Unlocking Startup Growth: From Product-Market Fit to Go-to-Market Fit

Unlocking growth beyond Product-Market-Fit: the journey of MobileIron's CEO from heroic selling to building a repeatable Go-to-Market playbook that drives scalable revenue.

  • 1. After achieving product-market fit, there is a missing link called "go-to-market fit" which is necessary for growth.
  • 2. Go-to-market fit consists of a simple and repeatable process that can be carried out by ordinary people.
  • 3. The speaker, Bob, has worked with the listener, Barry, on two startups: Airespace and Meraki.
  • 4. At Meraki, they achieved go-to-market fit by focusing on making their product extremely easy to use and providing excellent customer service.
  • 5. Go-to-market fit is important for scaling a startup because it allows the company to consistently acquire new customers and grow.
  • 6. The key to achieving go-to-market fit is understanding the customer journey and creating a playbook that outlines each step of that journey.
  • 7. A good go-to-market playbook should include the following elements:
  • * Stages of the customer journey, from first touch to purchase order
  • * Urgent pain points that motivate customers to engage with the company
  • * "Wow" moments that occur during demos or meetings and cause customers to lean in and want to learn more
  • * Mary wows, which are specific things that convince executives to make a purchasing decision
  • * How the product makes the customer a hero within their organization.
  • * Specific actions and tools needed for each stage of the customer journey.
  • 8. A good go-to-market playbook should be concise and fit on one or two pages, rather than being a lengthy brain dump of information.
  • 9. To determine if you have achieved go-to-market fit, look for signs such as increasing sales efficiency and a feeling of momentum within the company.
  • 10. As a startup grows, the ideal executive team may change, and it can be difficult to replace high-performing executives who are struggling in their new roles due to loyalty.
  • 11. The speaker has experienced this firsthand when he stepped down as CEO of MobileIron in 2016 after realizing that the company needed a CEO with experience running a larger organization.

Source: EO via YouTube

❓ What do you think? What is one crucial insight or lesson that you took away from your journey of building MobileIron and discovering Go-to-Market fit? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!