GTM is the whole answer to one question: how does a stranger who has your problem end up paying you and staying. That covers who you sell to, what you say to them, how they first hear about you, who talks to them, what you charge and who keeps them after the sale. It is not a launch plan or a marketing campaign, those are pieces of it. The useful test is that you can draw your GTM on one page as a path a real customer walked, from first hearing your name to renewing. If you cannot draw it, you do not have a GTM yet, you have a set of activities.
4 hand-picked resources, 1 India-specific, 4 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it It makes the point most first-time founders miss, that early on you are selling the founders and the promise that you personally will solve the problem, not a product. That reframe is what makes GTM click.
On Y Combinator Startup Library Talk
Open ycombinator.com →Why we picked it A structured curriculum for engineers who have never thought about sales, covering channels, segmentation, quota, comp and coverage in bite-sized pieces. Good for building vocabulary fast so GTM conversations stop being opaque.
On Andreessen Horowitz by Peter Levine 16 short videos
Open a16z.com →Why we picked it It answers the four questions every early founder actually asks (what is my ICP, how do I run a sales call, which motion, how do I forecast) in one place, from First Round's own VP of GTM. The best single map of the territory.
From First Round Review by Emery Rosansky ~20 min read
Open review.firstround.com →Why we picked it Kirani has backed Freshworks, Chargebee and BrowserStack, and his rule that the product stays horizontal while the GTM goes vertical is the most quoted line in Indian SaaS for good reason. Covers push versus pull markets, channel focus, first pricing and first hires in one piece.
From SeedToScale (Accel India) by Shekhar Kirani ~15 min read
Open seedtoscale.com →How what gtm actually is reads from a different seat.
