# Go-to-market: customers, positioning, launches and pipeline — Summary 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]() Transcript: [Full Chat Transcript]() Work group: [Marketing Leaders]() ## Questions ### [Choosing an ideal customer profile and the positioning to match]() Pick a segment narrow enough to change your message, confirm it with retention data and customer conversations, and write positioning in the words those customers use. - **There are two starting points.** Vineet Mehra starts top-down, with the customer incumbents won't serve, such as the Americans living paycheck to paycheck whom Chime targets. Sri Batchu starts bottom-up, from the repeat customers in data the company already has. - **Let retention pick the segment.** Brittany Bingham segments the most retained, most engaged users and writes down the words they use. Rachel Hepworth still talks to customers before writing positioning, because data shows what people do and never why. - **Find the narrowest group that will pay.** Rachel's Climate Corp tried to sell to every business affected by weather and recovered by narrowing to farmers. Sri wants a B2B ICP specific enough to change the message. - **Treat a new segment as a separate bet.** Vineet keeps the core member fixed. Sri gives a new segment its own CAC, payback and retention, and moves the core positioning only once those numbers beat the core segment. ### [Testing whether your positioning is working]() Positioning works when the target audience can explain the benefit in its own words, ties it to your brand, and goes on to activate and keep using the product. - **Start with comprehension.** Steven Tristan Young asks people new to the category what they think they can do and why they would choose the product, then watches whether that carries through to a first purchase or listing. - **Test recall without the logo.** Kira Klaas shows newcomers the benefit statement with no logo, asks which company it describes, and repeats the test with the same segment over time. - **Compare matched groups.** Vineet Mehra runs the new message in matched markets or audiences with product and offer held steady, then compares qualified members and payback. Brittany Bingham adds that installs show people choose the product but cannot say which message caused it. - **Count healthy teams as well as signups.** If a new message wins on signups and produces fewer healthy, active teams, Rachel Hepworth would revise the message or the first-use experience before scaling it. ### [Planning the go-to-market for a product launch]() Agree on the one tension the product removes, gate on the demand signal closest to your economics, and judge the launch against a holdout on a scorecard the CFO approved before launch day. - **Pick the demand signal that fits the business.** Vineet Mehra's waitlist for Chime MyPay reached 1.7 million people in a week. Micah Moreau says a free signup forecasts little for a paid product, where a deposit or pre-order does. For a free product, Vineet tracks the first behavior that drives revenue. - **Agree on the story before the calendar.** Kira Klaas has product, sales and marketing agree in writing on who the launch is for and why it is different. She cites a Mutiny survey in which misaligned teams were 2x more likely to miss revenue targets. - **Build the early-access group first.** Rachel Hepworth gave community members and creators early access to Notion AI, so they had real use cases to post on launch day. - **Measure lift against a holdout.** Micah keeps a geo or user cohort out of the launch media to measure incremental lift. Brittany Bingham scores a feature launch on the share of active users who try it in 30 days, the share still using it at day 60, and support tickets per new user, and Micah adds upgrade rate and revenue per active user. ### [What to finish before a launch and what to leave for later]() Have a named customer, a working path to the promised benefit, a few early users and a measurement plan ready. The full campaign, brand guidelines and every channel can follow. - **Name the customer and the use case.** Rachel Hepworth says Notion Projects launched to a broad audience without a sharp message for one customer, and the launch had little effect on engagement or revenue. - **Walk through the first experience yourself.** Brittany Bingham checks that someone can reach the promised benefit and that the team can see where people stop. For Fathom's new meeting experience, she would widen the audience once a small group captures a meeting and comes back for another. - **Set up three measures before inviting anyone.** Micah Moreau tracks each visitor's source, whether they complete the action the launch promises, and whether the same cohort returns, with spend by source alongside. - **Leave the polish for later.** Vineet Mehra, Kira Klaas and Rachel each put the full campaign, brand guidelines or every-channel rollout on the can-wait list. Kira would let the first cohort's questions shape those materials. ### [When a SaaS partner program is worth building]() Pilot with a few partners who already help customers, and fund a full program once the team can repeat the handoff and partner-assisted accounts show incremental payback. - **Start with people already doing the work.** Rachel Hepworth would begin once community members or partners already help customers get value, as Notion's template creators did. - **Pilot the integration before the program.** Brittany Bingham treats a product integration as the first partner investment. Micah Moreau and Sri Batchu would fund a small integration pilot early, and hold back commissions and broad recruiting until the sales handoff is repeatable. - **Measure what the partner caused.** Sri compares similar customers or markets with and without partner support. Micah says a partner tag on an account is an attribution record and does not show the partner caused the sale. - **Judge each partner on its own step.** Rachel would judge a template creator on discovery and an implementation partner on team rollout. Kira Klaas checks whether customers arrive with an accurate idea of what the product can do. ### [Pipeline channels for B2B products with technical buyers]() Choose the first channel by how fast a technical buyer reaches value, then judge every channel on activated accounts and qualified pipeline. - **Time to value picks the first channel.** Micah Moreau starts with self-serve when an engineer can get working value in one session, and with founder-led conversations when setup needs data access, a security review or production changes. - **Early on, sell directly.** Sri Batchu ranks founder-led sales and targeted outbound first for an early product, then technical content and community, with paid search and SEO once the buyer language is clear. - **Product usage can feed pipeline.** Rachel Hepworth says most of Notion's pipeline came from product-qualified leads or accounts. Kira Klaas adds focused campaigns for the approvers who still see a tool as a risk. - **Test search against the trial task.** Rachel and Brittany Bingham would both test a narrow paid search campaign first, aimed at the task a buyer completes in the trial, and compare activated accounts by query before spending more. ## 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 --- Copyright © 2026 Super Me Network, Inc. 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