Hey founders!
I'm an early stage investor that is on a personal and professional mission to improve the chances of pre-seed and seed stage companies getting funded. I regularly work with founders and host workshops about ways in which founders can get funded by teaching them the fundamentals of how venture investors make decisions. Today I wanted to touch on a topic that I think most founders miss the mark on when it comes to communicating your opportunity to investors.
If you're a first time founder actively fundraising, you need to know how and why to communicate your Go-To-Market Strategy.
Quick definition: Your GTM Strategy is who your customers are and how you're going to acquire them at scale.
In my experience as an active pre-seed and seed stage investor, and as someone who has advised thousands of founders on this very topic for other first time founders, I’ve come to the conclusion that the GTM Strategy is among the most undervalued and under-appreciated part of your fundraising strategy.
The reason why I say this is because, more often than not, the plurality (if not the majority) of your fundraising will go towards your sales and marketing efforts.
In other words, your sales and marketing is the most immediate and the most tangible thing you're going to do as soon as you start collecting checks, right?
So if this is the case - if most of the funds are going towards sales and marketing and if it's going to happen as soon as you have the money - then you need to be able to articulate with precision how you’re going execute your marketing strategy.
Remember, your GTM Strategy (your actual strategy and how it’s represented in the deck) is articulating who your customers are (your Ideal Customer Profile) and how you’re going to acquire them. In order to reach your customers you have to know who they are so you can know where they spend their time.
This is so important for you to remember - the plurality, if not the majority, of your fundraising will go towards sales and marketing.
Therefore you need to be able to articulate what specifically will be done once you start receiving checks.
That specificity lies within defining your ICP, identifying your tactics, and communicating the strategy that inform your tactics - otherwise known as the GTM Strategy.
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