Photo by Aditee Bhargava
There are two opposite mistakes founders make with this question, and both are common enough that neither one should be treated as the safer default.
The first is starting too late, treating GTM as something to think about once the product is essentially finished, as if distribution is a problem to solve after the real work is done. The second is starting too early, building an elaborate GTM plan before there's any real signal about who the customer actually is, optimising a strategy against assumptions that haven't been tested against a single real conversation yet.
Starting too late is the more visible failure, because it's the one that produces a recognisable, painful moment: a finished product, genuine confidence in what's been built, and silence where customers were supposed to show up. The mistake isn't that GTM thinking happened after building; some sequencing of effort is unavoidable. The mistake is that GTM was never thought about as a parallel discipline at all, developing alongside the product, informed by the same early conversations that were shaping product decisions. By the time the product is finished, an enormous amount has been learned about the customer that never got translated into a distribution plan, because nobody was deliberately capturing it for that purpose.
Starting too early is less visible and, in some ways, more wasteful, because it produces something that looks like progress without actually being it. An elaborate GTM strategy built before a single real customer conversation has happened is built entirely on assumption, however well-reasoned. Channel sequencing, messaging, pricing, all of it optimised against a guess about who the customer is and how they decide, dressed up with enough confidence that the team starts treating the guess as settled fact before it's been tested even once. The plan looks complete. It's actually fragile in a way that won't become visible until real customers behave nothing like the plan assumed they would.
The right starting point sits earlier than most founders expect, but in a much rougher form than the word "strategy" implies. The moment there's a working hypothesis about who the customer is, even an imprecise one, is the moment to start having real conversations with people who might fit that description, specifically to test and sharpen the assumptions a GTM plan will eventually depend on. This doesn't require a finished product. It requires enough of a concept to have a genuine conversation about the problem, the alternatives the person currently uses, and what would actually make them switch. That input should be shaping the product simultaneously, not arriving after it as a separate workstream bolted on at the end.
What actually deserves the word "strategy," the full version, with sequencing, channels, and pricing reasoned through, is appropriate once there's a real, if still small, body of evidence about how actual people respond. Not a finished product. Real signal. The strategy built on that foundation is fragile in healthy ways, ready to be revised as more evidence comes in, rather than fragile in the dangerous way a strategy built on pure assumption tends to be.
A useful check: has anyone outside the founding team who fits the intended customer profile had a real, substantive conversation about the problem this solves recently, not at the very beginning, or is the current GTM thinking still running entirely on the assumptions made before the product existed?
GTM thinking shouldn't wait for the product to be finished, and it shouldn't get formalised before there's anything real to base it on. The right moment is earlier and messier than most founders expect: as soon as there's a real hypothesis worth testing against real people, not once there's a polished product or a polished plan.
Every business has its own version of this story. If you're working through something similar, drop me a note at [email protected]. Whether it's to exchange ideas, brainstorm a challenge, or just have a thoughtful conversation, I'm always happy to make time for a complimentary 30-minute chat.