Why Founder Branding Works for B2B Companies

Peter Thiel’s company Palantir only has one single salesrep: Palantir's CEO @Alex Karp.

In the book Zero to One, Thiel talks about why that is:

Palantir is selling to governments and government agencies. So their deal size is anywhere from $100M - $1B… that’s billion with a b.

Because they only do MASSIVE deals:
1. They only do very few of them per year, so one person CAN handle them all.
2. The decision-makers they sell to, given the amounts of money involved, don’t want to talk to anyone else than the CEO. They’d laugh if Palantir would send an AE to them.

Now, that’s for 9 and 10-figure deals in B2B.

On the opposite end of that scale are B2C products. Most b2c products and even low-cost b2b SaaS products are impulse buys. You don't need to meet the Allbirds CEO before spending $100 on their shoes.

But most B2B companies are somewhere inbetween, doing deals in the 5-6 figures.

If you're selling enterprise solutions, you might want to put your founder/CEO out there. Here's why:

If your deal size is $30,000 (like ours) and above, prospects need a trustworthy relationship to make a purchase decision.

When making high-ticket purchase decisions, your prospects want to know:
- Who’s the founder?
- Do they know what they're talking about?
- Do they understand the complexity of our business?

That’s why as you move up that prize scale, the founder's involvement in the selling process increases and his relationship with clients becomes more critical.

If you are somewhere between the price point of Allbirds and Palantir, it makes sense to run your marketing via the founder brand.