Snyder's Law

The path in 2025

PSA: I am going on paternity leave in March. Pray for me, and also last PMF Camp for a while starts Jan 20 — if you want my help with your founder-led sales pitch / PMF approach - check HERE to reserve your slot!

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I hereby pronounce Snyder’s Law for Overthinking Founders: Anything that can be used as an excuse to avoid sales, will be used as an excuse to avoid sales.

I’ve been reflecting on 2024 and the patterns I’ve seen startups go through. Why do we all struggle with LARPing? Why is it so difficult to figure our business out?

Yes, it is intellectually challenging. Yes, ambiguity, uncertainty, yada yada yada. But frankly, most of the time, it’s difficult because we try to figure it all out while avoiding selling. We do this athletically, finding any smart-sounding excuse:

• I need to be building the brand, writing blog posts, growing an audience

• I need to be “validating hypotheses” and “doing research”

• I need to be building the product

• I need to go heads’ down on fundraising

• We’ve got a few customers, so I need to focus on customer success

The thing is, these all sound like good, important things to do. We can fill 80-hour weeks on these things. But if we’re doing these things to avoid or delay sales, it kills us.

And it gets worse: Snyder’s Law makes us bad at sales when we DO eventually wind up selling. We go through the motions, but don’t put our soul into it. We don’t try to win, we look to hire and delegate the hard parts of sales when we know deep down it won’t work. Or we dabble across a variety of customer types so as not to hold ourselves accountable to finding our one repeatable “hell yes.”

Look into your soul. Does Snyder’s Law apply to you?

If you say a quick “no,” think twice: I came up with Snyder’s Law reflecting on a conversation I had with a founder who had a long and successful sales background, where HE admitted to avoiding sales. It’s part of being human - avoiding the important, uncomfortable thing while convincing ourselves we’re not.

I have coined Snyder’s Law not out of pride, but out of shame: I had an awesome 2024 that would have been 10x better if I hadn’t fallen victim to Snyder’s Law.

Even now, Snyder’s Law keeps me awake, stressed at night: “I avoided sales today. Why, why, why do I keep doing this?!”

I am writing this to hold myself accountable in 2025. Join me.

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PS:

• If you want to work with me in 2025, now’s your last chance for a while. Let me help you figure out founder-led sales! (More info HERE)

• My new startup, Waffle makes sure that everything you build from now on is SOC 2 compliant, so you avoid a long, awful migration when you urgently need your SOC 2. Get a free few months & 1:1 onboarding support by emailing me - rob@reframeb2b.com