❓ Problem

Building software has never been cheaper. More than 70 million projects have now been created on Lovable alone, with a million new ones every week. Selling software has never been harder. Spend ten minutes on Indie Hackers and you'll see the same confession over and over: most products don't fail on the build, they fail on distribution.

On the other side of the fence sits a growing pile of talented salespeople with nothing to sell. Canva has just announced that 1,271 people, or 22% of its staff, will lose their jobs, change roles or relocate, and nearly 200,000 workers have been hit by tech layoffs in 2026. Plenty of them can close. They just need a product.

And hiring a proper salesperson is a luxury most small builders can't afford. The Bridge Group's 2026 AE report puts median AE pay at $200K OTE, average ramp at 6.2 months (the longest in the study's history) and the share of reps hitting quota at just 48%. A solo developer can't bet $200k on a coin flip.

So the coder with a great product and the closer with a great Rolodex never meet. Each has exactly the half of the business the other is missing.

✅ Solution

Dealship is a marketplace where developers with products to sell find salespeople to sell them, paid on commission.

• Developers list what they've built. Who it's for, the price, the commission on offer (say 20-30% of first-year revenue), a live demo, and any proof it works: users, revenue, testimonials.
• Salespeople browse by fit. They filter by industry, buyer and deal size, try the demos, and apply to represent the products their network will actually buy. The rep who spent ten years selling into dental practices finds the AI scheduling tool built for dentists.
• Both sides agree terms on-platform. Commission rate, territory, exclusivity and a trial window, all in a standard contract so nobody needs a lawyer for a $6k deal.
• Dealship tracks and pays out everything. Rep-specific links and deal registration log every intro, customer payments run through the platform, and commission lands automatically when the customer pays. Dealship keeps a cut.

The wedge is B2B software and AI tools, where margins are fat enough to fund generous commissions and a product can be demoed in five minutes. Once the matching and payout rails work, the same marketplace expands into services, agencies and eventually any business that wants a commission-only sales team on tap.

📊 Key Numbers

Market size

• Performance-based selling is already a huge, growing pool. US affiliate marketing spend is forecast to hit $13.81 billion in 2026, and that's mostly consumer clicks rather than B2B closers.
• The B2B version is proven. PartnerStack says its network of 100,000+ active partners drives $390M+ in annual sales and earns $45M+ in commissions a year, almost entirely through referral links rather than hands-on selling.
• The supply of sellers is deep. The BLS counts roughly 303,200 technical and scientific sales reps in the US with a median wage of $100,070, before you count SaaS AEs, SDRs and this year's laid-off talent.
• The supply of products is exploding. Lovable says 80% of its builders are non-technical and 35% are already generating revenue. Most of them have never made a sales call in their lives.