This week on How to Unf**k Your Startup, we welcomed Alex Kottoor, a seasoned entrepreneur and business leader with over two decades of experience driving profitable growth in startups, SMBs, and Fortune 500 companies. Alex started his career at CDW, where he honed his skills in solving customer problems through technology. He then co-founded his first SaaS company, SceneDoc, which he successfully grew and exited. Now, as the founder and CEO of Dena Growth, Alex is turning his attention towards helping early-stage founders navigate the challenges of scaling, particularly around go-to-market strategy and sales. Having been a founder himself, Alex knows firsthand the challenges they face when transitioning from founder-led sales to a dedicated sales team. In the early stages of a startup, founders often wear multiple hats, including that of the head salesperson. While this hands-on approach is necessary to understand customers and craft a winning sales formula, there comes a point where founder-led sales can become a bottleneck to growth. Knowing when and how to make the transition to a dedicated sales team is a critical inflection point that can make or break a startup's trajectory. In this episode, Alex shares his framework for navigating this transition strategically, from laying the groundwork with deep customer immersion to codifying a repeatable sales playbook to making the right first sales hires. Founders will come away with a clear roadmap for scaling sales beyond themselves while avoiding common pitfalls that can derail momentum.