The playbook doesn't exist yet.
You're writing it.
A newsletter for founding and early AEs selling in the messy, unstructured stage, before the process or the predictability exist. Every week: how to sell through the ambiguity.
What you'll get
Tactics that work without a playbook
Field notes from the unstructured stage
A weekly edge in five minutes
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Weekly insights for founding and early AEs selling before structure exists. Built for reps figuring out the motion in real time.
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About Before It Scales
Before It Scales is a weekly newsletter for founding and early account executives — the people selling before there's a playbook, a proven motion, or any predictability. Most sales advice assumes structure: a defined ICP, case studies, references, a repeatable process. Founding AEs have none of that. They're building the motion while running it. This newsletter is for that job.
Who's behind it
Dave Rubinstein was a Founding AE who scaled a company from pre-revenue to $10M ARR — and didn't even know it was pivoting when he joined. He spent six years in leadership roles at Salesforce, and led teams at Outreach and Meta. But the lesson he writes from is the one nobody brags about: 'do what I do' doesn't scale. He built a sales motion that depended entirely on him. Since then, he's had 300+ conversations with founders across 41 countries, and now mentors founding AEs from close to the action, not above it.