Four years ago, Orrick asked me to present to an audience of mostly-technical entrepreneurs on how to build a go-to-market strategy. While the presentation h

1. Go-To-Market for Geeks
Second Edition!
October 2, 2012

2. What is Go-To-Market?
• Strategies and tactics
• Users and revenues

3. Why is it important?
• The only way to raise a Series A is to
demonstrate traction
• “Praying” is not an attractive go-to-market
strategy
– VCs know that 1-word answers are praying!
• Appstore
• Freemium
• Viral

4. Where do I begin?
• Identify your target market
• If you can’t do this, get a new business.

5. What is a target market?
• A sufficiently large…
• …Group of similar users or buyers…
• …Who have the same set of…
– Needs
– Buying behaviors
– Influencers
– Channels
• “To mine for gold, find a vein.”

6. The only goal worth pursuing
• Users and revenues*
– * These can be future revenues
• That’s how you measure success
– TechCrunch/Mashable/etc. stories are
useless unless they also drive users and
revenues within your target market
– They can attract VC attention, but without
traction, you won’t close a Series A

7. Strategies and Tactics
Know your goal and
how to get there!
•Sales
•Marketing
•Pricing

8. Don’t Be Afraid To Sell

9. You Can’t Avoid Sales
• Distribution Catch-22
– The channel only sells what’s already selling
• The World of Warcraft Fallacy
– Salesmen can’t tell you what to sell
• (and they can’t sell what they can’t understand)
• Talking To Customers Is A Good Thing
– Sale/No Sale doesn’t provide enough info
– Customer contact is too valuable to abdicate

10. Founders Must Learn To Sell
• Talk to real potential customers
• Understand their need *before* you try to
solve it
– “What problem are you trying to solve?”
– “What are you doing about it right now?”
– “What would you like to happen?”
• Demonstrate the product and listen to
their feedback (instead of arguing)
• Ask for the order!

11. The Four Types of Sales
• Field Sales (“The Bag Man”)
– 6-figure deals, 6-month sales cycles
– In-person wining & dining
– On-site pilots & sales engineers
• Outbound Telesales (“The Boiler Room”)
– 4- or 5-figure deals, 0-3 month sales cycles
– Web demos & pilot programs
• Inbound Telesales (“The Order Taker”)
– The human touch to help freemium hand-raisers
• Direct Marketing

12. Growth Hacking
• Direct marketing is a numbers game
• Your goal is to prove the math works
– End-to-end transaction funnel
– Scalable front end
– The one metric to watch:
• LTV / CPA
• You don’t need to hire a specialist—this is
the one part of GTM that is up your alley

13. Marketing:
TechCrunch is Not a Strategy

14. Money Is Not The Answer
• If you tell a VC, “We need the money for
marketing,” you won’t get the money.
– Exception: 1999
• You have to generate traction before you
ask for money
– Exception: Andreesen, Zuckerberg, Williams

15. Marketing On A Budget
• The old way:
– $15K/month for a PR firm
– Brief analysts, brief press, wire release
– It’s all about relationships & unwritten rules
• The new way:
– Do your own PR
– Friend/Retweet influencers, speak at
conferences, content marketing
– It’s all about relationships & unwritten rules

16. Turn Weakness Into Strength
• You’re unknown
– Give folks the chance to “discover” you and take
credit (e.g. “Show HN”)
• You’re playing David & Goliath
– Use “retail politics” to reinforce the friendly, accessible
nature of your company
• Blogs, Twitter, Facebook are your friends
• You don’t know what you’re doing
– Ask for advice and get people to buy in
– Write compelling content about your space

17. Price: Necessary, Not Sufficient
• Pricing can hurt the business, but rarely
helps (at least for startups)
– Price based on value, not cost
– Price based on how the market likes to buy
• License vs. Subscription
• Unit pricing vs. Flat rate
• Up front vs. In product
– It’s always easier to reduce prices
– For self-service products, always test
• eBay, Craigslist, AdWords, Facebook, LinkedIn...

18. Shortcut: Know The Playbook

19. Plays that worked
• Cheezburger Network (Media)
– Inherent virality + PR blitz
• Dropbox (B2C)
– Simple, must-have product + Freemium +
Viral marketing
• Marketo (B2B)
– Clear target market (VP Marketing) + Field
sales + Aggressive advertising

20. Last Thoughts
• Don’t strategize, iterate!
• There is no magic formula and every
business is different.
• Product alone isn’t enough
• You can do more of this than you think…
• …But don’t get too cocky—the market is
smarter than all of us.

21. How To Reach Chris
• Chris Yeh
– chris.yeh@pbworks.com
– http://chrisyeh.blogspot.com
– http://www.asktheharvardmba.com
– http://twitter.com/chrisyeh