The pitch arrives in some version of the same email every month: "I have deep institutional relationships. I'll bring you clients. You only pay on success. No retainer, no risk."
It sounds perfect. A senior person with connections, skin in the game, aligned incentives. Founders love it because it feels like zero downside.
It never works. And the reason isn't the person – it's the model.
Why commission-only fails structurally
Institutional sales cycles are long. A typical institutional mandate in digital assets takes 6 to 18 months from first conversation to signed agreement. That's months of relationship building, due diligence, internal advocacy, committee approvals, and legal negotiation. No one serious will work that cycle for free, hoping for a commission at the end.
The best people won't take the deal. Anyone with genuine institutional relationships – the kind that took 10 or 15 years to build – knows their value. They are not going to deploy that network for a commission-only arrangement that might pay out in 18 months, or might not. The people who accept commission-only terms are, by definition, not the people you want. They either lack the network they claim or lack the options to negotiate better terms.
There's no accountability structure. Without a retainer, there's no scope of work, no reporting cadence, no defined milestones. The commission-only BD person does whatever they feel like doing, whenever they feel like doing it. You have no visibility into their activities, no ability to course-correct, and no way to measure progress against a plan – because there is no plan.
Incentives are misaligned from day one. A commission-only person is incentivised to close the fastest deal, not the right deal. They'll push the easiest prospect, not the most strategic one. They'll over-promise to accelerate the timeline. And when the deal doesn't close quickly enough to justify their time, they quietly move on to the next company offering commission-only terms.
The real cost
Commission-only arrangements feel free. They're not. The cost is:
- Time. Six months of false hope while you could have been building a real system.
- Reputation. An unmanaged BD person having institutional conversations on your behalf, without a playbook, without messaging discipline, without your involvement. Every bad conversation is a door that closes.
- Distraction. The founder spends energy managing a relationship that was supposed to be hands-free. It never is.
- Delay. The institutional market entry you needed to start six months ago still hasn't started.
If someone offers to sell your product to institutions for free, ask yourself: why? The answer is never good.
What the alternative looks like
The alternative is a retainer-based engagement with defined scope, clear milestones, and mutual accountability. It costs money upfront – and it should. Building institutional commercial infrastructure is serious work. It requires deep diagnosis, market mapping, system architecture, and sustained execution.
A retainer creates alignment. The person building your system has committed time and attention. You have visibility, reporting, and the ability to steer. Progress is measurable. Accountability runs in both directions.
The question is not "can I find someone who will do this for free?" The question is "can I afford to waste another six months proving that free doesn't work?"
The answer is almost always no. Especially if you're burning runway while you wait.