The Founder-led GTM Starter Pack
Every company can and should be data-driven on day one.
There are a lot of stacks and starter kit posts going around, so thought I’d share what are hard requirements for founders of early-stage technical companies. There are many other tools, but you should not be starting without these.
These all allow you to be data driven and focused. Once these are set up, you can review daily/weekly on how to refine your product experience, your target audience/icp, messaging, and/or GTM motion. Previously, this used to cost companies a lot of money and require experts to run each one. Now your founding team can do a lot of the work at a fraction of the cost.
Consider this the “Rippling stack” for early-stage GTM:
PostHog - Free to start vs. legacy tools; cost $10k minimum to start
— If you have anyone using your product (self-serve or otherwise) and are not watching sessions on how people use your product, you are doing yourself an incredible disservice. If you have no one using your product, well, the only thing you should be doing is having conversations with your ideal *user* profile. Then, make sure you use posthog once people start logging into your product :)
Koala - Free to start vs. legacy tools; cost $10k+, $60k+ for quality
Know the companies landing on your website
— “But I don’t know WHO the person is!” Sure, but I think a signal of someone landing on your website of your K8s product from your target prospect probably isn’t someone in customer success. Use the data as signal on where to start. Then be amazed at how much the product does as people start using your products :)
Clay - Free to start vs. (good) legacy tools; cost $24k+
— Not sure who that gmail user is? Use Clay. Not sure how to find more companies that fit your ICP with specific requirements? Use Clay. Want to do personalized outbound at scale? Use Clay. Etc, etc.
Apollo.io - Free to start vs. legacy tools; cost $2k/seat/yr.
— Everyone talks about ICP but no one wants to build the lists for it! Do it easily in here, track the data and success of your cold outbound and see in one report the titles, industries, company sizes, and other datapoints to know who your emails are resonating with most.
Fathom - AI Meeting Assistant - Free to start vs. legacy tools; cost $15k+
— It’s 2024. Record your calls.
Assembly.marketing - early access, but will be a winner :)
— You should be posting and testing your messaging. Refine it every week and learn how your audience engages with your content. Messaging IS strategy!! (assembly.marketing)
Once set up, have a weekly GTM session reviewing this with your founding team on what you’re learning and how to better iterate each week. These tools allow you to be data driven and develop GTM skills week in and week out.