yc takes two technical co-founders and quietly turns one of them into a salesperson. happened to me. during the batch, i remember thinking there's no way i'm going to do sales. now it might be my favorite part of the job. if i had a kid going to college right now, i'd suggest they study computer science, then go into sales anyway. being technical and being able to sell is a rare combination, and it compounds like crazy.

jen abel might be @lennysan's best recurring guest. i've listened to all three of her episodes. first was founder-led sales (0 to $1m). second was 1-10. the latest one's about the playbook on how to sell into enterprises ($100k+ acv deals). one of the more useful ~90 mins i've spent on a podcast this year. jen's whole framework reiterates how people try to reduce sales down to a science when it's clearly not one. it deals with actual humans, actual psychology, actual variance. it's closer to an art than a process. another compelling point she made: when someone brings your tool into their org, they're spending real political capital to do it. that changes how you should think about the relationship; it's someone vouching for you internally. sales might be one of the few things that survives the ai era mostly untouched. it's also why fde roles are exploding right now. the same instinct with a different (fancy) label - still fundamentally about a human building trust with another human. also @jjen_abel's twitter is genuinely funny, worth following independent of the sales content. rare combo of being both one of the sharpest people on enterprise gtm and one of the funniest follows.

after we got into yc, I remember our partner telling us straight up, "this is one of the worst ideas i've ever heard. but it's your company, so keep going if you want." it's a strange feeling being told your idea is bad while still being accepted into the batch. in hindsight, they were right, as we ended up pivoting through it all. massive respect for letting us find out for ourselves.