{"id":9492,"date":"2026-01-09T13:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/the-new-rules-of-early-stage-go-to-market-hint-there-are-no-rules-l-build-mode\/"},"modified":"2026-01-09T13:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-09T13:07:11","slug":"the-new-rules-of-early-stage-go-to-market-hint-there-are-no-rules-l-build-mode","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/the-new-rules-of-early-stage-go-to-market-hint-there-are-no-rules-l-build-mode\/","title":{"rendered":"The new rules of early-stage go to market (hint: there are no rules) l Build Mode"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the season finale of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Paul Irving, Partner and COO of GTMfund, to <!--more--> discuss go-to-market strategies for the AI era. Drawing from his work with over 120 portfolio companies and a network of 350+ operators from companies, Paul shares specific, actionable advice on how early-stage startups can win even when facing well-funded competitors who iterate at lightning speed. He also explains why distribution has become the final remaining moat when technical advantages disappear in months instead of years, and why every company needs a unique go-to-market motion tailored to their specific ICP. <\/p>\n<p>If you just can\u2019t get enough AI-native GTM strategies, check out this episode of the GTMnow podcast: Build your AI Outbound Machine with ChatGPT <\/p>\n<p>Chapters:  <\/p>\n<p>00:00 Intro <\/p>\n<p>00:44 Meet Paul Irving &#8211; GTM Fund <\/p>\n<p>04:02 Finding Competitive Edge in Specific Channels <\/p>\n<p>07:34 Matching Operators to Startups with AI <\/p>\n<p>12:08 The End of the B2B SaaS Playbook Era <\/p>\n<p>14:09 Creative GTM Strategies <\/p>\n<p>16:18 The Power of Warm Introduction Mapping <\/p>\n<p>23:04 Success Stories: Ryder and Vanta <\/p>\n<p>25:25 Red Flags in Go-to-Market Strategy <\/p>\n<p>27:29 Advice for Resource-Constrained Founders <\/p>\n<p>31:22 When to Start Hiring a GTM Team <\/p>\n<p>34:57 Outro <\/p>\n<p>New episodes of Build Mode drop every Thursday. Isabelle Johannessen is our host. Build Mode is produced and edited by Maggie Nye. Audience Development is led by Morgan Little. And a special thanks to the Foundry and Cheddar video teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the season finale of Build Mode, Isabelle Johannessen sits down with Paul Irving, Partner and COO of GTMfund, to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9500,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9492","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nicheblog.top\/tech\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}