Sweta Govani 🧩’s Post

Unpopular opinion: Early-stage startups should limit themselves to 3 marketing channels max for their first 10 customers 🤔 → Here's why I think differently: ➾ Focus beats fragmentation. Mastering one channel at a time yields better results than spreading yourself thin. The variable to customers not working with you should be because of your product, not because of how you approached them. ➾ The Bullseye Framework (Gabriel Weinberg🙌) isn't just a fancy term. It's about finding that one channel that outperforms the rest. But you can't hit the bullseye if you're aiming at 10 targets simultaneously. ➾ Your audience isn't everywhere. They have preferred hangouts. Your job? Find those spots and show up consistently. ➾ Quality always beats quantity. Doing three channels right beats doing ten poorly every single time. (not sure if you are doing this? Check the footer of your website. How many social channels are you directing people to that have 0 activity on them) ➾ Resource reality check. Early-stage usually means limited resources. Invest them wisely in channels you can truly own. Remember, it's not about your own preferences and social bias. It's about where your audience is and how you can build real relationships with them. What's your take? Have you found success by focusing on fewer channels (growth stacking) or do you prefer casting a wider net (growth hacking)? #b2b #startup #growthstacking

Great take on the core elements of a go-to-market strategy. My take away: GTM has a large number of variables. Focusing on one value per variable is your baseline effort. Losing focus and tackling variations of multiple variables, like multiple customer profiles across multiple channels, leads to “combinatorial complexity”. In other words, complexity grows exponentially the more variations you try, more complexity means increasingly difficult to manage and analyze. Thus simple == more effective 🙂

I've worked closely with 12 early-stage startups. Now they do well over $50M+ ARR. Here's what I've learned about GTM: We act like startup marketing is complicated. It isn’t. There are only 5 fundamental marketing questions... (If you master them, you’re ahead of 95% of startups.) 1️⃣ Who do we want to speak to? ➟ Audience: ideal customer profile -> early customer profile ➟ Personas: demographic, psychographic, firmographic ➟ Decision making unit: everyone involved in a B2B purchase 2️⃣ What do we want to say to them? ➟ Positioning: what’s our familiar reference point for prospects? ➟ Messaging: what features, benefits & outcomes to highlight? ➟ Copy: what words do we use to describe our product? 3️⃣ When do we want to say it to them? ➟ Sales funnel: map out our buyer’s journey ➟ Sales qualification: MEDDPICC, BANT, etc. ➟ Understand our buyer’s natural cadence: budget cycles 4️⃣ Where do we want to say it? ➟ Channel selection: email, social content, channel sales, etc. ➟ Types of collateral: static ads, sales decks, video demo… 5️⃣ How do we want them to feel after they hear it? ➟ Buyer psychology ➟ Cognitive biases I'm not saying executing your GTM plan is easy. There's a TON of nuance and it's great to work with experts when you need to level up. But for founders of early-stage startups just starting to build a GTM engine, it’s all about clear focus & execution of the fundamentals. Just start at the top of this list and work your way down. Feel stuck? Reach out and I’ll point you toward help. __ Was this helpful? Please 👍 like and ♻️ repost it to help other

The future of startups is media. It’s not just a speculation but a fact. Media is more than just a marketing strategy. It’s about creating ecosystems that drive value and loyalty through content, influence, and community. Here’s why this matters: media doesn’t just tell your story—it creates your audience. In a world where companies are competing for attention—you’re competing for trust. And in an increasingly crowded space, the ones who succeed will be those who master both product and perception. Owning the narrative makes you not just sell a product, but sell a worldview, a solution, and a movement. The truth is, the future belongs to those who can build tribes and drive conversation. When your startup embeds media, you become a thought leader, a curator of knowledge, and a creator of communities. The companies that win in the next decade won’t just be selling software—they’ll be selling influence of which the best product of influence is “content”. Content isn’t just a byproduct; it’s a core product. As growth becomes more expensive, those without a media or creator strategy will be stuck in a cycle of diminishing returns. It’s time to think beyond software and embrace the power of influence, community, and storytelling. Success won’t come from the product alone—it will come from the world you build around it. Everyday is a new reality! #anyalewechiprecious #drubix #founder #everydayisanewreality

If you've worked at an early startup you know how fast things move. Sometimes so fast that your team can lose sight of what actually matters, and you need to regain focus. There's a 9 question exercise I like to go through to ground startup marketing teams back in the basics and the real "why" behind what we're doing. Typically it leads to some "oh, duh" or "aha" moments. I published the list in Growth Therapy today: https://lnkd.in/g4YeUYRd

When should startups dive into performance marketing? Founders, this might be sooner than you think. The moment you have a clear value proposition and understand your target audience, it’s time. 🕒 Performance marketing isn't just for established companies. It’s a powerful tool for startups to accelerate growth and build brand awareness from the get-go. Why wait? Start early to: 🔹 Validate your product-market fit with real data. 🔹 Generate quality leads and build a customer base. 🔹 Optimize campaigns to maximize ROI from the start. 🔹 Demonstrate product adoption and growth, crucial for attracting funding. 🔹 Learn and adapt quickly to market demands. When your MVP is ready and you’re seeking scalable growth, performance marketing can be your strategic advantage. Every click, impression, and conversion is a learning opportunity. It’s about smart spending and targeted reach. Don’t wait to be big. Start being strategic. Did you adopt performance marketing early on for your business? How was your experience? Let me know in the comments! #Startups #PerformanceMarketing #GrowthHacking #DigitalStrategy #founder

"Early startups shouldn't do marketing." I saw a few posts saying this last week. And I couldn't disagree more. “But startups should focus on building their products.” How’s anyone going to know about your product if you’re not talking about it? “That’s what sales is for.” Who is sales going to sell to if you don't have an audience? The fact is, marketing makes your development and sales so much easier. By building an engaged, receptive audience, you can get more feedback on your product and your message. You'll better meet your customers' needs, and you won't go into every sales conversation completely cold. You don't need to go overboard. You may not even need a full-time hire. But you have to start getting your name and your message out there. Early.

The worst thing that can happen There’s a first time for everything, and this is my first post on LinkedIn. I can’t take all the credit for this initiative. My brother, Nando de Freitas, pushed me into it! Some of you may know that, after leaving IBM, and together with Paul Baker and my son Marco De Freitas, I’ve become the proud co-founder of a software startup in the healthcare sector, called Go Triage AI. We are the first to market in our chosen niche, but I was expressing my concern to Nando about competitors who I know will be copying us given our early success when he said “That’s not important, the worst thing that can happen is that nobody knows about your product, about your achievements”...an aha moment for me, if there ever was one. Marketing is critical to the success of startups. Poor or non-existent marketing plans account for around 20% of startup failures, but product-market fit is even more important, the lack of which is responsible for around 40% of failures (sources vary a bit on these figures but it’s in that ballpark). So, yeah, if you already have product-market fit, to fail because of lack of marketing is really the worst thing that can happen! 🫣 I know that my friend Michael Schumacher at HMDG would agree. There is a lot of startup material out there, but each startup has its unique story and I’d like (through a series of posts) to share with you the story of Go Triage, hoping that in doing so you might get one or two nuggets as you embark on your own startup (ad)venture. If you take anything from this introductory post, I hope it’s this: just because you’re a “techie”, it doesn’t mean that it’s ok to abdicate from your marketing and selling responsibilities. ...and here is my first 2 cents towards making our product known! 😅

🔥 Execution Doesn't Just Eat Strategy for Breakfast - It Devours It Whole 🔥 Let's be brutally honest: Most startups don't fail because of bad ideas. They fail because of pathetic execution. In the cutthroat world of early-stage startups, execution boils down to one make-or-break factor: 𝐕𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐈𝐓𝐘. 🚀 Velocity of building and shipping: Ship or die. Period. 🎨 Velocity of Design: Perfection is the enemy. Ugly and functional beats beautiful and late. 💼 Velocity of Sales Execution: If your deal cycle isn't faster than your competitors for the same ICP, you're already losing. 📈 Velocity of Marketing: Test relentlessly or get left in the dust. 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐲 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐥? In the startup arena, the slow get slaughtered. High velocity means more experiments, more failures, and ultimately, more chances to strike gold before you run out of cash. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐡: The intensity at your startup should be slightly uncomfortable for everyone. If it's not, you're too slow. If it's unbearable, you're heading for burnout. If your startup doesn't feel uncomfortably intense, you're already on the path to failure. Agree or disagree? Drop your thoughts below 👇

TAM SAM SOM is broken Credit to Robert Kaminski, follow him for more insightful content. ------ Original post below 👇🏼 TAM SAM SOM is broken 💢 Especially for horizontal markets. Markets are far more complex than 3 concentric circles. Take a look at one of Calendly’s target markets. ↳ Sales teams booking meetings w/ prospects. ⚫️ Investor Market Breakdown [Left image] 3 basic definitions of who might buy a meeting booking tool. This is a drastic oversimplification of what the market looks like. And often leads to poor GTM strategies. 🟣 GTM Breakdown [Right image] This is a more accurate depiction of a market — A complex collection of sub-markets. It factors in the nuances that drives different customer behavior: → different industries → different company types → different teams → different situations → different needs 🔥🔥 So, what does a more realistic view of markets mean for startup founders? 1️⃣ Build better GTM strategies No more blindly following a TAM/SAM/SOM as your market map. Instead, your sales and marketing motions will be rooted in something closer to reality — resulting in campaigns that are: → more targeted → more effective → more predictable 2️⃣ Identify more growth opportunities Even in saturated markets, there will always be underserved segments. You just have to be willing to look for them — and then get specific with your message to reach them. 3️⃣ Less likely to prematurely scale When founders raise money, they get the feeling that they are on their way to becoming a large company. So they start doing “big company things”: ⛔️ Broad ambitious marketing campaigns ⛔️ Moving up market to chase enterprise deals ⛔️ Start building new products Embracing the reality of complex markets will give founders some pause before making these mistakes. _____ So when planning your GTM, ask yourself… 🤔 Do you have an accurate picture of your market? And remember… Markets are complex. Because markets are made of people. And people are complex. Act accordingly. #startups #marketing #gtm #growth Stay updated with The Startup Anatomy for top content on: 🚀 Startups, Founders Story 💸 Investors, VC, Startup Angel Funding