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Most founders waste months validating ideas with pats on the back instead of credit cards.
Our guest, Santiago Suárez Ordóñez reveals how he went from zero sales experience to closing over 100 customers by treating revenue—not compliments—as the only signal that matters. This episode breaks down the exact playbook for transitioning from "advice calls" to actual sales.
Santiago Suárez Ordóñez is the CEO and co-founder of Momentum, an AI platform that transforms customer conversations into valuable go-to-market data (raised over $18M from Basis Set, First Mark, and others). Previously, he co-founded Blameless (raised $50M+) and was the first engineering hire at Sauce Labs (raised $150M+).
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
01:59 - Why Engineers Make Terrible Salespeople (Until They Don't)
04:40 - From 70+ Rejections to Finding The First Few Customers
07:25 - Stop Being the Smartest Person in the Room
09:40 - Why Your Friends Are Lying to You About Your Startup Idea
14:36 - It Takes 100 Meetings to Land 3 Design Partners
16:16 - Embracing Rejection: The Founder's Identity Crisis
19:11 - The Mom Test: How to Get Brutal Honest Feedback
22:44 - When Your Biggest Customer Is Your Worst Signal
26:13 - Money Is King: The Only Validation Metric That Matters
28:45 - From "Can I Get Your Advice?" to "Give Me Your Money"
37:12 - The Fellow Portfolio Company Email Hack That Opens Doors
41:12 - Never Demo First: The 30-Minute Sales Call Framework
44:58 - Why You Need SDRs Before Product-Market Fit
47:50 - Building a Sales Machine While Still Figuring Out What to Sell
54:54 - Shadow Your Customer for Free Instead of Building in Isolation
57:22 - Why Zero to $1M Is a Vanity Metric for Startups
Our guest, Santiago Suárez Ordóñez reveals how he went from zero sales experience to closing over 100 customers by treating revenue—not compliments—as the only signal that matters. This episode breaks down the exact playbook for transitioning from "advice calls" to actual sales.
Santiago Suárez Ordóñez is the CEO and co-founder of Momentum, an AI platform that transforms customer conversations into valuable go-to-market data (raised over $18M from Basis Set, First Mark, and others). Previously, he co-founded Blameless (raised $50M+) and was the first engineering hire at Sauce Labs (raised $150M+).
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
01:59 - Why Engineers Make Terrible Salespeople (Until They Don't)
04:40 - From 70+ Rejections to Finding The First Few Customers
07:25 - Stop Being the Smartest Person in the Room
09:40 - Why Your Friends Are Lying to You About Your Startup Idea
14:36 - It Takes 100 Meetings to Land 3 Design Partners
16:16 - Embracing Rejection: The Founder's Identity Crisis
19:11 - The Mom Test: How to Get Brutal Honest Feedback
22:44 - When Your Biggest Customer Is Your Worst Signal
26:13 - Money Is King: The Only Validation Metric That Matters
28:45 - From "Can I Get Your Advice?" to "Give Me Your Money"
37:12 - The Fellow Portfolio Company Email Hack That Opens Doors
41:12 - Never Demo First: The 30-Minute Sales Call Framework
44:58 - Why You Need SDRs Before Product-Market Fit
47:50 - Building a Sales Machine While Still Figuring Out What to Sell
54:54 - Shadow Your Customer for Free Instead of Building in Isolation
57:22 - Why Zero to $1M Is a Vanity Metric for Startups
Creators and Guests
Host
Pascal Unger
Co-founder / Managing Partner at focal.vc We lead pre-seeds in North America with up to $1M: We exclusively back AI native software startups at the very start. Thereafter, we help them get off the ground better and faster, supported by a network > 200 GTM executives. That's our singular, unwavering focus.
What is focal podcast?
Pivotal early lessons of today's best startups.
Welcome to the focal podcast where we go deep with some of today's best founders and operators on ONE crucial lessons from their early days.
This podcast is not the usual "highlight reel" startup podcast that goes one inch deep across 20+ topics. Rather, we ask the questions you’d ask if you were sitting across from them. No fluff, just the real, actionable insights you’d get if these founders were mentoring you 1on1.
We cover topics including:
- What worked and why.
- Costly mistakes and how they fixed them.
- Frameworks that truly made a difference.
- Tactics to move faster.
- What they wish they’d known sooner.
- And much more!
"Only a fool learns from their own mistakes. The wise learn from the mistakes of others."