Taming the monkey

This is the second article in a series applying lessons from startups to other domains. If you are new to the newsletter, start with the previous issue, Focus on the monkey.

In the previous article, I suggested a critical ingredient of success with startups (and many other endeavors) is focusing on the monkey. That often means focusing on go-to-market (GTM) strategy. The reality isn’t so simple. I mentioned that our biggest struggle as a startup was building a scalable GTM. While true, our product-market fit (PMF) wasn’t strong enough either. We had strong initial growth with early adopters and then hit the wall with GTM challenges. If the PMF had been stronger, we might have been able to fight through our GTM challenges. 

One of the most common mistakes I see leaders make is falling so deeply in love with a product or message that they assume growth will happen automatically. They perfect their product, only to discover there’s no path to reach the masses. 

Love the product

At the other extreme, some leaders become so enamored with an idea that they assume everyone will share their perspective. They rush to market, only to discover that others do not share their enthusiasm. Both of these scenarios assume you have to start with a product. After reading the last article, the founder of an amazing 3D printer company, Toybox (full disclosure, I am an investor), shared examples of companies that do the opposite. They start with GTM and use it to shape the product. Here’s a summary of his insights. 

“Mobile games are hyper-competitive and resource intensive to build, but it all comes down to one number, the ad conversion rate. Once that rate crosses a certain threshold, the game takes off and publishers pour money into scaling it. To find winners, many studios create fake or bare-bones versions of games and advertise them first. Once they find ads that achieve a minimum conversion rate, developers build the full game. In other words, they use GTM to discover PMF. This inversion is powerful because it collapses risk early. You can fail at the ad screen instead of after 12 months of development. This turns GTM into a filtering mechanism. Instead of guessing which product might work, you let CAC and conversion rates, the main scaling levers of the business, decide for you. It’s a great example of building a business without a product, where the funnel, not the product itself, drives success.”

Love the GTM

Looking back, we underestimated how severe our GTM challenges were. We needed to either invent a new GTM approach or develop a product with strong enough PMF to overcome the distribution barriers. We didn’t iterate enough on either. Scaling requires testing product and GTM in parallel until a winning combination is found. The same GTM might not work for every version of a product and you won’t know if you have PMF until you’ve paired it with an effective GTM. We should have rapidly tested multiple product versions with different GTM strategies, keeping each test small enough to explore many combinations.

To make an outsized impact in any domain, you need both PMF and an effective GTM to scale it. What I learned from my startup was that we missed a crucial step: figuring out how to scale before actually scaling. This step is often the most difficult. It's a messy combination of testing and iterating multiple products and GTM strategies in parallel. It might look like this. 

Love the Product, Love the GTM

In the previous issue, I mentioned Think Together’s GTM challenges in improving K–12 outcomes in California. Today, Think Together is leveraging an iterative PMF–GTM approach to scale impact. Our vision of changing the odds for kids in California is a monumental challenge, with more than half of the state’s six million K-12 students performing below grade level. To meet the need, we are testing a dizzying array of product and GTM combinations. 

The Orenda division is breaking up its consulting product into smaller, modular offerings that are faster to implement. They are also training groups of districts through cohorts instead of one at a time as well as developing digital versions that can be deployed online or in hybrid models with online and in-person assistance. On the GTM side they are leveraging conferences, podcasts, blogs, resellers and partnering with industry organizations. Outside of Orenda, Think Together is also developing a suite of software solutions and our newly launched superintendent training academy, Think Transcend. These new initiatives will not only serve the needs of our school district partners but will also provide additional GTM channels for Think Together to serve more children. In our initial testing, all have shown signs of success. Time will tell which combinations truly have the potential to transform the lives of millions of children. 

In the first article, I asked which is the monkey, PMF or the GTM? I concluded that, more often than not, it’s GTM. In practice, the monkey is often a combination of both. The key is making sure you tame the monkey before moving forward.

Sangeeth Peruri - Jack of Many Trades, Master of None
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