I’ve seen the myth stated and restated for years, and it is time for us to admit that it is an inaccurate description of the world.

The myth is that early in a company’s history, it evolves past the point at which the head is leading the sales. The myth is that this is a finite transition, that it is a discrete growth stage with an end, that at some point the founder and/or CEO gets to step away from the sales process.

The reality is that the sales change, and who they are to changes, but the head of the company, whether the head is the founder or, later in the company’s lifecycle, a professional manager who goes by the title CEO, never stops making them.

Look at any large company, even one that has been around for 50 or 100 years. Sure, the sales to most of the customers will long ago have been “process-ized” and delegated to, probably, the sales department.

But whether you’re the CEO of Apple, or the founder of Scaleup#397, you are still sitting down to dinner with the biggest of the biggies and trying to close the deal.

I’ve seen this personally, at some of the biggest companies in the country.

This is not just a semantic difference here. We are not just splitting hairs. This is existential stuff. If Jamie Dimon does not make this sale to The Fed, JPMorgan Chase could go under. If Elon Musk does not make this sale to General Motors, Tesla could go under. If the founder of Scaleup#397 does not sell his or her widgets, Scaleup#397 could go under.

We like to pretend that “founder-led sales” end, but they actually never do. They morph, but then they continue. The size and structure of the company doing the selling changes, but the fact that the sales are existential, and the fact that they are sales, and the fact that the head is doing them, never ends, and it never goes away.