“We’re not celebrating yet. The money needs to be in our bank account before we can do that.” My close friend told me, as we were hanging out in Sonoma a few weekends ago. I’d tried to toast his latest accomplishment but he was having none of it. More like a little brother to me, this dude was sitting on a term sheet for a massive Series A round. Flashback to January: my buddy’s startup was in dire straights. 3 weeks away from not being able to make payroll. As CEO, he feared the worst; having to shutter the business he’d been painstakingly building for the last several years. Reading this, you might ask, ‘What the hell happened between January and August?’ 

He uncovered his first – and thereby game-changing – go-to-market channel. One that unlocked rapid revenue growth; carrying his company from next to nothing in revenue to $1.5M in ARR over a 6 month-span. Investors who had stuck a fork in him now were hungry to partake in his round. Any objective observer could see that his team had built the best product for his market segment. The missing ingredient was an effective way to bring it to market. The term sheet was signed and the money was wired the following week. A startup once on its last legs now feels like a rocket ship. 

“Should we pivot? Scratch everything and build a new product? Should we go after a new market?”, clients of mine asked me, a few years ago, as we were starting our engagement. These founders had just entered YCombinator, and yet I could smell the beginnings of despair. I tried my best to ease their angst. “Guys, it’s perhaps a bit premature. I’d like us to gather more evidence before making such a sharp turn. What we have here could either be a product issue, a sales execution issue, or a combination of the two. I can help you remove the sales execution issue. And we can continue learning about the market’s reaction to the product. We owe ourselves that, before redirecting the ship in a brand new direction.” 

Having poured their hearts and souls into building a product for over a year, they thought it best to at least give this instance of their baby a fair shake. After identifying several sales execution problems, we got to work. By the end of YC, 3 months later, they had 50X’d their ARR and closed the biggest name in their space. An oversubscribed seed round was secured shortly thereafter. Their doubts about reaching product-market fit had vanished. The company attained the $1M ARR mark in 12 months – unlocking a preemptive Series A round. And $3M in ARR just 2 years after we started working together.

These two stories are glaring examples of the following. You can have a great product. But without some semblance of sales/GTM execution, you won’t be able to move any product. And you might as well forget about product-market fit. Your startup will end up dead before you know it. All of the work you’ve put into building a world-class product goes to waste. Seeing startups with great products not succeed makes me sad. It’s yet another reason why I encourage startups to level up as soon as they can in sales/go-to-market. 

One of two things happens when you increase your sales/GTM execution. The first is the optimal outcome, as exemplified in the anecdotes above. Your revenue goes up and to the right. Usually quickly, if the product is best in class. The second? A bright spotlight gets shined on your product. Although not the ideal outcome, you get to learn and adjust things. If managed properly, you get market feedback of this sort: if you build feature A and feature B in the next 3 months, $500K in pent-up ARR will be unlocked overnight.

A huge misconception in Startup Land is: the best products always win. The truth is: that a lot of great products don’t make it out to market effectively. The road to startup success is littered with fallen ventures that never found product-market fit. And you can’t get to product-market-fit just with a stellar product. You need to figure out how to get it out there and in your customers’ hands. And fast. 

 And by quickly, I mean this. Most founders don’t realize that they are sitting on a ticking time bomb. Time is running out on them in the form of runway. In my experience, most B2B founders don’t attack the market with enough ferocity. This leads to founders finding themselves backed up against the wall, with little to no recourse. With most startups taking 12 to 24 months to find product-market fit, each month is crucial. If you’re not growing steadily and learning a lot from the market, you are running behind. 

If you feel stuck or are not on the right trajectory to your Series A, reach out to me. Or someone like me. I usually tell clients, “Listen, I’m not going to be able to help you much on the product front. Maybe indirectly, by teaching how to listen to the market. Or building better product feedback loops. For the most part, where I’m going to help you is to increase your sales and go-to-market execution. I’ll act as your thinking partner. And because I’ve seen this movie many times now, I’ll be able to help prevent your making costly mistakes.” 

I want you to succeed, and I’m here to support you. At the end of the day, I consider it a privilege to play my own small part in helping founders and startup operators put their dents in the universe.