How do I do go-to-market on my own?

Doing go-to-market alone works when it is sequenced and fails when it is attempted all at once. The order that survives contact: say who it is for before writing anything, pick two channels rather than five, publish before reaching out, and only then contact the few accounts where something dated has actually changed. This kit is that sequence across about six weeks, with the skills that do the heavy parts and templates for the parts a skill cannot do for you. It is opinionated about what to skip.

The sequence

1. 01

   Say who it is for, badly and fast

   ~2 days
   • Write the one sentence in the template. Give it twenty minutes, not a week.
   • Name three situations a buyer could be in, concrete enough to name two real companies in each.
   • Name at least two kinds of buyer this is not for, and mean them.
   • Write down the claims you refuse to make, so you can tell later when you are drifting toward them.

   The trap
   Spending three weeks here. The sentence gets better from publishing, not from thinking. A wrong one you can react to beats a blank page you keep returning to.

   templates/01-positioning.md
2. 02

   Choose two channels and define a fair test

   ~2 days
   • List the channels where the people you just described already are.
   • Cut to two. Two done weekly beats five done occasionally.
   • Before publishing anything, write down what would make you keep each one and what would make you drop it.
   • Write down how many posts you will publish before judging. If the number is under twenty, raise it.

   The trap
   Deciding what counts as success after seeing the results. That is how everybody keeps the channel they enjoyed and drops the one that was working.

   templates/02-channels.md
3. 03

   Publish before you reach out

   ~14 days
   • Pick one thing you know that your buyers get wrong, and one piece of evidence that it is true.
   • Draft it natively for both channels. The claim stays, the shape changes.
   • Approve and publish. Then do it again, twice a week, for two weeks.
   • Do not contact anybody yet. This phase exists so that when you do, you are not a stranger.

   The trap
   Treating this as a warm-up and skipping to outreach. A message from somebody the buyer has seen three times is a different message, and this phase is the entire reason the next one works.

   skill: one-idea-every-channel
4. 04

   Watch a small number of companies properly

   ~5 days
   • List twenty companies you would genuinely like as customers. Twenty, not two hundred.
   • For each, record what changed, where you saw it, and the date.
   • Delete every row with no URL against it. You will not remember which ones you checked.
   • Expect two or three rows a week to deserve a message. The rest are context.

   The trap
   Watching two hundred companies. Twenty watched properly produces more conversations than two hundred watched as a list, and the difference is whether you can say something specific.

   templates/03-evidence.md
5. 05

   Reach the few, with the dates attached

   ~5 days
   • Take the two or three accounts where something dated actually changed.
   • Find the person closest to the change, not the most senior person available.
   • Draft a message that fails if you remove the company name.
   • Approve each one yourself. Never batch.

   The trap
   Sending to everyone on the sheet. Volume is what gets a domain filtered, and a filtered domain costs you the channel that was working.

   skill: who-changed-this-week
6. 06

   Make it a week you can repeat

   ~14 days
   • Put the fifteen-minute review in the calendar on the same day each week.
   • Review channels monthly with sample sizes next to every rate.
   • When you fall behind, publish rather than reach out. It is the higher-value hour.
   • Keep the cadence smaller than you think you can manage.

   The trap
   Designing the cadence on a good week. Build it for your worst week or it stops in the first month and everything above it stops with it.

   skill: weekly-gtm-reviewtemplates/04-cadence.md

Questions this answers

How do you do go-to-market as a solo founder?

In sequence rather than all at once: define who it is for, pick two channels instead of five, publish for a fortnight before contacting anybody, then reach only the accounts where something dated has changed. The order matters more than the effort, because publishing first is what makes the outreach work at all.

How long does it take to get a go-to-market motion running alone?

About six weeks to have something repeatable, of which two are spent publishing before any outreach happens. The parts that feel like progress, such as building a large list, are the parts that produce the least.

Should you do content or outreach first as a founder?

Content, by a wide margin. A cold message from somebody the buyer has seen three times is not cold, and outreach sent before anybody has heard of you is the most expensive way to learn your positioning is wrong.

How many companies should you watch?

Around twenty, watched properly, rather than hundreds watched as a list. The constraint is not how many you can list, it is how many you can say something specific and recent about, which is a much smaller number.