> It's not about cold-calling, it's about monetizing your network. If you have experience and contacts in an industry, and a startup offers you 30% commission on the revenue you bring in, it could be worth the time to see if you can make valuable connections for them. This is especially true if you're not tied to a full-time schedule with them — you could literally do this while still working another job.

So, the salesperson should risk losing a contact (and an account) for... nothing?

How do you lose a contact by seeing if they’re interested in a new product/service?

> How do you lose a contact by seeing if they’re interested in a new product/service?

From the perspective of the prospect, the salesperson is making a recommendation. If the startup fails to deliver, then it can cause a lot of problems in the relationship.

Sure, you'd want to make sure you don't over-promise, and of course the buyer would realize they're buying from a startup (and presumably getting a discount as an early adopter). Anyway, my point is just that this sort of matching service could work out in some circumstances, and it is in some ways easier than trying to match founders who are sharing equity.

> Sure, you'd want to make sure you don't over-promise, and of course the buyer would realize they're buying from a startup (and presumably getting a discount as an early adopter). Anyway, my point is just that this sort of matching service could work out in some circumstances, and it is in some ways easier than trying to match founders who are sharing equity.

The point of parent of this thread is that developers tend to receive very unreasonable requests from people wanting to start companies and are not developers, and I am demonstrating that there are other professions that receive the same treatment from the developers.