Cited from real sources 6 min read Updated August 2026

A framework by Jen Abel

The Mid-Market Illusion: Jen Abel on Which Sales Game You Are Playing

Jen Abel co-founded JJELLYFISH. She argues the mid-market is not a segment you can sell to. It is one name stretched over two different games. In small business the user and the buyer are the same person, and marketing can carry the deal. In enterprise they are two people. Procurement exists and sales carries it. Naming your game is the first decision, and it sets every one after it.

The framework

A word that means ten things means nothing

Abel starts with a test you can run at your next standup. Ask five people to define the mid-market. You will get five answers, and they will not be close.

every single person has a different answer, right? It's either based off of revenue, it's either based off of market cap, it's based off of employee size.

Abel, on why the label fails Watch at 6:08

The disagreement is not pedantic. It is the symptom. A word that means revenue to one person and headcount to another is not describing a real thing. A go-to-market plan built on it inherits the vagueness. Abel's replacement is two buckets and nothing in between.

you have small business which is typically can be really powered by marketing and then you have enterprise which is typically going to be salesled

Abel, naming the two games Watch at 6:36

The line between them is not size. It is whether the person using your product is the person who signs for it. Abel makes that the load-bearing distinction in a separate conversation, and it explains why you cannot blend the two motions.

the user and the buyer are very different right as you go down Market

Abel, on the real dividing line Watch at 56:48

When the user and buyer are one person, a good product and a clear landing page can close the deal. When they are two people, someone must carry the case from the person with the pain to the person with the budget. That route runs past legal and procurement. That is a sales motion, and it costs what a sales motion costs. Calling the account mid-market does not make that cost smaller.

So Abel converts the label into a question. Are we at the top of small business, or the bottom of enterprise? Pressed, most teams say the bottom of enterprise. Good. Now you know which game you are playing, and you can staff and price for it.

Practice

How do you pick a side and act like it?

The first two steps set the constraint. The rest follow once you hold to it.

Ask which end you are anchoring to.

Upper end of small business, or lower end of enterprise. Make the team answer out loud. Abel's rule is that the mid-market is an illusion, so refusing to choose is itself a choice.

Go at tier-one logos early, not later.

Her examples are Walmart, Nvidia and United Healthcare. The counterintuitive part is that the biggest names are often the early adopters, because they are the ones hunting for an edge.

Price toward an ACV of $75K to $150K.

Below that the deal does not repay the months of effort an enterprise cycle costs. Start lower if you must; staying lower is the trap.

Keep outreach under four sentences.

Relevant, counterintuitive and about the problem. A long email to a tier-one executive is a filtered email.

Send the founder, and say you are early.

Abel treats the founder as the product in early-stage sales, and treats admitting the stage as an asset. Being honest about what you have not built yet is what gets you the real objection instead of a polite one.

Budget six to twelve months for the cycle.

Longer in regulated industries. The length moves with founder proactivity, org complexity and how much the problem hurts. Treat a fast close as a signal, not a plan.

When you hire, split comp 50/50.

Base to commission. Hire for the game you named in step one; an enterprise rep and a small-business rep are not interchangeable people.

Conditions

When does picking a side backfire?

The failure Abel sees most is not picking wrong. It is picking enterprise and then behaving like a small-business seller the moment a deal wobbles.

people will discount till the cows come home because they think that's the way to get a deal done

Abel, on the reflex that kills the ACV Watch at 16:08

Her read on the nickel-and-diming buyer is that it is qualification data, not a negotiation. The accounts worth having do not grind you on the first contract, so a buyer who does is telling you something about the fit.

Works best when

The problem you solve exists at tier-one scale, not just at your own
A founder is still doing the selling and can change the product in the same conversation
The deal can carry a services component, which is often how the ACV clears $75K
You have the runway to hold price through a six to twelve month cycle

Fails when

You name enterprise, then discount to close and reset the price for every deal after
The product is self-serve and you have added a sales cycle it never needed
You need fast iteration loops more than you need a large logo
You hire small-business reps and point them at tier-one accounts

The third one is the honest caveat. A long cycle buys you a big contract and costs you learning speed. Early on those two trade against each other. The opposite motion has the product carry the acquisition, and no buyer ever meets a human. Rahul Vohra's Van Westendorp pricing work starts from that end of the same problem.

Primary sources

Where Abel discusses this

Two Lenny's Podcast sessions, both over 75 minutes. The enterprise playbook episode is where she takes the mid-market apart. The founder-led sales episode is the longer walk through the motion underneath it.

6:08

Timestamp

Jen Abel · Lenny's Podcast

Debunking the Mid-Market Myth

"every single person has a different answer"

56:48

Timestamp

Jen Abel · Lenny's Podcast

Differentiating Market Segments: SMB vs. Enterprise

"the user and the buyer are very different right as you go down Market"

16:08

Timestamp

Jen Abel · Lenny's Podcast

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Low ACV Deals

"people will discount till the cows come home"

46:53

Timestamp

Jen Abel · Lenny's Podcast

Setting Initial Deal Pricing

"it nets out to 75 to 150k"

Where experts disagree

Where operators disagree: is mid-market the safe default, or a fiction?

Jen Abel

treats the mid-market as a naming problem rather than a segment, because asking five people to define it returns five different answers built on revenue, market cap or headcount. She collapses it into two games, small business powered by marketing and enterprise carried by sales, and tells founders to go at tier-one logos early with an ACV headed for $75K to $150K.

Y Combinator

defaults early-stage companies to mid-market precisely because it is the softer target, arguing that enterprise sales cycles run too long for a young company to learn anything from. Faster iteration loops beat a bigger logo when you are still finding out what you are selling.

The deciding factor is whether the problem exists outside enterprise at all. If it does, YC's learning-speed argument wins and mid-market is the cheaper classroom. If the problem is structurally an enterprise problem, there is no smaller version to practise on, and Abel's point stands: you are playing the enterprise game whether you named it or not. Note YC concedes the same edge, that a motivated champion inside an enterprise can move as fast as a mid-market deal.

Useful? Send it to whoever keeps saying the plan is to go after the mid-market.

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