If you’re a founder, at least once you’ve googled “go-to-market strategy.” You’ve asked ChatGPT, and maybe read a few Medium posts.
You’ve even downloaded every free template out there. And then followed the same default advice — define your ICP, pick channels, build funnels, and run campaigns.
It’s a great way to start, but most of the advice are expensive and slow.
Now you do not need to hire a team of sales or make a big budget. Cursor went from $1M to $500M ARR in about a few years without spending on ads. Midjourney hit $200M revenue with 11 employees. Grammarly built a $13B valuation mostly on product and SEO.
They just stopped doing what everyone else does.
What works vs. what’s dead
In 2026, 81% of B2B buyers will pick their vendor before they even talk to sales. Read that again. Your expensive sales team is meeting people who’ve already decided.
Meanwhile, paid ads became a rich company’s game. The channels that used to level the playing field now favor whoever has deeper pockets.
But Cursor, Midjourney, Notion, and Linear all hit hundreds of millions without traditional sales teams or paid ads.
So what’s actually working?
1/ Forget your ICP too early. When you lock onto one customer profile, you stop noticing other groups who might love your product even more. Test different segments, stay flexible. Early-stage startups grow through iteration, so an ICP can wait.
2/ Build leverage instead of buying reach. One good partnership can bring more real users than months of Facebook ads. Think about how Stripe became the default payment processor everywhere — as of 2025. It gets around 35 000 new businesses every month by integrating into products like Shopify, and Amazon.
Or how Zapier grew by integrating with everything — Slack, Google Sheets, HubSpot, Mailchimp. This makes distribution part of the product itself.
3/ Community has become the most underrated growth engine. Midjourney has 20 million users on Discord with up to 2.5 million active daily. Each user is both a customer and marketing channel.
4/ Your product is your go-to-market. The best product-led companies post 130-150% net dollar retention — existing users expanding naturally, without anyone selling to them. Cursor operates with 12 people generating $100M in revenue.
5/ Cold email still works. When you personalize, target precisely, and bring real value, it’s still one of the highest-ROI channels out there.
The cheapest strategies require patience and creativity. They can’t be delegated to an agency or solved by throwing money at the problem. That’s exactly why they work.
Where to spend and where to save?
Your go-to-market strategy works in two distinct moments. First, when you’re reaching your first users and testing product-market fit. Second, when you already have PMF and want to scale.
Snapchat, Uber, and Revolut can burn millions on marketing. They have funding, teams, and data to back every move. Early-stage startups don’t. In both cases — whether you’re still testing or already scaling — you don’t need big budgets.
Before PMF: every dollar tests a hypothesis. Run small experiments to see which channels bring users who actually stay. Use their feedback to improve your product.
Cheap channels matter more than paid acquisition — LinkedIn for B2B, TikTok for Gen Z, Reddit for niche problems only your users understand.
After PMF: scale the channels that already perform. Track retention obsessively to maintain quality as you grow. Increase spending gradually.
A rough allocation could look like 40-45% on paid acquisition, 25% on content, 10% on events and PR, 5% on branding, and 10% on headcount or freelance support. But these numbers mean nothing if you are losing $2 on every customer you acquire. If this happens, it means that your unit economics don’t work.
Unit economics is the reality check on whether each new user creates value or loses money. It goes beyond CAC and LTV. Healthy growth needs strong margins, short payback, low churn, solid retention, real engagement, and working referrals.
When these metrics are still unstable, growth takes a back seat to efficiency and cost control.
Save on: large sales teams before product-market fit, broad paid acquisition, expensive marketing automation tools, generic content and brand campaigns, premature channel diversification.
Spend on: exceptional product experience, one brilliant community manager, strategic partnership development, high-quality SEO-optimized content, design that makes your product feel premium.
“Spend your time where you can’t spend money.”
The math is simple. A world-class designer costs less than three mediocre SDRs. A community manager costs less than your monthly ad spend.
Building a community means showing up daily for months before seeing results. SEO takes six months minimum to gain traction. Product-led growth requires making hard product decisions that sometimes sacrifice short-term revenue.
This is why most founders still default to the expensive playbook. Writing a check for ads or hiring salespeople feels like progress. It’s tangible and what everyone else does.
But just because something feels like progress doesn’t mean it is. So spend your time where you can’t spend money.
