What happens when you’re building a company from scratch? According to Jack Siney, co-founder and CRO of FrontRace, you embrace the chaos, talk to everyone, and prioritize real customer feedback over perfecting the product to help drive early sales.
In this episode of The RevOps Revolution podcast, Jack sat down with host and Revcast’s Chief RevOps Officer Jeff Serlin to break down what it really takes to build both a company and a go-to-market (GTM) function from day one, as his company brings its solution to market for capturing and analyzing the activities of customer-facing team to drive business and revenue intelligence.
He states: “People come along later stage in the company and they're always like, ‘Oh, this is so easy. You guys have it done.’ You're like, yeah, if you were here the first two years, you'd see what chaos it is.”
Get to 100 Customers—Fast
For Jack, one of the biggest early mistakes founders make is staying in “whiteboard mode” too long—refining a product in isolation rather than testing it with real buyers.
“Whatever you talked about in a meeting room or put on a whiteboard is typically 50% or more different once you actually go to market. … My biggest encouragement is to make sure that you go get customers.”
The goal isn’t just revenue—it’s feedback.
“Take the deal. Get the customer in the room. Get to the customer part of your product development conversation because that will expedite everything you do.”
Building Belief Before the Product
When there's no product to show, what do you actually do in those early months?
Jack shared a simple framework that involves three key perspectives:
- someone thinking about the business financially
- someone thinking about the product
- someone talking to the market
“You need a sales-driven person that’s talking to the market… normally a product or tech person… and someone looking at the finances of the company. Those three perspectives are typically super critical,” he says.
Armed with those viewpoints, Jack advises founders to attend industry conferences—not as vendors, but as observers—and gather candid insights from seasoned operators. “You'll see [prospects] shaking their head, they're like, ‘Yes, that's really an issue.’ Or they'll almost wince. You know, they'll be like, ‘Ah, I don't really see it that way.’ All that feedback is so important.”
Beware the Echo Chamber
Even well-designed validation efforts can fall short if people aren’t honest.
Jeff noted that during Revcast’s early research phase, most feedback was overwhelmingly positive—perhaps too much so. “People were not… being totally honest with us. I think people have a tendency to say it makes sense, that it sounds cool…. I think we were hearing too many good things or confirmation, which isn't the only thing that you want to hear.”
Jack agreed—and emphasized the importance of setting expectations clearly with early customers. “We want your brutal, honest feedback. By the way, this is not a fully baked pie.”
Scaling Sales—But Only When You’re Ready
So when do you move from founder-led sales to hiring a sales team? Jack’s answer: only after you can document what really makes a sale happen. “Most people don't actually know what creates a sale. They have chunks of it… but it's all the little things in between that make the deal.”
They both note that too often, companies hire reps and hand them a pitch deck and pricing sheet—and expect them to close. But unless you've defined the nuances that drive conversion, you're setting them up to fail. “When you're able to document that and understand that, then that's when you should hire people.”
Culture, Sales, and Leading with Care
Culture also matters—especially in high-pressure sales environments. Jack emphasized that while sales often provides the energy and momentum in a company, it shouldn’t overshadow the broader culture. It’s important that people feel love for what the company is looking to do and have the passion that translates into their work.
“You start to build a great company culture and you want that to be the big roof over the company and you want the sales culture to create some energy within it,” Jack says. “As you get bigger, KPIs take over… and we lose the ability to really tie people to the company. But if you're able to do that, it pays off…. when you invest in your people in the right way and treat them the way that you'd want to be treated, you'll typically see that back a hundredfold in their commitment to the company.”
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To hear the full discussion, check out the episode of The RevOps Revolution podcast.
And if this topic interests you, we’d love to show you a demo of Revcast to see how our solution helps you scale-up that GTM engine with greater revenue predictability, efficiency, and achievement.
