The most common startup problem: lack of go-to-market answers

Afterwards, while the attendees were speed-dating, at least 30 entrepreneurs came up to me to ask me questions about their businesses, and get a little speed-mentoring. And was struck by how nearly all of them could not describe their go to market strategy.

Surprisingly to me (in a room full of entrepreneurs), few knew what that means. Though there's probably a more proper definition, my definition is:

• What's the of paying customers you need to reach?
• How will you communicate your value proposition to them?
• How can you communicate with a whole bunch of them?
• Can you reach them in a cost-effective way<

The answer to how to do these three things is of course going to vary by business, and type of customer. A startup that involves consumer users will have an answer that has to do with viral spread, fast & addictive engagement and clarity over whether to monetize the users or the data about them. A startup with a specific service useful to a business vertical can use an inbound sales model with a clever customer capture funnel.

I found it striking how many of the founders there were concentrating on the product build, and looking for a technical co-founder, or were a techie looking for a business person to hook up with, but thought that business person's job was to go fundraising. There was much attention on Minimum Viable Product, and on low-cost technical development. Yet even with the greatest product, few could articulate how they'd sell it.

I've personally long felt that finding a good technical co-founder was a really important thing to a startup. But I'm coming to realize that maybe that's just because I came up through product management & marketing jobs in the tech business, and the go-to-market questions were something I at least knew was a problem I had to solve in my startups - whether I ended up with a good answer or not.

This year, though, my thoughts might be shifting a bit. Having now seen 50-100 ventures in the last 6 months of mentoring, I'm beginning to realize that the biggest team gap in many startups might, in fact, be the equivalent of the startup product manager - where "product manager" includes a fairly expansive definition as the person who can guide the product development, talk to customer prospects & prioritize requirements, and then figure out how to get to those customers at scale. Typically this might have been the startup CEO; but with that startup CEOs coming from a much more diverse set of backgrounds, these skills are often missing. It's an important gap to fill.

Entrepreneurs, can you answer the questions in the second paragraph above? If not, you need somebody on your team who can in order to succeed.