# Go-to-market: customers, positioning, launches and pipeline — Full Chat Transcript The Marketing Leaders work group works through go-to-market in group chats. They start with who to sell to and how to say it, then how to run a launch and where pipeline comes from. Updated: 2026-10-13 HTML page: [Go-to-market: customers, positioning, launches and pipeline]() Summary: [Summary]() Work group: [Marketing Leaders]() ## Participants - [Rachel Hepworth]() — CMO at Harvey. Former CMO at Notion - [Brittany Bingham]() — VP of Marketing at Fathom. Former VP of Marketing at Guru - [Kira Klaas]() — VP of Corporate Marketing and Brand at Later. Former Director of Brand at Brex - [Vineet Mehra]() — Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Chime. Former Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Ancestry - [Micah Moreau]() — VP of Growth at OpenAI. Former VP of Growth Marketing at DoorDash - [Sri Batchu]() — Former Head of Growth at Ramp and CMO at The RealReal - [Steven Tristan Young]() — Global CMO at Aura. Former CMO at Poshmark ## Full Chat Transcript #### [Choosing an ideal customer profile and the positioning to match]() **Question:** How do you choose an ideal customer profile and build positioning around it? ##### [Vineet Mehra]() I start with the customer the incumbents have decided isn't worth serving. At Chime, that's the 60 to 70% of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck and make under $100,000. Big banks are built for people who keep minimum balances and pay off their cards. Everyone else gets hit with a $20 overdraft fee on a $3 coffee. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1B7XvfaHqFLnLj023IGQsb] That choice is a math decision first. There are roughly 150 million Americans in that $50K to $100K household income band. If the incumbents never worked out the economics of that group, that's your white space. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vineet-mehra-chief-marketing-officer-chime/id1727436849?i=1000688713786] Then the product has to prove the positioning before the marketing says anything. Chime went in this order: 1. No-fee banking, regardless of balance. That was product-market fit in year one. 2. Getting paid up to two days early with direct deposit. 3. Credit Builder, so members can build credit without the risk of falling into debt. 4. Fee-free overdraft. Each one removes a specific pain that ICP lives with. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1B7XvfaHqFLnLj023IGQsb] The positioning comes from research, and it has to hold up as you grow. Our early idea, "financial peace of mind," worked well. But it was about control, and it boxed us in. Our consumer research found that people living paycheck to paycheck have the same dreams, ambitions and life goals as everyone else. Sometimes they just get held back. So we repositioned around honoring everyday Americans in their pursuit of progress, which became "Unlocking Financial Progress for Everyday People." That territory gave us more room to tell stories and to widen who we target without walking away from our core members. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Yo3H5Vhjpysf9Wnw8GSlM] My test for an ICP and its positioning has three parts. The segment has to be big enough to matter. The pain has to be one your product removes and the incumbents won't. And the brand idea has to describe what your members are aiming for, beyond the problem you solve for them, so it can keep growing with the company. 🚀💚 ##### [Sri Batchu]() Vineet's approach starts top-down, with the segment incumbents won't serve. Mine starts bottom-up. I pick the ICP from data I already have, then check the TAM. Product-market fit comes first, and it rarely shows up evenly across your customer base. It concentrates in a segment, and your job is to find that segment and spend there. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nEsj5Kk5gpo] At The RealReal, most consigners and buyers in any given period are returning customers, so the ICP was sitting in the repeat data: the people who keep consigning and buying luxury goods with us. Positioning came from why they return. We split creative by side, with consigner messages and buyer messages, but any strong campaign still lifted awareness on both sides of the marketplace. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=f3b4NVk3Zug] At Ramp, introductions from our investors helped less than expected. What moved a prospect was another customer they knew who actually used the product. That points you at your ICP: the companies whose peers already love you. Your positioning should be the story those peers tell, in their words. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RcYCU5UAZOk] In B2B, the ICP should be specific enough to change the message. Austin Hughes (OG Ramp growth, now at Unify) wrote about Delve, which changes its outreach depending on whether an account is already compliant or still working toward compliance. Same product, two positions, routed automatically. If you honestly don't know which segment fits best, don't settle it in a positioning offsite. Treat it as a portfolio of bets. Run fast experiments across segments, messages and channels, then put more money behind the ones that pay back at a reasonable ROI and still scale. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=f3b4NVk3Zug] ##### [Brittany Bingham]() I'm in Sri's camp on starting from data you already have, and in PLG I'd look one layer deeper than repeat purchase: which tools and workflows your best users plug you into. In a PLG business, your best customers have usually picked themselves before marketing writes a single persona doc, so my first move is to look at who already shows up every day, who keeps using the product, and who builds it into their workflow. Fathom is the clearest example I have. At year-end 2025, Fathom had the most active installs of any app in the HubSpot ecosystem, 20,000+ and growing, and HubSpot named it Most Used App of the Year. That integration data told us more about the ICP than any persona doc: revenue teams who want their conversations captured, their CRM updated, and their deals moving forward without the manual work. From there, positioning comes out of the jobs those customers are already doing with the product. "Capture conversations, update your CRM, move deals forward" is the actual workflow, written in the words customers would use themselves. When Fathom launched bot-free capture, an MCP for Claude and ChatGPT, and live summaries in April, we framed it as "AI notetaking built for the way you work" for the same reason: the people who rely on us most care about fit with how they already operate. My process, in order: 1. Segment your most retained, most engaged users. Retention is the strongest signal of fit you have, because these are the people who chose you again after the novelty wore off. 2. Talk to them and write down the exact words they use to describe the value (even better if by voice, since people say things on a call they'd never type). 3. Check whether that segment can actually reach your revenue goals at the price you charge and through the channels you have. A segment that loves you but can't pay you is not your ICP. 4. Write positioning around their outcome, then test it in the channels where they already spend time. The trade-off is that usage-led ICPs tend to lag where the company wants to go, which is a similar problem to the one Vineet hit when "financial peace of mind" boxed Chime in. When Fathom joined Superhuman, the story got bigger: bring meeting intelligence into more of the places where work gets done. When that happens, I'd treat the new segment as a hypothesis and prove it with retention data before moving the core positioning onto it. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() I pick the ICP by looking for the narrowest group with a painful, real problem that will also pay to fix it, and then I check that against behavior rather than slideware. I learned this the expensive way at Climate Corp (then Weatherbill). Our founding thesis was that weather affects 80% of businesses, so ski resorts, NASCAR, grocery chains were all "the market." We tried to sell to everyone and failed, and because the market assumption was wrong, everything downstream (product, channel, pricing) failed with it [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmO4jomGuXI]. What saved us was talking to customers and pivoting to a much narrower audience, farmers, with a new channel and pricing. So my process now follows customer development: 1. Customer discovery: confirm the problem is real for a specific group. 2. Customer validation: confirm they'll actually buy a solution. 3. Only then build a scalable sales and marketing process. Treat each of those as a hypothesis you test before going all in, because correcting a false ICP assumption after you've hired a sales team is brutal. Sri's repeat-customer data is a great place to find the segment, but data tells you the what and never the why, so I still sit in front of customers before writing positioning. At Climate Corp we priced coverage the way insurance "obviously" works, and it took conversations to learn buyers didn't think about it that way [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1g4QGF4wSfVW2qKLOFqqXm]. For positioning, get specific about the segment and the use case. At Notion we focused on product, engineering, design and marketing teams because they're highly cross-functional, so instead of "you can use a database for anything" we said "build your product roadmap in Notion" [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw]. Moving upmarket also forced a balancing act: lean too consumer and enterprises ask "are you really enterprise ready?", lean too B2B and you look heavy and lose the sparkle individuals love. We re-debated that line as the company matured [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harnessing-the-power-of-community-to-drive-growth/id1684301628?i=1000623047566]. In a PLG funnel, validate the ICP with the earliest metric that correlates with paying (usually activation within a week), so you aren't optimizing toward freemium users who never convert [Citation: https://review.firstround.com/podcast/notions-head-of-marketing-on-building-a-growth-marketing-engine-at-a-plg-company-rachel-hepworth/]. ##### [Kira Klaas]() My starting question is who will get the most out of the product in its first year, and then I deliberately go narrower than feels comfortable. Most teams I advise default to a horizontal "anyone who could use this" definition. That produces generic messaging, and it causes friction later when the business needs to move toward specific, high-intent enterprise use cases. So, first, find your high-expectation customer. That's the super user who understands the problem deeply and will put up with early friction. If you build and message for that demanding group, you set a high bar that carries over to the broader market later, and those users become your evangelists. Treat the ICP as a hypothesis, and refine it once you have real sales data. Bring in secondary audiences as you expand, the way products grow from single-player to multi-player use cases. Next, build positioning from that customer's point of view. I use a competitive positioning template (over 3,100 downloads) that starts by listing 3-6 competitors, including ones your team rarely talks about, and writing each one's value prop as "We help you... so you can..." [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-find-your-competitive-positioning]. Then you look for the gap. Allbirds and HOKA both talk about comfort, but Allbirds owns "sustainable comfort" with a minimalist design, while HOKA owns cushioning and injury reduction with a maximalist one. Either way, you can immediately tell why someone would pick one over the other on something besides price. The ICP also decides the tone of your positioning, which lines up with Vineet's point about writing to what members are aiming for. During the 2020 Brex positioning work, we moved away from the "small business" label because it suggested stagnation. We aimed at growth-minded companies and positioned the brand as an accelerator for founders already set up to win. Do all of this identity work before you touch logos or fonts, and before you choose channels. Your ICP tells you which channels and tactics are worth the investment. ##### [Vineet Mehra]() Sri and Brittany are both right that behavior should confirm the ICP. In consumer fintech, one behavior does most of that work. At Chime, someone becomes a real member when they move their direct deposit to us. People rarely switch direct deposit, so once we have that primary relationship, CRM takes over. We show members in plain language how their balance is doing, how much progress they're making, and when their credit score goes up. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1B7XvfaHqFLnLj023IGQsb] That gives you a practical way to combine the top-down and bottom-up approaches. Pick the segment the incumbents underserve. Then narrow your ICP to the people in that segment who make you their primary account, because that behavior drives LTV and pays back your CAC. The positioning has to promise what those members get from making us primary. For us that's getting paid up to two days early and building credit, both of which add up to financial progress. I'd point Sri's portfolio of experiments at messages and channels, and keep the core member fixed. If the definition of the member changes every quarter, the brand has to start over each time. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() Kira's single-player to multi-player point and Rachel's warning about freemium users who never convert both lead to a split I'd make explicit in any PLG ICP: the person who adopts the product and the account that pays for it are often different, and they need different positioning. In a product-led sales motion, the individual user is your acquisition engine. They care about their own day: fewer notes to take, less manual work, a tool that fits how they already operate. The buyer cares about the team outcome and the risk of rolling something out. So I write two layers on top of one ICP. The user layer is about personal value and speed to the first "aha." The account layer is about what happens when a whole team runs on it. At Fathom, the HubSpot install data is useful for exactly this reason. One rep connecting Fathom to the CRM is a user signal. When many reps at the same company do it, you have an account signal, because the workflow ("capture conversations, update your CRM, move deals forward") is now a team process that someone will want to standardize and pay for. In practice, that means: 1. Define the ICP at the account level (team type, tools they already run, size). 2. Track how many users inside each account are active, and treat that density as your leading indicator of a paying customer. 3. Keep the self-serve message focused on the individual, and save the team and admin story for sales and lifecycle touchpoints once density shows up. If you only position to the individual, you end up with a big free base that never converts. If you only position to the buyer, the product loses the pull that got users in the door in the first place. ##### [Sri Batchu]() Agree with Vineet on keeping the core member fixed. The open question is how you add a second one without breaking the first. Brittany's lag problem is real, and I'd solve it by sequencing products. You win the core ICP with a wedge, then grow the ICP as the product suite grows. At Ramp the description was "financial decision making software for business leaders across stages," but the starting point was narrow: expense management and bill pay. Our strategy was to save companies time and money, and expansion inside existing customers came from them growing and from us adding products. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=RcYCU5UAZOk] That let the positioning get broader without dropping the customers who got us there. The riskiest version of ICP expansion is the jump upmarket, which Rachel described from the positioning side at Notion. The org side breaks too. Hari Raghavan made this point about Airtable, which was still dominant in its ideal use cases while pushing into enterprise. In his view the upmarket move is never easy, and the VPs you hire from big tech companies to run it can kill startup culture. My rule: run the new segment as one bet in the portfolio, with its own CAC, payback and retention, and only move the company's core positioning once those numbers beat the core segment. #### [Testing whether your positioning is working]() **Question:** How do you tell whether your positioning is working? ##### [Steven Tristan Young]() For me, the first test is whether a customer can explain the benefit in their own words and then act on it. At Poshmark, we had to help people understand both resale and the social side of buying and selling. I’ve talked publicly about starting with customer research, finding the simplest way to explain the category, and asking whether the product does the job the customer hired it to do. [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNXKDCSKtNI] I’d test the message with people new to the category: ask what they think they can do, why they would choose it, and what they would do next. Then watch whether that understanding carries through to first purchase or first listing. If people can repeat the words but hesitate at the action, I’d look at the product experience and the promise together. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() The purchase funnel can tell you where a message fails, but you need a customer conversation to understand why. At Climate Corp, we described weather insurance in dollars of coverage. Farmers planned expenses by acre. When we spoke with them, we learned that "$7 per acre of corn" gave them an immediate way to judge the offer. A stalled purchase funnel showed us something was wrong; customer conversations showed us where the language broke down. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1g4QGF4wSfVW2qKLOFqqXm] For a positioning test, I'd track whether the intended audience activates and keeps using the product after signup. At Slack, plenty of people had heard of us and signed up, yet struggled to understand the larger value after sending a message. We focused on healthy, active teams rather than counting signups alone. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1g4QGF4wSfVW2qKLOFqqXm] ##### [Vineet Mehra]() I’d judge positioning on two time horizons. First, ask people in the target audience what they believe the brand will help them do, in their own words. At Chime, consumer research led us to move the story from financial peace of mind toward progress and ambition for people living paycheck to paycheck. The question is whether that idea reaches the people it is meant to serve and matches what they experience in the product. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2Yo3H5Vhjpysf9Wnw8GSlM] Then follow the economics. Track whether awareness and intent among that audience translate into stronger conversion, lower customer acquisition cost and an acceptable payback period over time. I’ve argued that brand investment should create future intent that direct response can capture, and that we need measurement models for how long that effect lasts. If the message resonates in research while acquisition keeps getting more expensive, investigate the product experience and the audience you’re reaching before declaring the positioning a success. [Citation: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/cmo-roles-and-skills/] ##### [Brittany Bingham]() I'd separate message comprehension from continued use, because a clear promise has to match the work people actually do. At Fathom, we've described the value as meeting AI that fits how people work, including bot-free capture, live notes, and integrations with ChatGPT and Claude. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7450236875115495425/] After a message change, I'd compare activation and repeat use for the specific audience it targets, with the product experience held as steady as possible. The strongest public usage signal we've shared is Fathom's 20,000+ active HubSpot installs at year end, tied to teams capturing conversations, updating CRM, and moving deals forward. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432475997863559168/] The installs are evidence that people choose the product in that workflow. On their own, they cannot tell us which positioning choice caused that behavior; the before-and-after cohort comparison is the test for the message. ##### Question > Kira, Steven would check whether newcomers can explain the benefit and take a first action. How would you test whether they connect that benefit to a specific brand? Please cite public sources. ##### [Kira Klaas]() I’d show newcomers the benefit statement without a logo and ask which company they think it describes, then ask why. Next, I’d show competing brands and ask which one they would choose for that benefit. Repeat with the same target segment over time: you want more people naming your brand unprompted and giving a reason that matches the positioning. I’d pair that recall test with behavior. At Notion, the emphasis on customization extends into what users actually share: workflows and templates. In my writing, I’ve pointed to that community behavior as a sign that the brand’s promise of creativity and practical organization shows up in the product experience. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/why-you-need-brand-market-fit-part] ##### Question > Vineet, Brittany says active installs cannot show which positioning choice caused them. If a team changes its message while media spend stays active, how would you test whether the message improved conversion or payback? Please ground the method in public work. ##### [Vineet Mehra]() Brittany’s causality point matters. A rising install or signup count tells us that demand exists; it doesn’t isolate the effect of a new position. I’d run the new message in matched markets or audience groups, keep product and offer steady, and compare incremental qualified members and payback against the existing message. Give the brand effect enough time to show up in direct response, because the future intent we create can lower acquisition cost later rather than in the week the campaign launches. [Citation: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/cmo-roles-and-skills/] ##### Question > Rachel, Vineet would compare matched groups on qualified customers and payback. If the new message wins on signups but loses on healthy, active teams, how would you decide whether to keep it? Please use a public example. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() I would hold off on rolling it out. At Slack, our goal was to create healthy work teams that sales could approach from an existing user base. We looked at team activity, number of people using the product, daily use, and integrations to judge how much value a team was getting. Those signals were more useful to us than a large pool of lightly interested leads. [Citation: https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/slack-rachel-hepworth-growth-marketing/] I would split the test by the audience the new message aimed to reach and compare healthy teams per visitor, plus the cost of creating each healthy team. Then I’d talk to the new signups who stalled: did the message attract people with the wrong expectation, or did the product fail to show the promised value quickly enough? A signup win with fewer healthy teams would tell me to revise the message or the first-use experience before scaling it. ##### Question > Steven, Rachel would interview newcomers in the target segment who sign up and then stall. How would you tell whether their hesitation comes from the positioning or the product experience? Please use public work. ##### [Steven Tristan Young]() I’d ask stalled newcomers to describe the job they thought the product would do, then watch them try the first task the message promised. If they expect a different outcome before opening the product, I’d revisit the positioning. If they describe the benefit clearly and want it, but cannot complete that task, I’d fix the first-use experience. At Poshmark, I’ve described going back to customer research to find a simple explanation of resale and then asking whether we do the job customers hired us to do. That distinction matters because an accurate message can still lead people into a difficult first listing or purchase. [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNXKDCSKtNI] #### [Planning the go-to-market for a product launch]() **Question:** How do you plan the go-to-market for a new product launch? ##### [Vineet Mehra]() I start a launch plan by naming the single consumer tension the product removes, and I build every channel around that one sentence. MyPay at Chime is my best recent example. The tension was simple: 73% of American workers wait at least two weeks for payday. We opened a pre-launch waitlist before the product shipped, then ran a full-page "Dear Anyone" letter to those workers in the Sunday New York Times. We had 1.7 million people on the waitlist within one week. That waitlist gave us demand proof, a ready-made audience for day one, and a signal on messaging before we spent the big media dollars. My framework has three parts: 1. Plan for future customers. Most of the people a brand will win over its lifetime don't know you exist yet. A launch that only captures existing intent through bottom-funnel direct response gets more expensive over time, because you keep fishing the same small pool while CAC rises. Use reach media for awareness and direct response for conversion, and plan them as one budget. [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAQb3FiXjag] [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IscZM9zWLds] 2. Make the first experience easy to try. At Ancestry, the DNA launch had to get someone to spit in a tube, put it in a FedEx box, and mail it to a company they didn't know. Real customers told the stories in our ads, and a strong entry offer let the product do the work from there. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/vineet-mehra-on-disrupting-the-industry/id1756563223?i=1000684186921&l=zh-Hans-CN] [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/vineet-mehra-cmo-of-ancestry-the-ambidextrous/id1336484262?i=1000419773364] 3. Agree on the scorecard with the CFO before launch. Fully load CAC to include headcount, agencies, tools and production along with paid media. Then show how launch attention turns into repeat usage, retention and revenue that lasts beyond launch week. At Chime we call this performance storytelling: one team, one budget, and brand and performance measured on the same business outcome. 🚀💚 ##### [Micah Moreau]() I plan a launch GTM as a budget problem first and a messaging problem second, because the most common failure I've seen is a team judging a launch by steady-state efficiency targets in week one. On a practical level, my sequence looks like this: 1. Validate demand with money. I'd push a little on Vineet's waitlist point: 1.7M signups in a week is great proof the message lands, but a free email signup is a weak signal of purchase volume because anyone signs up for free. If the product costs money, a deposit, a pre-order, or a paid pilot is what lets you forecast volume and size the media budget. 2. Write one canonical launch plan. When product, marketing and ops each run their own version, you get scope creep and three people drafting the same push notification. Product marketing owns the end-to-end comms (email, push, in-product), and everyone else works backward from that single plan. 3. Give the launch its own moment. A new capability buried inside a multi-product event gets lost. Anchor the messaging on the core platform, and give the new thing a standalone campaign. 4. Spend for signal, then tighten. For a big launch I accept blowing past payback guardrails early so the ad platforms get a flood of conversion data fast. Once the curves settle, I go back to marginal CAC and incrementality, since a blended average hides how expensive your last dollar was. 5. Use the spend as a product diagnostic. If paid traffic converts and then churns, the bottleneck is the product or onboarding, and more media won't fix it. The DoorDash version of this, publicly: we scaled growth and performance spend from under $1M a month to over $1B a year, and that only held up because the measurement and payback infrastructure was built alongside the media, so every launch had a contribution-margin bar to clear once the splash phase ended. (Per Willi's ask, I'm only drawing on my public work and public profile here, so no links attached.) ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() Before any launch moment gets planned, I check the assumptions underneath it. At Climate Corp we built a customizable weather insurance product for "the 80% of businesses affected by weather." We got the market wrong, and that one bad assumption knocked over the audience, channel and pricing decisions that sat on top of it. The local bike shop had no idea how much one inch of rain cost them, so a highly customizable product just gave them more ways to pick the wrong thing. [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmO4jomGuXI] So step one of my GTM plan is writing down the hypotheses (who has the problem, will they pay, which channel reaches them) and testing each one cheaply before you build a sales and marketing team around them. Step two is choosing who you're launching to, and that choice gets harder for horizontal products. My joke at Notion was that marketing had to acquire both a student in India using Notion only on their phone and a VP of product in San Francisco with a team of 100. Those two people need different launches. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] Step three is the launch itself. For Notion AI (it started as AI Writer in 2022), we gave community members and creators early access, along with enablement, tips, and the launch date. On launch day they had already been using it for weeks and could post real use cases on LinkedIn, TikTok and Twitter right away. Watching where they got stuck also told us what our own education materials needed to cover. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] Step four is picking one North Star metric before launch day, ideally one that spammy growth tactics can't inflate (this fits well with Vineet's point about agreeing on the scorecard with the CFO early). [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmO4jomGuXI] My running joke is that you want to work at a company that doesn't seem to need you. Marketing works best as an accelerant on a great product, the right market and good timing. Elicit is a current example: it reached 5M+ researchers through word of mouth alone, so the GTM job there is scaling momentum that already exists into enterprise. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() Micah, I'd partly push back on your point 3. Bundling works when the features add up to one customer story, and it gets lost when it's just a list of features. The first decision is what kind of launch it is, because that choice sets everything else. In the last few years I've run three different kinds: 1. A bundled "moment" launch. Fathom 3.0 packaged bot-free capture, an MCP for Claude and ChatGPT, live summaries during calls, and a new look into one story, sent people to a single "what's new" page, and ran on Product Hunt the same day [Citation: https://twitter.com/FathomDotAI/status/2044449338131444069]. All of it hung on one line, "AI notetaking built for the way you work," which gave people one big reason to pay attention. A single feature rarely earns that on its own. 2. A new-capability launch. With Clockwise Prism, the press coverage (TechCrunch), the founder's post, the company channels, and Product Hunt all landed on one day [Citation: https://twitter.com/TechCrunch/status/1828327093316247705] [Citation: https://twitter.com/britt_bingham/status/1828457946814230771]. When everything lines up in the same window, each channel boosts the others. 3. An audience-expansion launch. Clockwise going GA for Microsoft users was really a message to one segment, so we wrote it for them: "Microsoft users, this one is for you!" [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7180669548403073027/]. Guru's Microsoft Teams integration worked the same way [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6686325313212821504/]. From there, I pick channels as a portfolio. Mark Fiske and I built the Reforge Marketing Strategy program around moving from owning one channel to owning several, and around how to split investment across them [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6693655475692670976/]. For a launch, that means some channels are there for the day-one spike (press, Product Hunt, social, your existing users) and others build demand that compounds over time (SEO, ecosystem listings, lifecycle email into the product). The plan should also say what happens after day one. A Product Hunt badge is nice, but the result I care about is adoption. Fathom being named HubSpot's Most Used App, with 20,000+ active installs, came from steady distribution inside an ecosystem over many months, well after any single launch day [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432475997863559168/]. ##### [Vineet Mehra]() Micah, I agree on paid products. A deposit or pre-order forecasts volume far better than an email. MyPay was a different case, because Chime members sign up free and the real conversion is a direct deposit switch. So the waitlist was the right first gate, and the number I cared about next was how many of those 1.7 million people moved their paycheck once the product went live. Pick the signal that sits closest to the behavior that drives your unit economics. I'd push back gently on your step 4. Tightening to marginal CAC after launch is right, but last-click measurement will tell you to cut the reach media that created the launch demand in the first place. MMA Global's Brand as Performance work with TransUnion found that traditional measurement undervalued brand's impact by up to 83%, with studies from Ally, Kroger and Campbell's behind it. [Citation: https://mmaglobal.com/testimonials/testimonial-vineet-mehra] When a launch moves from splash phase to efficiency, I run incrementality tests across brand and direct response together, so the CFO sees what the TV, creator and print dollars added to conversion before anyone cuts them. Your step 5 is the one I'd underline for every launch team. If paid traffic converts and then churns, the fix belongs in the product or onboarding, and more media only makes the loss bigger. ##### [Kira Klaas]() Vineet's single tension sentence only works if product, sales, and marketing all say it the same way. Before anything goes on a launch calendar, those three teams have to agree in writing on who the product is for, what it stands for, and why it's different. I use a one-page corporate strategy summary as the single source of truth for GTM teams, and every launch asset gets checked against it [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/why-you-need-a-corporate-strategy]. Mutiny surveyed 500 sales and marketing leaders and found misaligned teams are 2x more likely to miss revenue targets. 70% of those teams believed they were "mostly or completely aligned," so I always confirm alignment out loud before the launch starts [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-align-gtm-teams]. I agree with Micah on one canonical plan, but I'd give it two owners with separate jobs: - PMM owns feature-to-benefit translation, launch coordination, and sales enablement. PMM teams usually pick safe, proven messaging because they're measured on adoption. - Brand owns getting people to care enough to reach the value prop in the first place, which means taking creative risks to stand out [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/product-marketing-wont-save-you]. If you skip the brand job, the launch reaches only people who already understand you. Positioning has to pick a lane. "All-in-one" is a feature list, and a launch built on it has nothing people can repeat [Citation: https://kiraklaas.com/]. At Brex, we tested the story with customers by working directly with UX research, and we ran "taste-making" sessions with stakeholders before any design work started. That got leadership to agree early on decisions that usually blow up late in a launch [Citation: https://nicky-depaul.medium.com/rebranding-with-research-1c45771d2ef9]. Last, plan both the big moments and the everyday ones. A billboard and a support rep's reply both shape what people think of the launch [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/marketing-lets-talk-about-branding-with-kira-klaas/id1513487553?i=1000672746556]. Rachel's Notion AI early-access program worked because creators had a lived-in story before launch day. For B2B, I'd budget for that from day one and treat specific named creators and operators as launch channels [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-do-b2b-influencer-marketing]. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() Brittany's audience-expansion launch is the one where I've seen brand work against you. When Notion moved upmarket, the consumer love gave us huge awareness and a lot of cachet. It also carried a risk: if buyers peg you as a consumer product, they won't trust you to roll out across a large organization or handle sensitive information. So the launch plan for the enterprise audience had to build credibility on purpose (security, admin features, proof that large organizations do serious work in Notion) rather than lean on the brand people already had. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] Notion's mix made this sharper, because roughly 80% of customers were individual consumers while more than 80% of revenue came from businesses. A launch can light up the 80% who make noise and barely reach the people who pay. I agree with Micah on validating with money. In the customer development framing I used in a 2018 talk, discovery confirms the problem is real and validation confirms people will actually buy a solution. Those are separate gates, and Climate Corp passed the first one and failed the second. [Citation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmO4jomGuXI] For a paid launch I'd treat the waitlist as message testing and the paid pilot as the forecast. For a free product, Vineet's version works: the forecast is the first behavior that drives revenue, like the direct deposit switch. One practical note on timing: at Notion the AI Writer launch began with the founders telling everyone to rip up their roadmaps and sprint. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] A fast launch like that only worked because the community and creator program already existed. If you expect to launch quickly, build the early-access group before you have a product to give them. ##### [Micah Moreau]() Brittany, fair: a bundle with one customer story is a single launch, and my objection is to a capability buried in a grab-bag event with no story. Vineet, agreed on last-click. When I say marginal CAC I mean incremental CAC from holdouts and geo tests across brand and performance together, which is point 3 below. Rachel's early-access playbook needs one more piece: plan day 31 before day 1. Launches that open with generous free usage (creator access, promo limits, free trials) get a big adoption spike, and then a lot of them stall because nobody designed the bridge from "free and delightful" to "paid and habitual." On a practical level, three things go in the launch plan up front: 1. The conversion bridge. If you hand out generous limits to drive trial, decide in advance what the user sees when the promo ends, what the paid plan is anchored to, and how few clicks it takes to upgrade. Free access with no path to paid trains people to expect it for free. 2. One motion for every segment. Rachel's student-in-India vs. VP-in-SF problem tempts teams to build separate self-serve and sales launches. I'd rather let anyone sign up as an org of any size and grow into enterprise features on their own, with sales stepping in where the usage data says a team is ready. Rachel's Notion 80/80 split is why the product motion can be shared while the proof differs: security, admin and enterprise references have to be ready on launch day for the buyers who pay, even if the consumers make most of the noise. 3. A holdout. Carve out a geo or user cohort that doesn't get the launch media. Week-one dashboards will credit the campaign for demand that was already coming (Rachel's Elicit example, where word of mouth did the work, is exactly the case where attribution overstates marketing). The holdout tells you the incremental lift, which is the number the CFO scorecard Vineet described should be built on. This is the same discipline we ran at DoorDash: splashy at launch, then every channel had to prove incrementality against a contribution-margin payback bar once the launch spike faded. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() In PLG, the most important launch audience is usually people who already use the product, so the signal closest to the economics (to use Vineet's test) is whether existing users adopt the new capability and keep using it. For an integration, that means active installs. Fathom reaching 20,000+ active HubSpot installs told us far more than launch-day traffic did, because each of those installs is a team capturing conversations and pushing notes into their CRM every week [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432475997863559168/]. That changes who belongs on the launch team. At Guru, my team covered brand, product marketing, comms, growth and lifecycle marketing, and scaled support. Because of that, the launch plan ran from the announcement through onboarding emails, in-product prompts, and the help content support would need in the first week. When support and lifecycle are part of the plan from the start, you hear about the "converts then churns" problem Micah described within days. Otherwise it shows up in a retention chart a quarter later. So my scorecard for a feature launch has three numbers: 1. The share of existing active users who try the feature in the first 30 days. 2. The share of those users who are still using it at day 60. 3. Support tickets per new user, which tells you where onboarding needs fixing. ##### [Vineet Mehra]() Kira's point about named creators as launch channels deserves a real budget line, because most launch plans still treat creators as an afterthought. Roughly 4 to 5% of marketing dollars go to the creator economy, while about 80% of consumer attention sits in creator-led environments. For a launch, creators are where discovery and trust form first, so I plan them alongside TV and paid social from the first budget draft. Community seeding also protects you when a launch touches something members already love. On a Community-Driven Disruption Forum I hosted, Michelle described launching a new version of a shoe to a community built on the original. The team knew customers had asked for changes but still loved and bought the original, so they seeded samples to that community before launch and let them try it first. The new product arrived with advocates instead of a backlash. [Citation: https://open.spotify.com/episode/2tAf1cjlCMFIh3LbEypJOn] At Ancestry we took the same idea into the creative itself. Real customers told the stories in our ads and were cast in them, because hiring an actor to tell a customer's story never lands the same way. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/vineet-mehra-cmo-of-ancestry-the-ambidextrous/id1336484262?i=1000419773364] So in the plan, I give creators and community three jobs: early access weeks before launch day, a share of the paid budget to amplify their best posts, and a feedback loop into onboarding when they get stuck. ##### [Micah Moreau]() Brittany's scorecard needs a fourth number: a revenue guardrail. Feature launches that hand power users extra capacity (bigger usage limits, reserve pools, bonus credits) can light up adoption and day-60 retention while quietly eating into paid upgrades. If that extra capacity covers what people would have paid for, adoption looks great and revenue per user slides. So I'd track upgrade rate and revenue per active user for the exposed cohort against the holdout, right beside the adoption numbers. The other thing I'd add on timing: pick the launch date based on when the product is clearly better on the dimension that actually makes people switch. In AI tools that's often speed. Users will move to a new product because it's faster before they move for a longer feature list. A launch calendar driven by a conference date or quarter-end can put you in market while the switching reason is still marginal, and then the media budget pays for trial without conversion. TL;DR on the framework this group has built so far: 1. Name the tension and get product, sales and marketing to agree on it in writing (Vineet, Kira). 2. Test the assumptions, and gate on the signal closest to your economics: a deposit for paid, the first revenue behavior for free (Rachel, Vineet). 3. Pick the launch type, build the early-access group before you need it, and give creators a real paid budget line (Brittany, Rachel, Vineet, Kira). 4. Spend for signal at launch, then hold every channel, brand included, to incremental lift against a holdout. 5. Score adoption, retention, support load and revenue per user on one dashboard the CFO signed off on before launch day. ##### [Kira Klaas]() Rachel's upmarket problem is easier to solve if you plan it a few launches ahead. I'd add one question to every launch brief: does this launch's story leave room for the audience you'll need two launches from now? Brex is the clearest example I know. It launched as "the corporate card for startups." Within its first year, the positioning moved to "the card for growing companies," and then to "the financial operating system for growing companies." Brex wasn't explicitly going upmarket when those changes happened. Even so, the broader story gave the company room when it later moved hard into enterprise SaaS. When Brex offboarded SMBs, the news was briefly confusing, but it didn't feel off-brand because the earlier messaging had prepared the market [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/when-plg-needs-brand-led-growth]. For a launch plan, this changes three decisions: - Positioning: write the launch headline for the segment you're launching to, and check that the company-level descriptor still fits the next segment. Brittany's "Microsoft users, this one is for you!" works because the line targets one segment and leaves the master brand open. - Proof: Rachel and Micah are right that enterprise proof has to be ready when you launch. I'd go further and start putting enterprise proof (security, admin, named customers) into earlier launches as supporting points, so the enterprise launch confirms what buyers have already seen. - Sequencing: treat each launch as one chapter of a longer story. A launch that wins its week but narrows the brand makes the next audience-expansion launch more expensive. This matters most for PLG companies that lean on community love. That love gives you reach, but it can also lock the market's picture of you in place while your revenue is moving somewhere else [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/when-plg-needs-brand-led-growth]. #### [What to finish before a launch and what to leave for later]() **Question:** What needs to be ready before a launch, and what can wait? ##### [Vineet Mehra]() Before launch, I want three things ready: a member benefit the product actually delivers, a clear way to explain it, and a measurement plan tied to the money we will spend. At Chime, I work closely with our CFO on payback periods and return on marketing investment. That discipline should be in place before the first major media dollar goes out. [Citation: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/cmo-roles-and-skills/] The full creative library and every channel rollout can wait. Start with a story grounded in the people you serve, then learn which message and channel earn attention and drive use. Chime uses actual members in testimonial ads, and our work on onboarding and conversion keeps changing through experiments. That gives the team room to improve the launch while keeping the product promise steady. [Citation: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/cmo-roles-and-skills/] ##### [Brittany Bingham]() The launch checklist needs a hands-on pass through the first user experience. Can someone reach the promised benefit, and can the team tell where people stop? That check makes the message and product path accountable to actual use. When we launched Fathom’s new meeting experience, we could point people to specific things they could try: bot-free capture, live notes in the desktop app, and integrations with ChatGPT and Claude. The announcement also gave them one place to see what was new. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7450236875115495425/] A polished video and a complete catalog of features can wait while the team checks whether the new experience fits how people work. At Fathom, the signal I care about is repeat use: the HubSpot app had more than 20,000 active installs at year-end when it received the Most Used App award. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7432475997863559168/] ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() The launch date got ahead of the product experience when we shipped Notion Projects. We aimed at a broad audience and packaged features that included existing capabilities, without a sharp message for one customer. The community called us out, and the launch had little effect on engagement or revenue. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] My must-have list would be: 1. A customer and use case you can name plainly. 2. A working path for that customer to reach value. 3. A few early users who have tried it, shown you where they get stuck, and can describe what they actually did. 4. Enough education to get the next users started. For Notion AI, we invited community members into the alpha and beta, learned their use cases, and gave them access and guidance ahead of launch so they could share their own experience when it went live. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] A complete feature set and a polished campaign can wait. The first Notion AI release was AI Writer; we moved quickly with an alpha and waitlist, then built on it. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] ##### [Kira Klaas]() I’d put audience and positioning on the must-have list. Before announcing, the team should be able to say who the launch is for, what changes for that person, how the offer differs, and how each product message fits the larger company story. I’ve seen launches treated as isolated announcements when they could build toward a shared narrative; launch coordination and sales enablement matter, but a clear foundation makes those assets coherent. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/product-marketing-wont-save-you] The must-have execution layer is smaller than a full brand system: a working customer experience, a clear landing page and core message, and agreement on who approves and supports the launch. My brand-building framework starts with the opportunity, agreement on the approach, and resources before activities, then uses what we learn to iterate. Comprehensive guidelines and a polished campaign across every channel can wait if the first experience works and the team can learn from it. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/the-5-phases-of-brand-building] ##### [Vineet Mehra]() Brittany’s repeat-use test should also govern how much we spend after launch. I would release to a focused audience once the benefit works, then expand paid media as evidence of continued use and acquisition payback comes in. The measurement windows need to fit the investment: direct response captures current demand, while brand work builds future intent. I’ve argued for measuring how long brand investment keeps contributing to direct response, because judging both on the same immediate conversion window can lead to poor budget decisions. [Citation: https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/future-of-marketing/management-and-culture/cmo-roles-and-skills/] ##### Question > Micah, Vineet wants a measurement plan tied to spend before major media investment. For a small launch, which measures would you set up before inviting users, and which would you add after seeing first use? Please ground your answer in public work and cite public sources. ##### [Micah Moreau]() For a small launch, I’d set up three measures before inviting anyone: the source of each visitor, whether they complete the action the launch promises, and whether that same cohort returns to use it again. Keep spend by source alongside those counts. That lets you see whether a weak result starts with the audience, the message, or the product experience. I’ve challenged the claim that a team simply needs more customers when it cannot show evidence that acquisition is the constraint. [Citation: https://twitter.com/micahmoreau/status/527624390557847552] After first use, add a cohort view of repeat behavior and a simple acquisition cost for users who actually reach value. Once you increase spend, test incremental return rather than treating every tracked conversion as caused by the ad. I’ve publicly pushed marketers to measure causal return on spend. [Citation: https://twitter.com/micahmoreau/status/908740570616561666] At small volume, those early rates will be noisy, so use them to find the broken step before setting a major media budget. ##### Question > Rachel, Micah wants a reason to expect customers back before launch. With Notion AI's alpha and waitlist, what evidence was enough to invite the first users, and what evidence would you require before a broader release? Please cite public sources. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() For the first Notion AI users, an alpha and waitlist let us put AI Writer in front of people quickly, while the product was still taking shape. The founders had seen the opportunity early, and we got an alpha out within a few months. I would treat that as enough to invite a small group to learn, rather than proof that a broad launch would work. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] For a broader release, I’d want alpha and beta users to show concrete use cases, point out where they get stuck, and describe the value in their own words. At Notion we brought community members into those early versions, used their feedback to prepare customer education, and gave them time with the product before asking them to share their experiences at launch. [Citation: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-hczsGcG1Aw] I’d then check whether the first cohort reaches an activation action tied to later paid use, since freemium conversion can take weeks or months. That link has to be tested as more cohorts mature. [Citation: https://review.firstround.com/podcast/notions-head-of-marketing-on-building-a-growth-marketing-engine-at-a-plg-company-rachel-hepworth/] ##### Question > Brittany, Rachel would track an early activation action, while Micah wants to see the same cohort return. For a launch like Fathom’s new meeting experience, what would you need to see before inviting a wider audience? Please ground the answer in public work and cite public sources. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() For Fathom’s new meeting experience, I’d invite a wider audience after a small group can install the desktop app, capture a meeting in the mode they chose, use the live notes, and come back for another meeting. Our public launch described bot-free capture, a desktop app with live notes and a scratchpad, and ChatGPT and Claude integrations. Those give us concrete actions to check instead of counting announcement clicks alone. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7450236875115495425/] I’d review where those first users get stuck and whether they return before widening distribution. A first successful meeting tells us the path works; another meeting gives us a better signal that the experience fits their work. I would keep the larger education library and broader channel push on the can-wait list until the first cohort can complete that loop. ##### Question > Kira, Rachel would invite a small alpha before broader proof, and Brittany wants someone assigned to act on feedback before expanding. Which materials and team owners must be ready for the alpha versus the broader launch? Please cite public sources. ##### [Kira Klaas]() For an alpha, I’d prepare a short invitation that names the customer and use case, one page showing how to get started, and a way to report confusion or failures. Assign a product owner to fix what users encounter and a marketing or research owner to collect their language and test whether the promise makes sense. A small messaging test with target customers belongs here, before the team spends to distribute the story. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-find-brand-market-fit-part] Before the broader launch, I’d want the product and marketing leads to agree on one plain-text positioning brief, then give sales and support the same explanation and an owner for updates as feedback arrives. At Brex, during our rebrand, we wrote down the different lines leadership was using and agreed which idea should lead. That decision kept competing internal messages from becoming the public story. A full set of brand guidelines and a campaign for every channel can follow once the first cohort’s questions have shaped the materials. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-find-brand-market-fit-part] #### [When a SaaS partner program is worth building]() **Question:** When is a partner program worth building for a SaaS company, and what makes one work? ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() I’d build a partner program once people are already helping customers get value from the product, and the company can make that work easier to repeat. At Notion, community members taught others, created workflows and templates we hadn’t imagined internally, and some built businesses around the product. We gave them beta access and educational materials so they could become product experts, while leaving them room to choose what to make and share. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harnessing-the-power-of-community-to-drive-growth/id1684301628?i=1000623047566] For a SaaS team, I’d start with a handful of people already doing this work. Ask which customer problems they solve, give them product access and practical training, then watch whether their customers activate and keep using the product. Those outcomes would tell me whether a formal program is worth the ongoing support. ##### [Sri Batchu]() The bar for funding a partner program is a working direct sales motion and a specific group of partners that repeatedly meets the buyer at the right moment. At Ramp I described a B2B sequence that starts with founder-led sales, then a small sales team and low-cost targeted marketing. Each later channel gets more effective as you learn more about the customer. A partner program should clear that same bar. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart/id1627920305?i=1000618239083] Start with a few partners and measure qualified introductions, closed customers, gross profit after commissions and support costs, and whether those customers would have arrived through your own sales motion. Give the partner a clear reason to bring you into its customer conversation and a simple handoff to your sales team. If the economics work only when every deal gets executive attention, keep the relationships and delay building the program. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() Sri’s economics test matters, and I’d give the partner-sourced customers enough time to show their value. At Notion, people often started as individual users, then adopted it with a team, and only later became larger business customers. Looking at the first purchase alone would undercount a partner who helps a team get started well. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harnessing-the-power-of-community-to-drive-growth/id1684301628?i=1000623047566] I’d compare partner-assisted accounts with similar direct accounts on time to first useful workflow, team adoption, and later expansion. That tells you whether partners improve the customer journey as well as the acquisition cost. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() The product integration can be the first partner investment. At Guru, we launched ways to surface knowledge inside Microsoft Teams and connect it through Zapier, Workato, and webhooks. The public product story was about helping people use Guru where they already work. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6686325313212821504/] [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6824045716890091520/] For an integration-led program, I’d look for customers repeatedly using the two products together. Then I’d work with a few partners to make that shared workflow easy to set up and track whether customers actually adopt it. If the workflow drives sustained use and gives each side a clear reason to support it, invest in training and a shared customer handoff. A long list of integration logos gives you little evidence about customer impact. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() Brittany’s shared-workflow test also helps decide which partner should own which step. At Notion, people often arrived through personal use, while a larger company rollout brought questions about security, customer success, and contracts. The person who gets someone excited to try a tool may have a very different job from the person who can help a company deploy it across hundreds of employees. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harnessing-the-power-of-community-to-drive-growth/id1684301628?i=1000623047566] I’d write down the customer step each partner helps with before setting one commission or certification scheme for everyone. A template creator might help people discover a use case; an implementation partner should be evaluated on successful team rollout. ##### [Sri Batchu]() Rachel’s point changes the measurement window. A partner who helps a team reach a useful workflow may create value long before the account expands, so I’d track activation and later gross profit by cohort rather than judge only the first invoice. The harder question is incrementality. At Instacart, we kept a persistent holdout for ads because an important revenue stream still needed a counterfactual. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart/id1627920305?i=1000618239083] For partnerships, I’d compare similar customers or markets with and without partner support, then check whether the lift in activated, retained customers covers commissions and the time spent supporting partners. Attribution to a partner is easy to record. Extra value caused by the partner takes more work to establish. ##### [Kira Klaas]() The partner’s explanation becomes part of the customer’s first experience of your brand. I’d give a creator a precise use case, product access, and space to show the workflow in their own voice. If their demo promises a result the product can’t deliver, the program can generate leads and still leave customers disappointed. In my B2B creator marketing work, I’ve argued for expert-led demos and ongoing relationships over isolated sponsored posts. At Later, I’ve seen the value of treating creators as partners who understand their audience, with creative freedom inside clear brand guardrails. That suggests a useful pilot measure alongside Sri’s deal economics and Rachel’s adoption data: are customers arriving with an accurate idea of what the product can do, and are they using the workflow the partner taught? [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-do-b2b-influencer-marketing] ##### Question > Micah, Sri requires a repeatable direct sales motion before funding a partner program, while Brittany would first invest in integrations customers already use. If a SaaS company has strong integration use but no repeatable sales motion, what would you fund next, and what result would change that decision? Please cite public sources. ##### [Micah Moreau]() I’d fund the integration workflow and its measurement next: make setup reliable, document the use case, and track whether connected accounts reach the useful action, retain, and expand. I’d work closely with a few integration partners already helping customers, but hold off on a broad recruiting and commission program while sales handoffs are still bespoke. The decision changes when partner-assisted accounts consistently outperform comparable unassisted accounts on activation and later gross profit, after support and partner costs, and the team can repeat the handoff without executive intervention. I’ve argued that marketers should measure incremental, causal return rather than accept credited conversions; a partner tag on an account is an attribution record, not evidence the partner caused the sale. [Citation: https://twitter.com/micahmoreau/status/908740570616561666] ##### Question > Sri, Micah would fund an integration pilot before sales handoffs become repeatable, then wait to recruit partners widely. Does your direct-sales prerequisite apply to that pilot or to a scaled referral program, and why? Please cite only public sources. ##### [Sri Batchu]() My direct-sales prerequisite applies to the scaled referral program. I’d fund Micah’s integration pilot earlier, because an integration customers already use can teach us which workflow creates value and which buyer cares. I would keep the pilot small and measure activation, retention, and support cost for connected accounts. A commission scheme and broad partner recruiting need a repeatable handoff and clear unit economics. At Ramp, I described starting B2B growth with founder-led sales so the early team learns how to sell before investing in more expensive channels. I also described holding growth engineers and sales to shared pipeline and channel-payback goals. The same logic applies here: use the pilot to learn the workflow, then fund a partner program when the team can repeat the sale and show incremental payback. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart/id1627920305?i=1000618239083] ##### Question > Brittany, Sri and Micah would start with a small integration pilot. In your Guru example, how would you divide setup, customer support, and measurement between the SaaS team and an integration partner, and why would each side invest the time? Please cite only public sources. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() For the pilot, I’d have the SaaS team own the product setup guide, the first useful action to measure, and support for problems inside its product. The integration partner should verify its side of the setup, own issues inside its product, and give customers a clear way to reach the right team when an issue crosses both. The two teams should agree on a small set of shared measures: successful connections, use of the joint workflow, repeat use, and support burden. Each side invests time if the workflow helps its own customers get useful work done more easily. At Guru, we shared ways for customers to surface knowledge inside Microsoft Teams and automate related work through Zapier, Workato, and webhooks. Those public examples show the customer use case; they do not establish how we divided support with those companies. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6686325313212821504/] [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6824045716890091520/] I’d put the proposed division in writing before inviting more customers into the pilot. ##### Question > Kira, you favor ongoing expert-led demos over one-off posts. How would you test whether creators will keep teaching a SaaS workflow that customers actually use? Please cite only public sources. ##### [Kira Klaas]() I’d give a small group of creators one customer problem and access to the product, then ask each to teach the workflow in a format their audience already trusts (a demo, newsletter, or tutorial). Pay for a short series rather than one post, and leave room for creators to show where users get stuck. In my B2B creator marketing work, I’ve argued that expert-led demos and repeated touches build trust more effectively than tightly scripted promotion. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/how-to-do-b2b-influencer-marketing] After each lesson, track who tries the workflow, reaches its first useful outcome, and returns to it. Ask those users what they thought the product would do and compare their answers with what the creator taught. I’d keep investing when creators want to teach the next workflow and their audience keeps using the first one; that feedback also tells the product team which onboarding steps need work. #### [Pipeline channels for B2B products with technical buyers]() **Question:** Which pipeline channels work for B2B products sold to technical buyers? ##### [Kira Klaas]() I’d rank channels by the job they do in the buyer’s journey: 1. Product-led sharing and useful technical content, if the product supports them. Give practitioners something they can try, share with a teammate, and evaluate against a real task. At Notion, shared pages and workspaces helped users bring others in; that loop created a strong starting point for growth. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/when-plg-needs-brand-led-growth] 2. Search, lifecycle email, and account-based outreach to capture active interest. Keep the proof and language consistent with what practitioners saw earlier. I treat these as always-on channels that convert existing intent. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/is-demand-gen-actuallybrand] 3. Focused campaigns and events to reach the people who approve a team-wide purchase. At Notion, we invested in awareness among corporate teams because adoption among individual users alone did not establish the credibility those buyers needed. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/when-plg-needs-brand-led-growth] I would start with the product and content loop plus capture, then add targeted awareness as you see which teams use the product and which buyers stall. At Notion, markets with brand activity saw roughly 20% higher awareness in core segments, with signups and site traffic rising weeks later, while demand spend was held constant across markets. That is evidence for coordinating the layers, though a technical product should validate the same sequence with its own buyer data. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/is-demand-gen-actuallybrand] ##### [Sri Batchu]() The order changes with buyer knowledge and company stage. My ranking for an early B2B product sold to technical buyers: 1. Founder-led sales and targeted outbound. Sell to a narrow set of engineering or technical leaders first. Use those conversations to learn the exact problem, buying trigger, and proof a buyer needs. 2. Technical content, community, and small events. Publish material that helps buyers evaluate or implement the product, then put it where those buyers already talk. These are relatively low-cost ways to test a message. 3. Paid search and SEO once the buyer language and conversion path are clear. SEO can take a long time without domain authority or backlinks, so I would avoid treating early traffic as proof of pipeline. That sequence is the B2B progression I described publicly: founder-led sales, first sales hires, targeted content/community/events and PR, then paid and SEO. The later channels scale better as customer understanding improves. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart/id1627920305?i=1000618239083] For each channel, track qualified pipeline volume and contribution-margin payback by customer segment. A cheaper lead that becomes a smaller customer is a poor ROI bet. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lessons-from-scaling-ramp-sri-batchu-ramp-instacart/id1627920305?i=1000618239083] ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() If technical buyers can try the product themselves, I’d rank channels by how quickly they get someone to useful work: 1. Self-serve product entry, paired with onboarding and product-qualified account signals. At Notion, the majority of our pipeline came from product-qualified leads or accounts: people used the product, got value, expanded inside a company, and then asked to speak with sales about a larger deployment. Webinars, events, and outreach helped people see what more they could do after they were already engaged. That is a stronger signal than a form fill from someone who has never tried the product. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harnessing-the-power-of-community-to-drive-growth/id1684301628?i=1000623047566] 2. Education that helps a buyer complete a real task, then a path to a security or enterprise conversation. For a technical product, I’d make the trial and the teaching specific to the job the buyer wants done. Let usage tell sales when to reach out: at Notion, contacting someone two days after signup was often too early because they had yet to see value. [Citation: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/harnessing-the-power-of-community-to-drive-growth/id1684301628?i=1000623047566] 3. Paid search and performance marketing once you can measure the quality of the users they bring. At Slack, bringing performance marketing in-house drove a substantial share of team creation. For search campaigns, I’d optimize against an early activation event that predicts paid conversion, rather than wait months for revenue or count every signup equally. [Citation: https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/slack-rachel-hepworth-growth-marketing/] [Citation: https://review.firstround.com/podcast/notions-head-of-marketing-on-building-a-growth-marketing-engine-at-a-plg-company-rachel-hepworth/] That ranking assumes a usable self-serve path. If implementation requires sales from day one, I’d move task-specific education and buyer conversations ahead of product-qualified signals. ##### [Kira Klaas]() Sri’s early-stage order makes sense. The trigger for adding a broader campaign is a gap between practitioner use and buyer confidence: teams may love a tool while IT or finance still sees it as a risk. We faced that at Notion as we moved toward corporate teams. I would check whether active teams expand into paid deployments and ask the approvers what proof they need before increasing awareness spend. [Citation: https://kiraklaas.substack.com/p/when-plg-needs-brand-led-growth] ##### Question > Micah, Sri puts founder-led outbound first for an early product, while Rachel puts self-serve usage first when buyers can try it. For technical buyers, how would you choose between those starting channels, and what pipeline signal would tell you to change course? Please use only public sources. ##### [Micah Moreau]() I’d choose based on the time it takes a technical buyer to reach a meaningful success event. If an engineer can get working value in one session, start with self-serve entry and instrument that event, then watch whether activated teams invite colleagues and become qualified opportunities. If setup requires data access, security review, or a change to production systems, start with founder-led conversations to learn the buying trigger and build the proof needed to get through that work. The switch signal is incremental qualified pipeline per dollar and per week of effort, segmented by buyer type. If self-serve produces signups but few activated accounts that progress to sales, put more effort into targeted conversations and onboarding. If founder-led deals repeatedly start with practitioners who already tested the product, invest in the trial and its discovery channels. I’ve argued publicly that lift testing is cleaner than relying on attribution, even though most teams execute it poorly. [Citation: https://twitter.com/micahmoreau/status/993656857997668352] Where volume permits, hold out comparable accounts before crediting search or content for deals that founder outreach would have won anyway. ##### Question > Rachel, Micah would start with self-serve when a buyer can get value in one session. Among search, practitioner content, community, and events, which would you test first to bring technical buyers into that trial, and how would you judge pipeline quality? Please cite public sources. ##### [Rachel Hepworth]() I’d test a narrow paid search campaign first, aimed at the exact task the technical buyer can complete in the trial. It gives you a fast way to compare a few buyer-intent queries with what people actually do after signup. I’d run practitioner content alongside it when the content genuinely helps someone complete that task. I would put community and events later as pipeline acquisition tests unless customers are already sharing useful examples there. At Notion, I was skeptical of generic SEO blog production; templates and use cases created by the community made more sense because they grew from an existing strength. [Citation: https://review.firstround.com/podcast/notions-head-of-marketing-on-building-a-growth-marketing-engine-at-a-plg-company-rachel-hepworth/] The scorecard would start with activation inside a day or week, then qualified accounts and eventual paid expansion, segmented by company size. At Notion, inviting a second teammate or creating and editing docs were early signals associated with later value; a professional email address also helped distinguish likely customers. A channel that doubles signups from tiny teams can look successful while giving the sales team very little pipeline. I’d check the early signal against actual paid customers and deals before increasing spend. [Citation: https://review.firstround.com/podcast/notions-head-of-marketing-on-building-a-growth-marketing-engine-at-a-plg-company-rachel-hepworth/] ##### Question > Brittany, Rachel would track whether active accounts reach sales before buying more individual signups. For a technical product with a usable trial, which discovery channel would you test first, search, practitioner content, community, or events, and why? Please cite public work. ##### [Brittany Bingham]() I’d test search first, starting with the specific integration or task a buyer needs to complete in the trial. The landing page should show the steps, give them a way to try the product, and explain how a teammate can use the result. At Guru, we showed how our Microsoft Teams integration let people search and surface company knowledge inside the tool they already used. That is the kind of concrete workflow I would build a search page around. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6686325313212821504/] I’d use a small paid search test to learn which queries bring accounts that complete that task, then invest in SEO and practitioner content for the queries that prove useful. At Guru, we built across content, SEO, marketing operations, and customer lifecycle roles, rather than treating discovery as the end of the journey. [Citation: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6755201709133434880/] I’d compare activated accounts and qualified opportunities by query and company type before expanding spend. 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