Bitcoin sales requires longer education cycles

Working with Bitcoin companies, I keep seeing the same pattern: sales teams try to apply traditional SaaS playbooks and wonder why their pipeline stalls.

The problem isn’t execution. It’s that Bitcoin sales starts further back in the buyer’s journey than most realize.

In traditional SaaS, prospects understand the problem you’re solving. They’re comparing your solution to competitors or evaluating whether to build vs. buy. The education is about your product, not the underlying technology.

Bitcoin is different. You’re often educating prospects on fundamentals: why self-custody matters, why the Lightning Network changes payment economics, why immutability is a feature not a bug.

This creates a fundamentally different sales motion. Your sales team isn’t just closing deals—they’re part educator, part consultant, part technologist.

This connects to what I’ve been thinking about with trust paradox in decentralized systems. You’re selling technology designed to minimize trust, but the sales process requires building enormous trust.

Companies need to reconsider their entire monetary infrastructure. Custody assets in uncomfortable ways. Work with startups instead of established vendors. This isn’t a 3-month evaluation cycle—it’s 12-18 months minimum.

The question I’m wrestling with: how do you structure a sales org and comp plan around this reality? Traditional SaaS metrics don’t work when your average deal takes a year and requires educating 8+ stakeholders.

More on this as I think it through. Related to broader thoughts on why partnership frameworks fail for Bitcoin companies.