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Alex Estner has spent his entire career in the startup world, with now 10+ years of experience in SaaS and marketplaces startups. Since 2022, he’s been supporting other early-stage founders on their journey from pre-revenue to €1 million ARR.

Over the last 3 years, he has helped 25+ SaaS companies (bootstrapped, pre-seed & seed-stage) with their Go-to-market - as a GTM advisor, consultant, or interim CRO.

Today, he will walk us through one of the most crucial topics for early-stage B2B SaaS founders scaling from 0 to 1 mil ARR - GTM Foundations.

Want to get your GTM foundation right? Alex provides 3 ways to support you:

→ Free GTM library with 50+ resources to build a strong GTM foundation

→ Bi-weekly newsletter mrrunlocked.com, where he shares actionable GTM content

→ GTM audit and 1-on-1 GTM advisory to build a strong GTM foundation

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by Alex Estner

Before we dive into the GTM Foundations, it is necessary to unlearn and bust some common myths that founders have during the 0-1mil ARR stage. 

Founders are consistently caught up in these myths in their growth journey. Before you head into the foundations, make sure you address all the myths and if you’re guilty of any, you know what to do next! 

A lot of times, you read about the 0 to 1 stage. I rather believe the 0-1 stage consists of at least 3 (sub) stages.

But once you have achieved stage 3, you hit product-market fit. Congrats 🎉

Product Market Fit = Problem Solution Fit (Stage 1) + GTM Fit (Stage 2)

So when I talk about GTM Foundation, this combines GTM experimentation (Stage 1) & GTM Playbook V1 (Stage 2).

GTM Foundation = GTM Experimentation (Stage 1) + GTM Playbook V1 (Stage 2)

So let’s take a closer look.

Your goal is to find the first 10 / 100 customers (depending on your ACV).

You will run different tests. You want to validate your hypothesis, so you do any and everything to land that first set of customers.

I call this GTM Experimentation.

❌ But you will most likely end up with different customer types and different use cases in this process. This is very hard to grow and scale.

✅ So you need to focus on your best-fit customers and, for the time being, niche down to one segment and use-case.

This is how you reach stage 2.

The goal is to go beyond 10 / 100 customers.

But you can’t do this while serving multiple segments and multiple channels because each of them requires different strategies and resources to work.

So, how do you do this?

Analyze your early customers (Early Customer Profile) to find your best-fit customers (Ideal Customer Profile) and focus on them till you scale to €1 million ARR.

Signs of best-fit customers are

✅ Higher product usage,

✅ Lower churn,

✅ Faster sales cycles,

✅ Higher win rates,

✅ Higher ACVs.

Focus on one channel, one use-case, and one ICP. If you are at this stage and want to learn more, check this out.

I call this GTM Playbook V1.

Once you have achieved that, congrats. You hit product market fit.

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Here, your goal is to go beyond 1 million ARR. You can do this in three ways -

1️⃣ Vertically - Same target audience (aka. ICP), but new use cases

2️⃣ Horizontally - Same use case, but new target audiences or

3️⃣ Simply continue what you already do if there is a big enough market. Double-down/scale.

So now we know the 3 stages from 0€ to 1€ million ARR and beyond.

To get there, you need to build your GTM foundations.

The GTM foundation spread over: GTM Experimentation + GTM Playbook V1

Now, it’s time to get in the trenches and build your GTM foundations.

Building the GTM foundations for SaaS founders on their journey from 0 to €1 million ARR is exactly what I do in my 1-on-1 GTM advisory.

The following sections should act as your guide in navigating the challenges of building your GTM foundation.

So we don’t go into details, but rather link to relevant materials. But at the end, you know exactly what you need to create/master to have a strong GTM foundation.

The 10 elements of a strong GTM foundation:

 ✅Ideal Customer Profile

✅ Positioning

✅ Messaging

✅ GTM Collaterals

✅ Channels

✅ Pricing

✅ Sales Motion

✅ CRM & Tracking

✅ Forecasting & Planning

✅ Internal Operating Systems

1️⃣ Use my free GTM library with 50+ free resources (guides, templates, workbooks, and tools) to build a strong GTM foundation (helped 5000+ SaaS leaders)

2️⃣ Get a 360° GTM audit of your status quo + a custom 6-month action plan

3️⃣ Work 1-on-1 with me - GTM Advisory for SaaS founders from €0 to €1 million ARR

That’s all for this week. Thanks to Alex Estner for sharing these insights.

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