It Is All About Sales

I am not an average software engineer. Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. We will come back to this.

When I started my entrepreneurial journey, I was focused on one thing: building. I thought if I built a great product, people would come. When we were working on Kwathu and EazyMalawi, my co-founders handled the business side while I focused on the technical work. Sales, marketing, business development - none of it was on my radar. Why would it be? I was the builder. That was my role.

It was only when I started Elior Health that reality hit me. Hard. What the heck is a pitch deck? What is an ICP, a TAM, a SAM, a SOM? I had no idea how to sell a product, market it, or raise money. I could build anything you put in front of me, but I could not explain why someone should care about it. That gap was painful to discover.

Here is the thing about me, though: I refuse to stay bad at something once I know it matters. I have taught myself almost everything I know, and business was no different. So I started learning. I read The Lean Startup, Zero to One, and Rich Dad Poor Dad. I listened to podcasts, watched videos, and took courses. Not to become a business expert, but to understand the language. To be able to sit in a room with investors or partners and actually follow the conversation.

And it worked, to a degree. I picked up enough to hold my own in business discussions. But knowing the vocabulary and being good at selling are two very different things. I understood that sales and marketing mattered. I understood that business development was critical. Understanding something and being skilled at it are not the same.

When I moved to San Francisco, this became even more obvious. I went to a tech meetup downtown with a friend and met some technical founders. What amazed me was how naturally they talked about themselves. "I am good at frontend, I shipped X and Y. I am good at backend, I built A and B." They could package their work into a story that made people lean in.

I could not do that. And the frustrating part is that my story should be compelling. My career started as a full-stack developer in Malawi, where there was no luxury of specialization. You did the frontend, the backend, the databases, the deployment - everything. From the beginning, I was the person who could take a product from an idea to life online. That is not a small thing. But I never learned how to say it in a way that landed.

If you have ever watched Silicon Valley, you know Richard Hendricks. Brilliant engineer. Built a compression algorithm that could change the internet. But put him in front of investors, and he would spiral into a technical monologue about middle-out compression while everyone in the room glazed over. He could not help himself. The product was his baby, and he wanted you to appreciate every detail of how it worked, not just what it could do for you. I used to watch those scenes and laugh. I am not laughing anymore because I realized I am Richard Hendricks.

A few months ago, I had an investor pitch call for Sekuire (www.sekuire.ai), a product I had been building. This was my moment. And what did I do? I started explaining the product in detail—the architecture, the features, how it all worked under the hood. I was proud of what I had built, and I wanted them to see it the way I saw it. Just like Richard on that stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, talking about Weissman scores while the audience waited to hear why they should care. I did not sell the business. I did not talk about the market, the problem we solve for customers, or the revenue opportunity. I talked about the product like an engineer, not like someone who wanted their money.

That call was a wake-up moment. Not because the product was not good. It is good. But a good product alone does not raise money. A good pitch does.

This is what I mean when I say I am not an average software engineer. I am not just a software engineer. I have built products end-to-end, launched startups, and worn every hat there is. The problem was never the skills. The problem was that I never learned how to sell them.

And now, the stakes are higher than ever. We are in the age of agentic AI, where code is cheaper than ever. Everyone can spin up a product. The barrier to building has dropped to nearly zero. What has not changed is the barrier to selling. If anything, it has gone up because there is more noise to cut through.

So I am doing what I always do when something matters: I am learning it. I am taking courses in sales. I am studying how people pitch, position, and close. Because in this new era, being able to build is table stakes. Being able to sell what you build - that is the real skill. And I plan to be just as good at it.

Remember when I said I am not an average software engineer? That is still true. But I am starting to realize that being a great engineer is only half the equation. I want to be a great engineer who can also sell. So if you have any sales books, courses, frameworks, podcasts, anything that has helped you get better at selling - send them my way. I am all in on this.