He Sells AI Door-to-Door. $3.5M ARR, 400% Growth, $0 Ads

No cold calling, email automation or ads: every customer is closed by an outside rep walking into restaurants, modeled on solar, pest control, roofing and pharma field sales. Rationale: competitors all cold-call with the same AI stack (data providers, Clay, ElevenLabs) so owners are bombarded; in-person builds relationships ('us having a beer') that cold callers can't beat and counters SMB churn from price-switching. Ambition is a sales org 'in the thousands'. Expansion is market by market.

Quota ~6 new locations/month (~$36K new ARR at ~$6K ACV). Rep keeps 30-40% of year-one revenue on new sales. 'Activity guarantee' instead of a base: reps who knock doors and set appointments earn ~$36-40K/year even with no closes. Target ~70 touch points/week (non-unique; repeat visits count), reduced by closing activity; at 10 demos/week no more walk-ins required. Good reps are promoted within ~6 months to salaried W2 market leads with no commission. Everyone gets a small equity grant vesting after two years.

Reps who perform on the ground are promoted (typically within 6 months) to open a new market, which is how the company expands city by city. Cost: the company loses that rep's closing output while the new market ramps, and has to recruit new reps; outside capital is used to bridge this.

Pays for Indeed job ads to find outside sales candidates for each new market.

The outside rep is physically with the restaurant owner; the market lead joins virtually and runs the product demo over screen share. Demos are required (no self-serve signup) so the owner understands the done-for-you value and doesn't drop off during setup.

Never offer free trials to SMB owners; require a demo and push hard for paying the full year up front. Reasoning: without skin in the game a busy owner never completes setup steps (e.g. clicking 'connect Google') because operational fires always win.

Websites, online ordering, and loyalty/rewards are free, undercutting point-solution vendors whose core business these are; revenue comes from AI 'agency' services on top (remarketing, social media, reputation management, phone answering, upcoming birthday postcards). Roadmap: add reservations and maybe staff scheduling as free stack pieces.

Previously used Stripe loans repaid as a percentage of every dollar collected; with fast growth they repaid in ~3 months, making the effective interest very high. Switched to Founderpath: $450K, ~16-month term, fixed ~$35K/month so cash flow is plannable. Money goes to scaling outside sales (covering the gap when top reps are promoted, Indeed recruiting, market ramp), not ads. Founder frames cost of capital vs. equity dilution as the key comparison.

Opened sales to hair and nail salons (seen as closest to restaurants) late last year using the same field org. Found the product was ~5% short of what salons needed and stopped; reps asking to sell other verticals are now told restaurants only. May revisit next year.