How to leverage GTM for fundraising

Read time: 3 minutes

The market has changed, and raising funds isn’t as easy as it used to be…

Any founder who is out there trying to raise funds is finding it harder to get meetings with investors and faces the challenge of standing out in a crowd.

We have spoken to multiple early-stage investors, VCs, and founders on how leveraging Go-To-Market (GTM) can make or break your fundraising success.

We have collected their feedback and insights to build a concise guide that any early-stage founder can use to understand what kind of GTM traction investors are looking for at each fundraising stage.

Use it wisely…

We are giving away a special gift, read until the end to find out!

The further along you go into the fundraising stages the more GTM traction investors expect to see, so let’s break it down by stage and review the kind of traction data you should present investors with to increase your chances of successfully raising funds.

Since our focus is mainly on early-stage startups, we’ll cover from the Pre-Seed stage until round A.

Pre-Seed Stage

Revenue Stage: Pre-Revenue - $50,000 ARR

GTM Traction: At such an early stage, investors mainly focus on the quality of the team - their skillset, ability to execute, and thinking process.

However, having a strong hypothesis of what you will sell, to whom, how you will reach them, and your business model is the least investors expect from you.

Pro Tip: If you can come to the table with some initial findings on your GTM hypotheses and your thought process behind them, this will showcase your ability to execute, adapt, and overcome challenges in the market.

Seed Stage

Revenue Stage: $250,000 - $1,00,000 ARR

GTM Traction: Nowadays, having an idea is not enough to raise at the Seed Stage. Investors are looking for market validation - aka paying users/customers, usage of the product, and feedback from users/customers.

Pro Tip: Paying users/customers is critical for this stage, however, what investors would like to see more of is a clear definition of the problem you can solve and who would pay for you to solve this problem - validating your Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM).

Round A

Revenue Stage: $500,000 - $3,000,000 ARR

GTM Traction: In addition to a higher revenue amount, investors would like to see one thing above all - are you able to repetitively replicate success with a specific type of user/customer?

Pro Tip: Investors would much rather see lower revenue but a higher concentration of one customer type rather than higher revenue but no clear definition of who your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is.

The more specific you are about your ICP the better chances you have for raising an A round.

If you’ve read this far, and you are struggling to raise funds for your startup, I have 3 questions for you:

1. Do you have the GTM traction needed for each stage?

2. If not, where do you feel stuck?

3. What are you doing to get unstuck?

*Special gift: free call to ask us anything about the GTM traction you need to succeed.

If you found these tips valuable, email us or drop a comment below to let us know. Your feedback helps us continue supporting startups like yours.

If you are ready to take your startup to the next level, this is how we can help 🏆️ 

• Hands-on Collaboration: If you are a startup founder who has initial traction and would benefit from a highly customized approach to help accelerate your startup’s revenue growth.