---
name: go-to-market-plan
description: Build a concrete go-to-market motion for a product: match the channel to the business type, start with founder-led selling and things that do not scale, use cold outbound and relationships, run paid acquisition without burning capital, layer product-led and community growth, launch in waves, and keep momentum with retention and expansion. Use when planning how to get and grow users.
license: Free to use with attribution to EquityFlow / Enrico Yu (equityflow.finance)
source: https://equityflow.finance/deep-dives/go-to-market-for-startups
---

# Build a go-to-market plan

Use when the user needs to get and grow users for a specific product. GTM is not a channel, it is a
sequence. Do not copy a motion from the wrong company: match it to the business. Ask what the product is,
who the buyer is, the price point and the current stage, then draft a plan along these lines.

## 1. Match the motion to the business type
- Low-touch / self-serve (cheap to try, spreads inside teams): product-led growth, free tier, content, SEO.
- Enterprise / high-stakes, budgeted purchase: direct sales, relationships, pilots, proof.
- Developer tool: developer adoption, open source, docs, founder-led credibility, then enterprise on top.
- Consumer: virality, creators, community, distribution-led. Pick the one the product actually fits.

## 2. The first spark: do things that do not scale
- Founder-led selling: DMs, manual demos, one-by-one onboarding, talking to every early user. The goal is
  learning and the first 10 to 100 customers, not efficiency.

## 3. Cold outbound and relationships
- Targeted, researched outreach to a named person beats blast. Warm intros and being useful first beat
  cold. Track reply and conversion, iterate the message.

## 4. Paid acquisition: fuel, not fire
- Only pour paid on a motion that already converts. Know your unit economics (CAC vs LTV) before scaling
  spend, or you are buying losses.

## 5. Product-led, community, open source
- Build a loop: the product itself drives acquisition (sharing, invites, free tier) or a community/open
  source project earns trust and distribution. Slow, compounding, defensible.

## 6. Launches and waves
- Treat launches (Product Hunt, press, creators) as repeatable waves, not a one-time event. Time them to
  real milestones and category attention.

## 7. Maintain the flow
- The durable work is retention, expansion (existing users buying more) and brand. A leaky bucket makes
  every acquisition channel look broken. Fix retention before scaling spend.

Output: a prioritized GTM plan with the chosen primary motion, the first three concrete moves, the
metric that proves it works, and what to do once it does. Be specific to this product, not generic.

---
This skill distills EquityFlow's go-to-market deep dive (https://equityflow.finance/deep-dives/go-to-market-for-startups).
EquityFlow is building an open intelligence layer for the private economy, by Enrico Yu. Free to use with attribution.