"There’s no silver bullet for nailing your go-to-market (GTM) strategy, but it’s best to think about this strategy as a process. There are three key stages, and being thoughtful about all three will put you on track for growth."

"1/ Start with lots of customer research and a soft launch"

"This is the first commercialisation phase where a small group is paying for your solution. It’s the time when you have a lot of conversations with your customers to understand how you can make their lives easier and why they signed up in the first place. You are not trying to actively promote your product."

"Founders often confuse the soft launch of a product with reaching product-market fit. You’ve reached product-market fit when customers are willing to pay for your product and churn is under control."

"Hit your network to gain those initial customers. People you know personally will be more willing to help than any internet stranger"

"The best way to go about this is a heavy customer research phase as you build the product. This will help you make sure you are developing a product that people want rather than creating something based on your intuition."

"To sum up, before entering an aggressive GTM strategy, ensure that you have enough paying customers through a soft launch to deploy your go-to-market plan."

"2/ Maximise the impact of your GTM with near-perfect product messaging"

"Prepare your GTM plan by focusing almost entirely on that uniqueness and take a step back. Think together with your team: who would benefit the most from this unique value we are creating?"

"Invest some time in this process. The answer is probably not as straightforward as you think it is, and it requires a deep dive into your market."

"3/ When does GTM end, and what do you do from there?"

"You need more than one North Star metric to safely say you should move from talking about GTM to the growth phase."

"My definition of a GTM ending and the start of a growth phase is when a company grows their revenues by more than 10% month-on-month several months in a row and the return on your marketing investments (eg. ads, providers, team) is higher than two."

"Many founders have the wrong assumption that they must excel on ads, SEO, social media, business development, partnerships etc. But the most successful startups focus almost exclusively on one or two channels that they absolutely master."