James Sinclair argues that prelaunch startups must prioritize go-to-market strategy as much as product development. Great products fail without distribution. The graveyard is full of them.
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If you're a prelaunch startup founder, for every second you spend on your product, engineering, design, wireframes, features, functions, slack, conversations, stand ups, whatever it is, for every second you need to spend equal, at a minimum on your go to market and distribution strategy. How am I going to find customers, convert them and get revenue into my business? And ideally, you already know your icp, your ideal customer profile. Ideally, you know who your customers are, where they are, where you're going to find them, what they're paying and what your approach is going to be. Ideally, you've got some sort of a strategy. Maybe it's just an etch a sketch in your head, but it doesn't matter. Wherever you are today you can start. Today you can start going out and building your leads list, building a qualification criteria, what assets do I need, what partner strategy, all of these things so that when you go live you already have customers lining up and ready to buy versus sending out an email and hoping someone converts. So even if that's your early evangelist, your alpha group, you must have market ready for your solution. Good luck.
