Invoice, motherfucker!

“Revenue solves all known problems” -- Eric Schmidt

Like it or not, you live in a market society, but even if you lived in the biggest communist society of the contemporary world, China, you would still have to get someone to pay your invoices. Because there is an unavoidable reality: our society is so complex that you have to get someone to pay for your work. The only alternative is to become a self-sufficient hermit. If you pull it off, let me know, but let’s see what happens when you interact with the rest of society.

This post is not about how to get paid a better salary. On the contrary, this short note is for all those techies who hate salespeople. So they get shaken up and understand the most important thing in any company.

Surely you have read plenty of gurus who say that focusing on money doesn’t matter and that you have to do what you love, with passion and within a culture of absolute freedom, hiring brilliant minds to work with you. If you do all that you will succeed and be the next Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg or, better yet, Steve Jobs.

Nonsense.

Everything, everything you do in your company must be focused on one thing: “getting an invoice into someone’s hands”. It’s that simple. Steve Jobs was clear on it; even Sergey and Larry are clear on it.

Just as I told you more than two years ago, Program, CTM!, now I’m telling you: Invoice, motherfucker!

The faster you manage to invoice, the faster you start giving your dream some security.

I have been through every kind of company. I have been part of startups where we took all the time in the world to think up the glorious architecture that would support our products and services, and the months went by and all we did was burn the seed capital the investors gave us. In the end that was disastrous.

You have to think about invoicing from day one.

The time between putting your service in production and the first invoice has to be as short as possible.

You don’t have to solve every technological aspect before providing a service. I have also been part of companies where we launched services operating by hand and with Excel spreadsheets while our developers built the software. We have literally operated like this famous commercial:

Developers have this obsession with wanting everything ready before going to production, but they forget the most important feature of all: Invoicing, motherfucker!

If there is no revenue there are no resources; it’s that simple. It’s easy to ask for more people, or better computers, or even better pay. But if there is no revenue to back them up, how can you demand them?

The best way to solve all known problems is with revenue, as Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO, once said.

People in technical areas, despite being very intelligent, tend to have little sense of how important it is to invoice as soon as possible. They are experts at putting up obstacles in their eagerness to do things right according to “best practices”. That is why they have no empathy for sales work and even look down on it. But I recommend you consider the following: if the salesperson tells you he needs an airplane in two weeks, get involved in the business and try to understand his need. He wants to invoice as soon as possible, and that’s a good thing!

Your duty is to help him invoice as early as possible. Negotiate, see what can be done; nobody is asking you for the impossible. You think the salesperson is asking you for something impossible. Talk a little more, dig deeper and be empathetic with him; understand how important it is for your company to have revenue soon. You will see that you can reach a good consensus, because the goal of the salesperson, of a good salesperson, is to satisfy a customer’s need and, in exchange, that customer will be willing to receive an invoice.

Don’t forget this.