The Salesperson
Entrepreneurs & Operators
Sells specific products within the ecosystem, lives by the pipeline
The Salesperson drives revenue for ecosystem companies — not building the product, but creating the deal flow. In hype phases, they earn more than engineers because demand massively exceeds supply of people who can close deals in technical domains. Their competitive advantage is the combination of domain knowledge and sales process discipline.
How it earns
Base salary plus commission (typically 10-30% of deal value); very high comp in hype phases when every company is hiring for growth.
How it fails
Knowingly selling overpriced or inappropriate products: token listings at $1-5M for worthless projects, enterprise software deals the customer doesn't actually need.
Real examples across cycles
Linux / Open Source
- Red Hat enterprise sales (selling support subscriptions to CIOs)
- SUSE/Novell sales
- VA Linux box sales
Crypto
- Exchange BizDev teams
- Token Listing Managers
- ICO marketing leads
AI
- Enterprise AI sales at Anthropic/OpenAI
- DevRel teams
- AI integration salespeople
People who play this role
Your first step
Give 5 product demos this week — to actual potential customers.
Is this your role?
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