Why So Many Startups Talk About GTM

In the last few years, Go-To-Market has become one of the most frequently used words in startup conversations.

Everyone claims to have a GTM strategy. Very few can explain what it actually does. After working across different environments — from building AI products at Kakao Brain, to running APEC-level GTM initiatives at ByteDance, to leading global GTM and monetization at Gamma — I’ve noticed a recurring pattern:

Most startups don’t fail because they lack GTM frameworks. They fail because no one truly owns revenue as a system.

GTM Is Not a Department. It’s an Operating Reality.

One of the most persistent misunderstandings is treating GTM as a synonym for:

Business development
Market research
“Opening” new markets
Or worse, a slide deck exercise owned by strategy teams

In reality, GTM sits uncomfortably between functions.

Sales closes deals.
Marketing generates demand.
Product ships features.

GTM exists where none of these want full accountability.

Its job is simple but brutal:

make revenue repeatable — not impressive once.

Why GTM Can’t Be Run from Headquarters

Strategy teams tend to operate from a distance.

They look at markets, segments, and numbers from above.

GTM doesn’t have that luxury.

It operates on the ground — where users abandon flows, pricing breaks behavior, and “great features” quietly fail to convert.

This is why GTM roles only started emerging globally in the last few years.

Not because startups became smarter, but because complexity finally exceeded intuition.

The Part Nobody Likes to Talk About: Revenue Plumbing

I often describe GTM as designing revenue plumbing.

Not the inspiring kind — the necessary kind.

Where does money enter the system?
Where does it leak?
Where does friction quietly kill renewals?

This requires seeing product, marketing, sales, and monetization as one connected system.

Optimizing one while ignoring the others doesn’t scale.

It just delays the failure.

A Lesson from Building Recurring Revenue at Scale

While working on a presentation product used by both individuals and enterprises, one insight became unavoidable:

In B2B, “better output” rarely wins on its own.

What matters more:

Templates that fit internal workflows
Compliance and visibility
Reducing double work, not adding delight

We also learned something uncomfortable:

Viral moments don’t guarantee retention
Image-heavy generation is expensive
Monetization must follow behavior, not hype

Growth without monetization discipline is just burn with better branding.

Growth Loops Don’t Work Unless Revenue Is Inside the Loop

The most effective GTM moments often look small.

A simple example: encouraging users to turn outputs into shareable assets.

This wasn’t a marketing trick.

It aligned:

User behavior
Distribution
Usage-based monetization

That’s GTM thinking: designing loops where growth and revenue reinforce each other, not compete.

The Global Expansion Myth That Refuses to Die

Many startups still equate global expansion with opening foreign offices.

In practice, this often means:

Fixed cost pressure
Currency risk
Forcing ROI before product-market fit exists

The teams that succeed tend to do the opposite:

Test regions without branches
Segment by culture and community, not just language
Run many small experiments
Scale the few that show real traction
Open offices after the system works

Global GTM is less about geography — and more about local truth.

What GTM Really Filters For

As markets mature, they self-filter.

Founders who rely on buzzwords struggle.

Teams who understand GTM as an operating discipline compound.

GTM isn’t glamorous.

It doesn’t live comfortably in slides.

And it rarely gets credit when it works.

But when it’s missing, everyone notices.

If you’re building or scaling a startup, the question isn’t

“Do we have a GTM strategy?”

It’s “Who truly owns making revenue repeatable here?”

There’s a moment many startups reach after early traction.

A few customers convert. Inbound interest appears from overseas.

Investors start asking about “global expansion.”

And suddenly, the same idea surfaces:

“We should open a local office. We need to hire faster.” This is often where GTM quietly breaks.

Why Opening a Foreign Office Too Early Is a Structural Mistake

Opening an overseas office is not a growth milestone.

It’s a cost structure decision.

Once a branch exists, three things happen immediately:

Fixed costs become non-negotiable
Local teams demand results before systems are ready
GTM shifts from learning to defending burn

The problem isn’t geography.

It’s locking in costs before revenue repeatability exists.

In early GTM stages, you don’t need a flag in the ground.

You need signals.

What Actually Works Better Than Offices

The teams I’ve seen succeed globally tend to follow a quieter path:

No office
No long-term local headcount
Heavy reliance on contractors and true locals
Fast regional testing
Ruthless de-prioritization

They run 10–20 region experiments. Only 1–5 survive.

Offices come after revenue behaves predictably.

GTM isn’t about presence. It’s about proof.

Hiring Faster Doesn’t Mean Scaling Faster

Headcount growth feels productive.

It looks like progress. It signals momentum.

But hiring ahead of GTM maturity is one of the most expensive mistakes a startup can make.

Why? Because people don’t scale uncertainty — they amplify it.

If pricing is unclear, sales teams discount. If ICP is fuzzy, marketing sprays. If onboarding leaks, support drowns. More people don’t fix this. They multiply the chaos.

The Metric Too Few Founders Watch: Revenue Per Employee

One number cuts through all the noise: Revenue per employee. It’s not glamorous. It doesn’t trend on social media. But it tells the truth.

High-performing GTM systems show:

Clear ownership
Focused roles
Systems that scale before people do

Low revenue per employee almost always signals:

Premature hiring
Role confusion
GTM as activity, not discipline

GTM Scales Systems First, People Second

Strong GTM organizations behave differently:

They automate before hiring
They simplify flows before adding roles
They fix leaks before increasing pressure

People are leverage.

But only when the system is ready.

Otherwise, they’re just cost.

The Hard Truth About “Global” and “Growth”

Global expansion doesn’t fail because markets are hard.

It fails because founders confuse motion with progress.

Opening offices feels like commitment.

Hiring feels like leadership.

But GTM rewards restraint.

The companies that win globally don’t expand first.

They stabilize first.

What GTM Ultimately Optimizes For

Not headcount. Not office count. Not market count.

GTM optimizes for: repeatable revenue with minimal organizational friction.

Everything else is downstream.

If this resonates, ask yourself:

Are we hiring to learn — or to justify past decisions?
Are offices solving demand — or hiding uncertainty?
Does our revenue scale with or against our team size?

GTM doesn’t forgive impatience. But it rewards discipline.

2025년 12월 14일

There is a pattern I see repeatedly across early and growth-stage startups.

When growth slows, founders rarely ask: “Who owns revenue as a system?”

Instead, they ask: “What feature should we build next?”

This instinct is understandable. But it’s also one of the most expensive mistakes in GTM.

Features Are Tangible. GTM Ownership Is Not.

Features feel productive. They are concrete, measurable, and emotionally satisfying.

You can:

Ship them
Demo them
Announce them

GTM ownership, on the other hand, is uncomfortable.

It lives in questions like:

Why does conversion drop here?
Why do users churn after week three?
Why does sales close but revenue not repeat?

There’s no launch post for that.

The Illusion of Progress

When founders over-index on features, they often mistake motion for momentum.

New features create activity:

More demos
More conversations
More internal excitement

But activity is not the same as progress.

Without GTM ownership, features pile up while:

Pricing remains misaligned with behavior
Onboarding leaks go unfixed
Sales discounts compensate for product friction

The result is growth that looks real — until it stops.

GTM Ownership Is a Different Kind of Responsibility

Owning GTM means owning outcomes that don’t belong neatly to one team.

It means someone is accountable for:

How product decisions affect sales cycles
How pricing shapes user behavior
How marketing promises align with actual value delivered

This role is often avoided because it creates tension.

And tension is inconvenient.

Why Founders Avoid This Question

The hardest GTM question is not technical.

It’s organizational:

“Who has the authority to say no — across product, sales, and marketing — in service of repeatable revenue?”

Without a clear answer, founders default to what feels safest:

building more.

Features Don’t Fail. Systems Do.

Most products don’t fail because they lack features.

They fail because no one owns how those features turn into revenue repeatedly.

GTM ownership is not about adding more.

It’s about deciding what not to add — until the system works.

The Shift That Changes Everything

Founders who break this pattern do one thing differently:

they stop asking “What should we build?”

and start asking: “What must work repeatedly before anything else matters?”

That question doesn’t lead to more features.

It leads to GTM clarity. And clarity compounds.

Most startups don’t suffer from open conflict. They suffer from silent misalignment.

Product, Sales, and GTM teams are usually polite.

They attend the same meetings.

They use the same dashboards.

And yet, momentum quietly dies.

Everyone Is Doing Their Job — Just Not the Same One

Product teams optimize for:

Feature completeness
Technical elegance
Long-term vision

Sales teams optimize for:

Quarterly targets
Deal velocity
Customer-specific requests

GTM is supposed to optimize for:

Repeatable revenue
System-level efficiency
Long-term scalability

The problem? No one defines who has the final say when these goals collide.

How the Conflict Actually Shows Up

This conflict rarely looks dramatic.

It looks like:

Sales asking for “just one more exception”
Product saying “this won’t scale”
GTM trying to mediate without authority

Deals get closed.

Features get shipped.

Revenue comes in.

But the system degrades.

The Hidden Cost of Compromise

When no one owns GTM decisively, compromise becomes the default.

Product builds edge cases
Sales promises flexibility
GTM patches leaks downstream

Each compromise feels small.

Collectively, they destroy momentum.

What looks like collaboration is often just avoidance.

Why Momentum Dies Quietly

Momentum doesn’t disappear overnight.

It erodes.

Sales cycles get longer
Onboarding gets heavier
Retention declines slowly
Revenue growth flattens inexplicably

By the time leadership reacts, the system is already brittle.

GTM Is Not a Mediator. It’s an Authority.

One misconception causes most of this damage:

treating GTM as a coordination role.

GTM is not there to “align stakeholders.”

It’s there to protect the revenue system.

That requires authority:

To say no to sales
To constrain product
To prioritize system health over local wins

Without that authority, GTM becomes a reporting function — not an operating one.

Alignment Is Not Agreement

High-performing teams are not always aligned because they agree.

They’re aligned because:

Ownership is clear
Trade-offs are explicit
Decisions stick

Silence is not alignment.

It’s just delayed failure.

The Question That Reveals Everything

If you want to diagnose GTM health in one question, ask:

“When Product, Sales, and GTM disagree — who decides, and why?”

If the answer is unclear, momentum is already leaking.

And leaks compound faster than growth.