Today I signed the vesting contract with my sales co-founder after 1 year struggling alone

I'm a tech / product guy who launched a gamification platform for training operational teams ( service, attendance ) called Lira Edu ( https://www.liraedu.com ) in Brazil last year.

I was able to get a contract with a company to train more than 1k security and doormen personnel in April last year after we run a two months pilot with 80 employees.

After that I went full-time on Lira. I was doing everything by myself. My biggest challenge was prospecting and beating the long B2B sales cycle. I've made some posts here on Indie Hackers and got a lot of help from people. Unfortunately even with all the help I got I was still struggling a lot with sales. I've decided ( with the help of my advisor ) to bring someone to take care of the sales so I could focus more on the product and business.

Finding the right person is REALLY HARD. I have sent more than 100 messages in WhatsApp and LinkedIn to people I was very close and people who I've briefly met but I knew had a good networking. I have defined the right profile of person I was looking for, the tasks supposed to perform and explained what was Lira and the current stage it was. My advisor helped me identify the best vesting conditions for such negotiation.

After that I've received some feedback and made some calls. Most of the people I've spoken too were not a good fit. I ended up with 2 people who have the right fit. I had to choose between them. I valued more fit with my startup and myself than sales expertise and ended up with one person.

We evolved the vesting conditions negotiation in November last year. It was tough. The person I've chosen is new to the "startup world". I had to explain the vesting, the importance of doing it right and how it could impact VC funding if not done properly. After two months negotiation we have finally agreed with the conditions. We have hired a lawyer to help writing the contract and after almost a month, today we have finally signed it.

My advisor helped me a lot with this. Is very important to be surrounded by good people who have faith in you and in your business.

Hope it might help you guys somehow, especially if you are looking to bring good people to your startup. I'm sorry for my english, I haven't practiced in a while.

Good luck for us all

Cheers!