The three sales frameworks every early-stage founder needs. | Product discovery framework by a YC-backed founder.

VC questions and how to answer them — the ultimate founder guide & VC Jobs.

Sep 30, 2025

👋 Hey, Sahil here — Welcome back to Venture Curator, where we explore how top investors think, how real founders build, and the strategies shaping tomorrow’s companies. Here’s today at a glance -

The three sales frameworks every early-stage founder needs.
VC questions and how to answer them — the ultimate founder guide.
Product discovery framework by a YC-backed startup founder.

FROM OUR PARTNER - 1PASSWORD

🚀 On-demand webinar: Smart, simple security for SMBs

No company is too small to be a target for cybercriminals. Thankfully, there’s a simple step that small businesses can take to guard against the growing threats of ransomware and credential-based attacks.

Join 1Password for a discussion on how teams can keep security and credential management affordable and achievable. Register to learn about:

The biggest security risks facing SMBs
Security tools that reduce friction for growing businesses
How your team can secure logins in hours

Watch the webinar now →

VENTURE CURATORS’ FINDING

📬 My Favourite Finds

Media Posts:

Vercel CEO on networking. (Link)
This is what every founder should know about valuation. (Link)
Elad Gil literally shares the secret to identifying emerging markets. (Link)
How much funding should a startup raise? - Marc Andreessen’s framework. (Link)
Artisan’s $25M Series A deck, which they just released. (Link)
Chris Dixon’s 2009 essay, “Climbing the Wrong Hill,” remains highly relevant today. (Link)
40 real startup pitch decks that raised $350M+ (Including leading startups decks) (Link)

Reports/Articles:

Amplitude’s product benchmark report: a must-read. (Link)
Sam Altman: What I wish someone had told me. (Link)
Elad Gil’s list of biotech companies he wishes existed is well worth a read. (Link)
What is the Price of Demand? (Link)
SaaS startup financial model: All-in-One Excel template. (Link)
The Math of Hypergrowth: Two Paths to the Same Goal. (Link)

🤝 PARTNERSHIP WITH US

Get your product in front of over 95,000+ audience - Our newsletter is read by thousands of tech professionals, founders, investors and managers worldwide. Get in touch today.

📜 DEEP DIVE

The three sales frameworks every early-stage founder needs.

Sales at an early-stage startup often feel like wandering in the dark with a flashlight that barely works. You hear a lot of vague advice: “Just hustle,” or “Go get ‘em!” But when you’re the founder or first salesperson trying to land those critical first customers, what you need are tactics, not motivational quotes.

I came across an interesting post shared by Whitney Sales, founder of ThoughtForge, creator of The Sales Method, and one of the sharpest sales minds. She shared three powerful sales frameworks that I believe every founder should know and use.

So I’m sharing some key points, along with my thoughts on them:

1. Start with your own founder story

Why? Because at this stage, you are the first customer.

According to Whitney, “The inception of any company is inevitably linked to the challenge the founder first faced and addressed. This part of the narrative is too often forgotten, and it’s key to connecting with a customer.”

Before you’ve got fancy logos and metrics, you’ve got your pain and your reason for building the product. Use it.

The Exercise: Use this simple story-building template to craft a value-based founder narrative:

“[SUBJECT] [ONCE UPON A TIME], [SITUATION] [CUSTOMER PROBLEM]. [CUSTOMER] and realized [FEATURES OF PROBLEM]. [COST]. [SUBJECT] learned [IDEATION PROCESS]. As a result, [SOLUTION].”

This isn’t fluff. It’s how you relate, build trust, and show the human reason behind your product.

Example: The TalentIQ founder started his first company and lost time and money because a recruiter couldn’t send qualified candidates fast enough. He saw the chaos of 50 tabs open across scattered data sources, and realised recruiters lacked one clean source of truth. That pain led to the product.

You’ve already told this story to yourself, your early hires, and maybe investors. Tell it again, but now to your customers.

2. Tell value-based customer stories

Why? Because the founder’s story won’t always resonate with every buyer.

Whitney says, “If you only have one customer, extract the elements of their use case that are most relatable to your prospect. A beta customer’s story can be as valuable as a paid customer’s story.”

This is where your product’s real-world value starts to come through. It builds credibility and defuses objections.

→ The Exercise: Here’s Whitney’s customer story framework:

“One of my clients, [CUSTOMER NAME], who is in the same [QUALIFICATION CRITERIA], was having the same problem. When I met with their [TITLE], they mentioned that [CUSTOMER PAIN POINT]. [DETAIL]. We implemented [FEATURE], and enabled them to [BENEFIT]. They saw [RESULT].”

📌 Example: A client had onboarding emails that weren’t working users dropped off. Whitney’s team implemented behaviour-based emails that matched user activity. The result? 63% more conversions. $4.2M in revenue unlocked.

Even if you have just one beta user, document their story. Get specific. Then build a bank of these stories, segmented by company size, pain point, industry, or tech stack.

3. Structure your sales calls around stories

Why? Because stories make people open up.

Early sales aren’t about pitching features. It’s about using founder and customer stories to get a prospect to start talking. Whitney emphasises: “The best sign a pitch is working? The customer starts asking you questions.”

The Structure: Here’s her proven sales conversation flow:

Start human (5–10 min): Crack a joke. Be real. Show you’re not a robot.
Assert the agenda (2 min): “I’d love to understand how you do ___ today, then share how we might help.”
Ask value-based questions (5–10 min): Learn their pain points. What’s costing them time or money?
Tell a customer story (2–3 min): Match their pain to a real use case. Share what worked.
Go deeper into ROI (5–10 min): Tie their pain to your product’s benefits. Use their own words to frame the solution.
Decide or qualify (10+ min): Ask about their budget, timeline, and who else needs to be involved (a.k.a. the classic BANT framework).
Lock next steps (5 min): Don’t end the call on “we’ll be in touch.” Schedule the next meeting now.

If you’re an early-stage founder, your sales pitch is not your deck. Your real pitch is your founding story and your first customer win.

Before you have a product that sells itself, you need stories that speak for it.

Whitney puts it best:

“The first sale founders make with these stories is with themselves. Then they use them to hire, raise money, and attract beta users. Scale happens when these stories are passed on to your salespeople.”

If you’re starting from zero, these three frameworks will get you your first few wins. And those first few wins? They’re what unlock everything else.

I highly recommend reading this article.

📄 QUICK WIN

VC questions and how to answer them — the ultimate founder guide.

I’ve seen posts claiming that VCs will ask you 250+ questions in a pitch meeting. That’s nonsense. No investor is sitting there running through a checklist that long. (If you know one, let me know—I’d love to meet them.)

Instead, here’s a list of key questions you’re likely to face. These are the ones I used to ask while working with VC firms, and I’ve also gathered insights from leading investors to curate this list.:

Team

Tell me a bit about your background and your co-founder(s)’s background.
How do you all know each other?
- How long have you worked together and in what capacity?
Why is your team uniquely motivated to solve this problem?
Why did you pick your co-founder?
Who do you need to hire during the next 18 months to be successful?
When was the last time you had disagreed on a business issue? How did you resolve it?
Do the founders have the knowledge to build the technology or would they need outside help?
What does the cap table look like? (equity distribution across founders)

Problem You’re Solving

What is the specific problem you are solving?
How big/serious of a problem is it?
Why is this a problem?
Who has this problem?

Solution / Product

How are people solving this problem today?
Describe your solution to this problem.
What effort/timing is required to switch from a different solution to yours?
(For deeptech) What is unique about the tech? (Do you have any patents / IP / trademarks?)
What is your product roadmap for the next 6-12 months?

With the help of leading investors and founders, we’ve prepared a detailed guide that shares important questions investors will ask and how to answer them. You can check it out here.

Market / Market timing

Why now?
- Why hasn’t this worked/been done before?
How big is this specific market?
- How many people does it affect?
- How much money are people spending to solve this?
What is your unfair advantage?
Who would you see as your key competitor at the moment? Why?

Customer Acquisition / Unit Economics / Go-To-Market

Who is your customer persona?
- Who is the end user?
- Who is the buyer?
- What does a day-in-a-life look like for these people?
How much are people paying today? (range?)
- How much do you think you can charge in the future?
How are you currently getting users / customers? (what customer acq channel(s)?)
How do you think you will get users / customers in the future?
How much does it cost you currently to get a user? And in which channel?
How much does your solution/product cost (COGs)?
- How much will it cost in the future?
Why do people buy / use your solution?
What is the sales cycle to-date?
How does the product team interact with current and potential customers? If so, how and how often?

Competition

What differentiates your solution from other alternatives?
Who are you more afraid of: Google or another startup?
- Who are you most afraid of?
What happens if a Google (or equiv) does this?
Who are the major players?
What is your moat?

Traction

When did you start the company?
How many customers do you have to date?
How much revenue have you generated to date?
Any notable customers?
What does retention or churn look like? (if you know)
What does engagement look like?
Any upsells?
When will your company break even in terms of profitability and cash flow?

Fundraising/plans

How much have you raised to date?
How much are you looking to raise?
Where are you in your round?
What is your burn rate?
What is your top priority for the next 3-6 months?
What are your capital costs? (if capital intensive, like hardware/e-commerce)
Have you secured a lead investor for the round? If so, who and how much is the lead investing?

That’s it. You don’t need to prepare for 250+ questions. Some questions might even feel frustrating, like “What if Google builds this?” or “How does this become a billion-dollar company?” I know many founders get stuck on these and struggle to answer them.

With the help of leading investors and founders, we’ve prepared a detailed guide that shares important questions investors will ask and how to answer them. You can check it out here.

Product discovery framework by a YC-backed startup founder.

Chris posted this framework in January of 2022.

Since then, he’s founded a YC-backed startup that makes it incredibly simple and easy to send transactional emails and sequences for any company, with a revenue growth chart that looks like this:

Here’s the framework:

Pick a customer you enjoy talking to
Talk to 15 of them to be sure you do (and can get in touch with them)
Ask them to tell you a problem that’s more important than an 8 on a scale of 1-10
If that problem is generalizable, make the smallest MVP you can (no code required, if possible)
Ask the 15 people if they’d pay for what you built, or would pay if you prioritised a certain feature they ask for
Repeat, with 50 new people. If the feature requests you’re getting are too varied, you may be solving the wrong problem.

Super practical and simple, but true! If you can’t find people to pay for your product, you likely don’t have a product that can turn into a business. Click into the thread to read it in full.

TODAY’S JOB OPPORTUNITIES

💼 Venture Capital & Startup Jobs

Partner 22 - a16z | USA - Apply Here
ESG Intern - ESG Enterprise | UK - Apply Here
Senior Associate, Vertical AI - Primary | USA - Apply Here
Investment Analyst - Capital Oven | India - Apply Here
Capital Formation Associate - B Capital Group | USA - Apply Here
Trade Operations Lead - Manhattan Venture Partner | USA - Apply Here
VP of Fundraising - Scale Asia Venture | Japan - Apply Here
Research Analyst - Positive Sum | USA - Apply Here
Fund Operations Associate - TNB Aura | Singapore - Apply Here
2026 Venture Capital Summer Analyst - Stepstone Group | USA - Apply Here
AI Venture Analyst Intern - Untaped Venture | USA - Apply Here
Investor Relations Manager - Beco Capital | UK - Apply Here
Associate - Venture Capital - Artha Venture Fund | India - Apply Here
Executive Assistant - AN Venture Partner | USA - Apply Here

🤝 Partnership With Us