Founder-Led Selling to Repeatable Revenue
Strategic Business Consultant, Agility Growth Partners — current
The Situation
First Avenue Ventures backs early-stage companies across 20+ portfolio holdings. The recurring pattern across those companies is familiar to anyone who invests at that stage: a real product, real customers, and a sales function that exists entirely inside the founder’s head. The founder can sell. The company cannot.
That gap is what stops companies from reaching institutional funding — not the technology, and usually not the market.
What Was Done
Ongoing work across the portfolio, tailored to where each company is stuck. Depending on the situation that has meant validating product-market fit, designing go-to-market and segmentation, building standardized and documented sales processes, implementing CRM with the routines and performance monitoring that make it useful rather than decorative, hiring and training sales talent, and in several cases stepping in directly as interim Chief Revenue Officer.
For a construction-sector FinTech company, that meant building a standardized marketing and sales process and client acquisition strategy from nothing, implementing CRM improvements that created consistent operating routines, and personally leading key accounts. Other engagements have included serving as CRO for a life science company and conducting activity-based costing analysis that led a healthcare analytics company to revise its pricing strategy — alongside commercial due diligence on prospective investments.
What Changed
“Mike Largent supports our 20+ First Avenue Venture portfolio companies as they go from early stage to institutional funding… Helping these companies create scalable sales processes requires an excellent grasp of the sales process — from lead generation to close. More than anything, working across these companies requires a doer, and Mike is that and more — executing at a high level with outstanding professionalism and relentless focus on getting the job done.”
— Mike Goodrich, Principal, First Avenue Ventures
Relevant if: you are an investor with portfolio companies that have product-market fit and no repeatable way to sell.