5 GTM Mistakes Pre-Seed Founders Make (And How to Fix Them)

You’ve built an incredible product. Now what?

Let’s be direct. You’re a technical founder. You’ve spent the last 6, 12, maybe 18 months living in the code, obsessing over architecture, and shipping features. Your product is elegant, powerful, and technically superior. But a great product doesn't sell itself. I’ve seen hundreds of pre-seed companies pitch, and the most common point of failure isn't the tech—it's the complete lack of a coherent go-to-market (GTM) strategy.

Most founders in your position treat GTM as a “later” problem. It’s not. It’s a “now” problem. Your ability to articulate and execute a GTM strategy is the difference between getting your first 10 customers and joining the startup graveyard. It’s what separates a seed round that closes in two weeks from one that never gets off the ground.

This isn't a fluffy marketing post. This is a tactical breakdown of the five most common GTM mistakes I see pre-seed founders make, and a no-BS guide on how to fix them. Let’s get to work.

Mistake 1: Confusing Your Product with Your GTM

This is the original sin of product-led founders. You believe your features are your marketing. You think a list of technical specs will make customers beat a path to your door. It won’t.

When I ask a founder about their GTM, and they start rambling about their API integrations or their superior algorithm, I know they’re in trouble. They can tell me what the product does, but they can't tell me who it's for, what problem it solves for them, and why that person should care right now.

Your product is the vehicle. Your GTM is the map, the driver, and the fuel. Don’t confuse the two.

The Fix: Get Obsessed with Your ICP's Pain

You need to stop talking about features and start talking about outcomes. The easiest way to do this is to get painfully specific about your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Who, Exactly? “SMBs” is not an ICP. “Developers” is not an ICP. Get granular to the point of absurdity.

Bad: “We sell to dev teams.”
Good: “We sell to VPs of Engineering at Series A fintech companies with 50-150 employees.”
Better: “Our ICP is a VP of Engineering at a Series A B2B SaaS company in North America, with a team of 15-30 engineers, who is currently struggling to prepare for their SOC 2 audit and is terrified of the manual evidence collection process derailing their product roadmap.”

That last one is a person. You can find that person. You can understand their specific, hair-on-fire problem.

Translate Features to Outcomes Once you know who you're talking to, translate every feature into a direct benefit for them. Nobody buys a drill because they want a drill; they buy it because they want a hole in the wall.

Feature: “We offer continuous, automated evidence collection for compliance.”
Outcome: “Slash your audit prep time by 75% and get SOC 2 compliant in weeks, not months, without pulling your engineers off product work.”

One is a description. The other is a solution to a costly, painful problem. Which one do you think sells?

Mistake 2: Boiling the Ocean with Your Marketing

The second you decide to “do marketing,” the temptation is to do everything at once. You spin up a Google Ads account, create a LinkedIn page, start a Twitter account, think about a blog, and maybe even record a podcast episode. The result? You do all of them poorly.

Your ads have a terrible CTR, your social media is a ghost town, and you’re burning cash and morale with nothing to show for it. At the pre-seed stage, you have two resources: your time and your money. Both are severely limited. Spreading them thin is a death sentence.

The Fix: Pick One Channel and Master It

Your goal is not to be everywhere. Your goal is to be dominant in the one place your ICP lives online. Find their watering hole and set up camp.

Where does your ICP hang out?

If you sell to developers, it might be Hacker News, specific subreddits like
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r/devops
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, or technical blogs.
If you sell to sales leaders, it might be LinkedIn and specific communities focused on sales ops.
If you sell to cybersecurity professionals, it might be niche forums and industry-specific Slack channels.

Don’t guess. Go find out. Ask the first few people you talk to: “What newsletters do you read? What communities are you in? Where do you go to learn about new tools?”

Go Deep, Not Wide Once you've picked your channel, commit to it. For example, if it's LinkedIn:

Optimize Your Profile: Your headline isn’t “Founder at StartupX.” It’s “Helping VPs of Engineering at Fintechs Automate SOC 2 Compliance.”
Connect Deliberately: Send 10-15 personalized connection requests per day to people who fit your ICP. Not a sales pitch. A genuine connection. “Hey [Name], saw your post on scaling engineering teams. Great insights. I’m exploring similar challenges in the compliance space and would love to connect.”
Provide Value: Don’t just post about your product. Share your unique perspective on the problem you solve. Engage with your ICP’s content. Become a known, trusted voice in that one ecosystem.

This focused approach builds momentum. Instead of getting one impression across ten channels, you’re getting ten impressions on one channel. That’s how you build a brand from zero.

For founders who want to build and manage these funnels themselves, a self-service platform can provide the needed structure. For those who prefer a hands-on approach, we offer a way to build your own marketing engine on our platform.

Mistake 3: Fearing Unscalable Activities

“But doing manual outreach isn’t scalable!”

This is the classic engineer’s objection. You’re conditioned to think in terms of systems, automation, and scale. That’s a massive strength later, but it’s a critical weakness now. At the pre-seed stage, you are not trying to build a machine; you are trying to find a spark.

As Paul Graham famously said, “Do things that don’t scale.” Your first 10, 20, even 50 customers are not a source of revenue. They are your external R&D department. They are your source of truth. You need to be uncomfortably close to them.

The Fix: Get Your Hands Dirty for Market Intelligence

Your primary goal with your first users is learning, not revenue. Every manual interaction is a goldmine of data.

You learn the exact words they use to describe their pain.
You uncover objections you never considered.
You see which “killer feature” they actually care about (it’s rarely the one you think).
You discover the internal buying process and identify the real decision-makers.

This raw, qualitative data is the foundation for all your future scalable marketing. It’s what you’ll use to write ad copy, landing pages, and sales scripts that actually convert.

Your Actionable Plan for This Week:

Build a list of 100 people on LinkedIn or a relevant database who perfectly match your hyper-specific ICP.
Manually visit each profile. Find something unique—a post they wrote, a shared connection, a past company.
Send a personalized message. The goal is a conversation, not a demo. Use the “Humble Expert Seeker” framework:

“Hi [Name], I saw you’re the [Title] at [Company]. My co-founder and I are building a new tool to help engineering leaders like you solve [Specific Pain Point]. We’re pre-launch and are just looking for feedback from experts in the field to make sure we’re on the right track. Would you be open to a 15-minute chat in the next week or two? No sales pitch, I promise—we just want to learn from your experience.”

Your goal is 10 conversations. These conversations will be worth more than any A/B test you could run right now.

Mistake 4: Treating Content as an SEO Checklist

So, you’ve decided content is your channel. Great. But you read a generic SEO guide and start churning out soulless, AI-generated articles like “What is a CI/CD Pipeline?” or “Top 10 Tools for DevOps.”

This is a waste of time. Your technical audience can smell low-effort, keyword-stuffed content from a mile away. It does nothing to build trust, establish authority, or differentiate you from the dozens of other startups competing for their attention. Checking the “we have a blog” box is not a strategy.

The Fix: Develop a Strong, Opinionated Point of View

Your content needs to have a pulse. It needs to reflect your unique vision for how the world should work. Smart people don’t want to read a dictionary; they want to engage with a compelling argument.

Be Controversial (Slightly) What’s the status quo in your industry that you believe is fundamentally broken? What’s your unconventional take on a common problem? Don’t be afraid to be opinionated. That’s what makes you interesting.

Boring: “The Importance of Code Reviews”
Opinionated: “Why Your Code Review Process is Actually Slowing You Down”

Write for One Person Use the hyper-specific ICP you defined in Mistake 1 as your muse. Write directly to them. Use their language, reference their inside jokes, and address their specific anxieties. When you write for everyone, you resonate with no one. When you write for one person, you resonate with the thousands of people just like them.

Focus on “Why” and “How,” Not “What” Your ICP already knows what the basic concepts are. They're looking for advanced insights. Focus your content on strategic “Why” posts and tactical “How-to” guides that solve a real, painful problem.

Bad: “What is SOC 2?”
Good: “A Founder’s No-BS Guide to Passing Your First SOC 2 Audit”

Look, I get it. You're building a product, not a media company. Writing high-quality, opinionated content takes time most founders don't have. This is where a dedicated service that understands your tech audience can be a game-changer. For some, a fully 'done-for-you' approach like AgentWeb is the answer to getting this engine running without taking your focus off the product.

This is the mistake that ties all the others together. I ask a founder, “What are your GTM goals for this quarter?” and they say, “Get more users” or “Generate some revenue.”

Those aren’t goals. They are wishes. Without specific, measurable targets, you have no way of knowing if your efforts are working. You can’t diagnose problems, you can’t double down on what’s effective, and you can’t tell a convincing story to investors. You’re just randomly firing a cannon in the dark.

The Fix: Define Your OMTM and Work Backward

At the pre-seed stage, you need to ruthlessly simplify. Pick the One Metric That Matters (OMTM) for your GTM efforts right now. Hint: It’s probably not MRR.

Your OMTM should be a leading indicator of traction. Good examples for a pre-seed B2B SaaS include:

Number of qualified demos booked per week.
Number of new trial sign-ups from your ICP.
Number of active users in your free tier.
Number of high-quality conversations with your ICP per month.

Work Backward from the Goal Once you have your OMTM, work backward to figure out the input metrics required to hit it. Let’s say your goal is 4 qualified demos per week.

You know from your manual outreach (Mistake #3) that it takes about 5 ICP conversations to get one qualified demo.
So you need 20 ICP conversations per week.
You also know that for every 10 personalized LinkedIn messages you send, you get 1 conversation.
Therefore, your input goal is 200 personalized LinkedIn messages per week (or 40 per day).

Now you have a plan. It’s not a wish anymore. It’s a set of concrete, daily actions. You can track your inputs (messages sent) and your outputs (conversations, demos) in a simple spreadsheet. Every week, you can review the numbers, see what's working, and adjust.

This process requires an investment of either your time or your capital. If you're weighing the cost of different approaches, from DIY tools to agency partnerships, you need a clear picture of the potential ROI. Understanding your GTM costs upfront is critical, and you can explore different models on our pricing page.

Stop Theorizing and Start Executing

Your pre-seed GTM strategy isn't about having a 50-page document. It’s about a relentless, focused process of learning and iteration. Avoid these five mistakes, and you'll be ahead of 90% of your peers.

Define your customer's pain, not your product's features.
Pick one channel and dominate it.
Do unscalable things to get priceless market intelligence.
Develop a strong point of view in your content.
Measure everything against one key metric.

Stop building in a vacuum. The answers you need aren't in your IDE; they’re out in the market.

Ready to put your marketing on autopilot? Book a call with Harsha to walk through your current marketing workflow and see how AgentWeb can help you scale.