How is GTM different before product market fit versus after?
Before PMF, GTM is a learning function and after PMF it is a manufacturing function, and confusing the two burns most of the money startups lose. Before PMF the founder sells, the pitch changes every week, you take meetings with people who will never buy just to learn why, and success is measured in insight and in a handful of customers who would be genuinely upset if you shut down. After PMF the job flips to repeatability: same buyer, same pain, same pitch, same close rate, now hire people and give them the script. The classic mistake is hiring a VP of Sales to find PMF for you, which never works because the thing that is broken is the product or the market, not the selling. A useful test: can you predict, within reason, how many of the next ten similar prospects will buy? If not, you are still pre PMF no matter what your revenue says.
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It lays out five stages from pre revenue to scaling and tells you what the founder's job is in each one, which is the clearest map we have found of the pre PMF to post PMF handover. It also names the exact failure this question is about: hiring a sales leader to solve a problem that is really a product market problem.
Pai splits PMF into product to problem fit and then motion to market fit, and that second half is exactly what founders mean when they ask whether their GTM is ready to scale. He argues it through Indian companies (Atomberg, Urban Company, Meesho, Meru) rather than Silicon Valley examples, so the market dynamics look like the ones you are actually selling into.
Sharath has built two enterprise companies (Observe, Sanas) with engineering in India and buyers in the US, and is direct about founder-led sales being non-negotiable for the first customers. Good on what actually has to move to the US and what does not.
