The need for emotional connection isn't limited to consumer products. All software is used by humans whose expectations are set by the best B2C experiences. Even enterprise products must honor user emotions to succeed, a concept termed 'Business to Human'.

Stop trying to convince executives to adopt your priorities. Instead, identify their existing strategic initiatives—often with internal code names—and frame your solution as an accelerator for what they're already sold on doing. This dramatically reduces friction and speeds up deals.

Stop targeting the ambiguous "mid-market." Your strategy, hiring, and ACV must align with either a marketing-led SMB motion or a sales-led enterprise motion. Blending them leads to failure as they are distinctly different games.

Stop viewing brand as a top-of-funnel activity. For elite companies, brand isn't a precursor to selling; it is the selling. It creates inbound demand that bypasses traditional conversion tactics like search ads or affiliate marketing, making it the most powerful and sustainable growth engine.

The "build it and they will come" mindset is a trap. Founders should treat marketing and brand-building not as a later-stage activity to be "turned on," but as a core muscle to be developed in parallel with the product from day one.

Encourage team members, not just founders or marketers, to build their personal brands by publicly sharing their learnings and journey. This creates an organic, multi-pronged distribution engine that attracts customers, top talent, and investors. It's a highly underrated and cost-effective go-to-market strategy.

Jumping to enterprise sales too early is a common founder mistake. Start in the mid-market where accounts have fewer demands. This allows you to perfect the product, build referenceable customers, and learn what's truly needed to win larger, more complex deals later on.

Enterprises are comfortable buying services. Sell a service engagement first, powered by your technology on the back end, to get your foot in the door. This builds trust and bypasses procurement hurdles associated with new software. Later, you can transition them to a SaaS product model.

Instead of approaching leaders first, engage end-users to gather 'ammunition' about their daily pains. They may not have buying power, but their firsthand accounts create a powerful internal case (groundswell) that you can then present to management, making the approach much warmer and more relevant.