probably be watching Cars and not paying me any attention
What's up, it's Zayd
Last week someone asked me: "If you could go back to day one of Valley, what would you do differently?"
I made a list. It got to 33 items before I stopped.
Some of this is obvious in hindsight. Some contradicts popular startup advice. All of it is stuff I wish someone had told me before I learned it the expensive way.
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Zayd’s Picks
My favorite finds of the week
On Product
1. Make the thing you sold actually work before building new features
Customers bought based on your pitch. Make that pitch true then add features.
We kept building new stuff while our core product was buggy. Lost 30% of users in a month because of it.
2. Your "aha moment" needs to happen in the first 5 minutes
If users don't get value immediately, they churn. Find your product's "aha moment" and move it as close to onboarding as possible.
3. Don't build trials until the product actually works
Trials when your product is half-broken just burn leads. We delayed trials for 6 months while we fixed core functionality. When we finally launched them, conversion was 3x higher.
4. Design is functional before pretty
Utility beats aesthetics until you're past $5M ARR. Make it work, then make it beautiful.
5. Give creative teams written vision + concrete examples
Don't say "make it modern." Show them three examples of what you mean by modern. Saves weeks of back-and-forth.
On Sales
6. Be head of sales AND main AE for 24+ months
Don't hire someone to own sales until you've proven the sales motion works. If you can't close deals, nobody else will either.
7. Outbound should be a no-brainer offer
Stop optimizing subject lines.
Start making your offer so good people feel stupid saying no.
8. Set up email + Google Ads day one to test messaging
Even if you don't use them yet. Seeing what messaging converts helps you understand your market.
9. Skip ads if you're low on cash
Ads take serious money to get right. Better to focus on outbound and content until you have budget to burn.
10. Track unqualified calls and no-shows in your dashboard
These tell you if your targeting is broken. If 50% of calls are unqualified, your ICP is wrong.
11. Don't add qualification until unqualified calls become a problem
Early on, take every call. You're learning. Add qualification once you're drowning in bad-fit demos.
On Team
12. You can tell if someone will be good within 7 days
If you're making excuses for them in week one, start recruiting a replacement. It doesn't get better.
13. Integrity > Intelligence > Energy (IIE)
Smart people without integrity destroy companies.
Hardworking people without intelligence create expensive problems.
Honest, smart, energetic people are unicorns.
Hire them immediately.
14. Pay 2-5% premium for employees who post about your company on LinkedIn
Their authentic posts are worth more than paid ads. Incentivize it.
15. 7s kill companies
"Good enough" employees drag down A players. A team of 5 people who are all 9s beats a team of 10 people who are 7s.
16. There's never a good time to replace someone
It always slows down a project. Do it anyway. Every time we let someone go, a key metric improved.
17. Give time to people with skill gaps, not behavior gaps
You can teach someone to use a tool. You can't teach work ethic or integrity.
On Marketing
18. Founder-led brand is non-negotiable
If you're not posting on LinkedIn, you're losing customers daily. Every B2B founder should be creating content.
19. Limited time? Twitter for ideas, LinkedIn for content
Scroll Twitter for interesting takes. Have your team turn them into LinkedIn posts you review.
20. Give everyone on your team a list of 200 questions to answer
Record voice memos answering them. Turn those into posts. This creates months of content in a few hours.
21. Build an ERC library
Evergreen Renewable Content. Save your best posts. Repost winners every 90 days. Your audience turns over, so all the new people haven't seen your best stuff.
On Operations
22. Keep monthly churn under 10%
If churn is higher, your product doesn't work yet. Fix it before scaling.
23. Find your "aha moment" and move it to onboarding
The moment users understand your value needs to happen immediately.
24. Pitch annual/quarterly first
Only offer monthly if they push back. Cash upfront is always better.
25. Add everyone to your email list
Close-lost, no-shows, downloads, replies. Capture everyone. 80% of our customers were on our list for months before buying.
26. Embed calendar on homepage, no forms
Let people book directly. Qualify in the background, cancel if they're not a fit. Forms kill conversion.
27. Stop asking phone/email on forms
Ask which tools they use, which channels work for them. Qualifies AND increases completion rates.
28. Build an "Are We A Fit?" quiz
Routes to booking or rejection. Makes people self-select out. Saves hours of bad-fit calls.
On Growth
29. Create a press kit
Logos, photos, one-pagers in Google Drive. Link it on your site. When people want to write about you, make it effortless.
30. Track "where'd you hear about us?" on every call
You think you know what's working. You're probably wrong. We thought our best channel was content. It was actually word-of-mouth we didn't even know was happening.
31. Video testimonials > text testimonials
Nobody reads text. Everyone watches video. Offer customers $50 or a free month to record 2 minutes.
32. Turn customers into partners
$50 for testimonial. $150 for case study. Free month for case study + backlink. Your happy customers should be selling for you.
33. List non-urgent tools you want, buy on Black Friday
Wait for discounts. We saved $12K last year by buying annual plans during sale periods instead of monthly plans throughout the year.
Sure, I’ve missed a lot of things that I’ll probably think of in the shower later, but what shocked me was, looking at this list, in the top 33 things I thought about, there was no advice about:
Raising money at the right valuation
Picking the perfect tech stack
Building the ideal org structure
Creating beautiful pitch decks
None of that matters until you have:
Product that works
Customers who stay
Team that executes
Revenue that grows
Everything else really is just noise.
TL;DR
If I had to cut this list down to just 5 things:
1. Make sure your product actually works before trying to scale
2. Stay in sales for way longer than feels comfortable
3. Hire slowly and fire fast - wrong people kill momentum
4. Build content systems that compound over time
5. Track real metrics (revenue, retention) not vanity metrics (impressions, clicks)
Do these five things right and most other problems solve themselves.
How I Can Help
Let me book sales calls for you while you're implementing these lessons. Seriously.
I built Valley to be your automated SDR and empower AEs. Get started today and watch your calendar fill up with qualified leads.
How can we work together 🏔️
See more of Valley’s messaging examples, feel free to roast them: https://coolmessagebro.com/
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