The Funnel Stage Nobody Owned
Your marketer is paid on leads and your reps on closed deals. Nobody is paid to make the first call, so the leads in between go stale. Who should own it.
The Briefing
Sharp takes on finance, founders, and operational reality.
The money, people, and operating decisions behind growth — the part most owners underinvest in.
Operations
Twelve Permission Levels Became One
An admin tool shipped with twelve permission levels. By month twenty-eight every senior engineer had root, granted one exception at a time.
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Team reality
Why I Stopped Doing Performance Reviews on Calendar Quarter
Quarter-end reviews put a manager's 8 reviews in the same two weeks, and the last ones go lazy. Hire-date reviews fix it, if the owner holds the raise pool.
Never pay SDRs for meetings booked
Pay SDRs on meetings booked and meetings double while closed-won falls. The plan pays for what it says, so write it on the number you want moved.
Three Emails Beat Fifty-Two
A CEO who emails every Monday trains the team to skim. Three emails a year that name the CEO's own bad call get read, and they cost the CEO something.
Sixteen Months of Unpaid On-Call, Then Two Resignations
Three engineers carried unpaid on-call for sixteen months. Two resigned the same quarter; the third asked off. A stipend would have cost far less.