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I was a top 0.1% salesperson nationwide in car sales

I was a top 0.1% salesperson nationwide in car sales. I read a bunch of lean startup stuff, learned to make a minimum viable product, and then started selling to companies with 20-80 employees. I'm likable and good at selling, so I got 34 companies using this garbage I made. It's the worst nightmare ever to keep people motivated to use it, keep fixing things I made as a rookie developer, keep adding or saying no to features. Overall the product isn't really needed, and sorta sucks too. If I was an typical developer trying to pitch a startup idea to businesses, it probably would have never got off the ground and nobody would have wasted any time. Maybe eventually the developer would have landed on an idea so good it had REAL PMF, and made that. But no, instead I sold some garbage and now I'm stuck working on it. There is such a thing as being too good at sales. You don't want sales talking people into bad ideas.

Original discussionAsk HN: What is the most useless project you have worked on?767 source comments · at import
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LC

It's inevitable that Sales will put Product in a bad spot because they're too good at selling their own innocence.

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TO

Amazing story. Love your honesty. Is there a world where you hire someone to build a more maintainable replacement?

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JO

Hehe, reap what you sow :) But - you are not really stuck though. If you have managed to go from 0 to 34 customers before you can do it again. It is totally an option to drop that product and/or startup, and go with a better one (guided by your learnings). Up to you to decide what is the best way forward :)

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RA

> now I'm stuck working on it. Why not put those sales skills to work and sell the business to someone else?

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MO

This is hilarious. Can you describe the product or what it does? Is it something to do with payroll, benefits, or HR?

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TH

imagine a software buying consultant. You could sell the service to your existing clients. Long ago i made a few html websites for businesses then explained basic html and ftp to the owner. It was perfect except from other webdesign shops hammering my clients.

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