4 tips on how to approach your early-stage AI product’s GTM strategy.
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The gen AI space is competitive AF, and startups can miss the forest for the trees when the pressure is this high. I’m sharing four tips to keep in mind when taking your product to market as an early-stage AI company.
1. 🎯Go back to first principles (especially when everything seems shiny and new)
“Thinking from first principles” seems like the thing to say these days to seem smart, but here’s a refresher on what it actually means: the practice of questioning every assumption you think you know about a given problem and then creating new solutions from scratch.
Reverting to first principles thinking when taking a product to market gets two big 👍thumbs up👍 from me. Here’s why:
A lot of the gen AI companies we’re seeing are early-stage with products that can do a whole lot of things. That means a variety of potential problems or use cases the product can solve, for a variety of possible personas. With limited time, energy, and resources (and a ton of competition), 95% of the time the right call for startups is to focus on a small, key set of personas that come out of initial research for your go-to-market strategy.
Once you’ve got a strong hypothesis on who you think those personas are, scrap what you think you know about them—and talk to them. You can’t properly figure out their Jobs to Be Done to help you develop the correct positioning and messaging unless you actually know what situations, motivations, and outcomes they have/are looking for (and how your product will help them solve their most pressing problem beyond what they’re currently doing).
Talking to them will also help you deeply understand the switching costs they're facing: sometimes keeping the status quo, even if not ideal, beats the cost of change (even when everyone is being told they should adopt and implement more AI).
Understanding how your product solves a prospect’s Jobs to Be Done *and* is worth the potential upfront headaches of implementing change are critical to making a sale.
Also: something I’ve seen founders or their founding teams struggle with is narrowing their persona focus in the beginning. It feels like they’re shutting the door on potential opportunities or upside, but trying to tackle too much too soon will muddle your message and drain your focus. Start smaller with a strong, solid foundation and build from there.
Ask: “What’s the 20% we can do now that will give us 80% of our results?”
And start there.
2. 🗣️A whisper in your ear: features and functionality are not the only way to differentiate
Building differentiated features and functionality is one way to draw a line in the sand around what makes your product unique, but it’s not the only option. With a lot of gen AI startups offering similar or overlapping solutions, figuring out how to differentiate can feel hard. And make no mistake—finding the story only you can tell can be hair-pulling work that takes iteration. But feature or functionality differentiation isn’t the only card you have to play🃏: you can differentiate in a variety of ways through your positioning, messaging, and GTM strategy.
Take a look at these two examples to see what I mean:
Exhibit A:
Now that OpenAI has launched a ChatGPT plan for enterprise customers, it's on par with other companies that have created enterprise solutions like Microsoft’s Bing Chat Enterprise.
I’m not on the inside of either company, but here are a few assumptions on how both could differentiate even though they go head-to-head feature-wise:
Brand: The Microsoft brand appeals to certain types of organizations. Even though both are “enterprise-grade,” Microsoft is known for privacy and security in a way OpenAI is not, which will likely influence who they go after in the market.
Platform: Microsoft has a suite of products and solutions that likely play nice with Bing Chat Enterprise over ChatGPT Enterprise. On the other hand, ChatGPT Enterprise offers customers free credits to use their APIs to extend OpenAI into a fully custom solution for their org.
Who they sell to: I imagine Microsoft will be upselling current customers on Bing Chat Enterprise (aka doing customer marketing), whereas ChatGPT Enterprise will have to go after new customers and convince them. In terms of market share, maybe that looks like Microsoft capturing more Fortune 500 customers or public companies that are already using their other products, whereas ChatGPT Enterprise targets growth-stage companies like Canva.
Exhibit B
Years ago, a young Intercom built Help Center and took on the behemoth Zendesk. It’s not an AI example, but it’s an 🌲evergreen🌲 example of how to differentiate even when your product lacks key features your competitors have using the Minimum Marketable Product (MMP) approach. Intercom knew it’d be years before they could catch up feature for feature with Zendesk, so they opted to differentiate through story.
So: Intercom got creative and decided they’d build the most personal, connected, and intelligent help center.
This allowed Intercom to truly differentiate without trying to play “catch-up” with features. If you want to launch a differentiated product into a crowded market, start with MMP.
Some final food for thought on differentiating via GTM strategy
Startups doing similar things can succeed in different ways depending on their GTM strategy. Keep these in mind as you think about how to give your product a leg up:
Customer acquisition: Are you focused on inbound, outbound, conferences, partnerships, or something else that’s different from competitors’ growth strategies?
Use cases: Are you highlighting particular use cases that speak to specific personas, taking a vertical approach to your positioning, or going after certain industries with targeted messaging?
Customer experience: How does your sales process, onboarding, and support process stand out from the competition? Are you offering more white-glove support, customization, and the like?
Pricing and packaging: How does the way you’re packaging and pricing your offerings stack up against similar products? How does that relate to the personas you’re focusing on?
Education: What are you doing to make it easy for target customers to actually get what you do? Are you creating educational or solid product videos, sandbox environments, or free trials for people to play in so they can see how easy it is to get started?
3. 🍊Prioritize post-launch activities: The juice is worth the squeeze
When things are new, with a lot of uncertainty, it’s common for startups to take their “best guess” at launch. I’m all for moving quickly and getting stuff out the door, but that needs to come with iterating quickly too. PMMs often go ham on product launches (as they should), but I’d argue that you need to really squeeze your post-launch activities if you want that sweet aha- moment💡 juice.
You all subscribe to Inside Olivine, so I know you’re smart—I’ll spare you a complete list of post-launch activities (but feel free to ask ChatGPT). Instead, I’ll point out the key things I’ve seen move the needle for earlier-stage AI startups looking to refine their approach:
Sales calls & enablement:
Are there new insights on your personas and their JTBD from the discovery stage of your sales conversations?
How are prospects responding to your sales story?
Are they having aha moments, getting confused, asking particular questions you need to address upfront, or presenting surprising objections?
➡️ There is so much to learn (and then iterate on) from sales calls.
Website:
Are prospects still not entirely clear on what you do or offer when they get on a sales call?
Is the conversion rate from your website traffic to calls booked lower than you anticipated?
Are you missing more detailed use-case pages to help prospects understand how your product would work for them?
➡️ Tweaking your website is one lever you can pull to unblock more or faster sales.
Nurture campaigns:
Are prospects giving you their info, yet not getting on a call?
Are you having discovery calls, with prospects then dropping off?
Could following up with case studies, how customers are utilizing new functionality, or mentions in the media give you more credibility with prospects?
➡️ Nurture campaigns give you more touchpoints to test messaging and updates while staying top-of-mind.
TL;DR: There are so many post-launch activities you could prioritize. What typically matters is figuring out which ones will help you hit your sales goals fastest, and then expanding from there.
4. ✨Find the balance between being reactive, proactive, opportunistic, and strategic
Lots of competition means competitors are popping up all the time. It’s easy to get caught up in reactivity, and sometimes that’s warranted. But when the stakes are high and everyone is stressed, how can you as the PMM drive your team to be more proactive, or better yet, strategic? If you can keep this in mind as the steward of your product’s success, your company will be better off.
This is less about “what to do” as a PMM and more about “how to think.” With limited time, energy, and resources—how much of your/your team’s time is spent being reactive vs. strategic?
Here’s how I define each:
Reactive: You keep reacting/responding to “fires” (e.g., new competitors, new competing features, etc.). Note: if you’re pre-PMF, it’s normal to spend more time being reactive (but it still shouldn’t be your default).
Proactive: “Fires” have happened enough that you’re getting ahead of them (e.g., creating the right sales enablement to educate different stakeholders in the sales cycle who’ve had strong objections in the past). Generally better than being reactive, but you’re still focused on “fixing” or responding to the past.
Opportunistic: Think of being opportunistic as taking advantage of a “shiny object/opportunity.” Sometimes the shiny thing moves you forward and sometimes it’s a distraction. Discern the difference. Here’s a great example of Momentum being opportunistic in a way that moves them forward with one of their main competitors getting sunsetted after an acquisition.
4. Strategic: Being strategic is really about intentionally creating a future of your choosing—one that’s aligned with your long-term vision. It’s seeing the forest for the trees and not getting pulled off course (e.g., reacting to every single thing in the market). You have your finger on the pulse of the market, but your north star isn’t constantly changing because of that. You continue to make decisions that move you closer to your vision.
Key takeaway: You’ll find yourself being reactive, proactive, opportunistic, and strategic as you take your product to market and iterate. What matters is being aware of how many of your decisions and actions fall where. If you notice something doesn’t feel kosher (e.g., too reactive, too opportunistic, etc.) surface it and realign your team to their north star.
👀 Are you a gen AI startup in need of positioning, messaging, and GTM support?
🏆 Olivine’s team of product marketing, sales enablement, and design leaders know how to differentiate your product to drive growth. Learn more.
