The instinct is understandable. Sales feels foreign, a senior hire feels safe, and the board wants to see a commercial name on the org chart. So the funded founder opens a search for a VP of Sales and waits for the problem to be someone else's.
Here is the math that instinct runs into. Recruiting a credible sales leader takes three to four months. That person then needs months more to learn a clinical product, a regulated buyer, and a market they have probably never sold into at your stage. In health innovation the first repeatable playbook is discovered in the field, deal by deal, and a hired executive discovering it on your payroll is the most expensive possible way to learn.
Clinical buyers want to talk to the person who built the thing and can answer the hard question in the room. Early deals are bought on conviction and evidence, and nobody carries either like the founder. Every objection heard first-hand becomes product, pricing, and positioning input with zero translation loss. That learning loop is the real asset of the first twenty deals, and it cannot be delegated.
The honest objection is that founders do not know how to run a sales motion, and it is true. What made you successful at building a product will not make you successful in GTM and sales. But the fix is not handing the motion to a stranger. The fix is installing the machinery around the founder.
With the engine installed, the founder sells at ten times their previous effectiveness, and the eventual sales leader inherits a working system with proof behind it instead of a blank map. That hire, made later and made well, is how the engine scales. Made first, it is how runway disappears.