Trust = Intent + Expertise: On Founder Fit

I met with two founders recently, exploring a new idea. As a habit, I always try to make time for founders. Paying forward the way other founders did for me in the early days. These founders were exploring an AI tooling idea, and I was a prospect.

“Have you ever built a production AI application like ours?” “No.” “Ok, why should I trust you to provide a solution to monitor ours?”

I explained to them that trust is one of the most important ingredients in getting a B2B startup off the ground. If you can’t earn trust quickly, your startup might not survive its first few months. But what is trust anyway?

This formula comes from the book Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play by Mahan Kalsa and Randy Illig. (It’s the best book on software sales.) Let’s break it down:

In my interaction with the founders, I saw clear intent—they were eager to solve a real problem I faced. But, expertise was where they fell short. So, how can founders bridge this gap and build the necessary expertise?

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